The Champions League will never - ever - go back to the way it was. Nor would there be any point given the crazy financial gulf now not only within domestic leagues but between them.

It's an "outside chance" right now but the most interesting development for the Champions league might actually be expansion. I know I can hear the wails of horror already from certain quarters.

But a 64 team group stage - with each country basically getting an extra place (but one that has to be obtained via a domestic play-off system) would open up the realistic possibility of "glamorous ties" against the biggest clubs to almost every European team.

The biggest clubs would find it far too easy to qualify for the last 32 (but then they find it pretty easy already to get to the last 16) but there would probably be lots of exciting battles between the other clubs vying for KO spots. And even the fans of the bigger clubs might enjoy the prospect of facing "new opponents" more often.

And because it would be straight KO from the last 32 (rather than just the last 16) there would be far more clubs that could go a long way in the competition every once in a while.

Of course this might be the death of the UEFA Cup - though I would prefer to see it continue with a 32 team group stage - with the 16 3rds from the CL groups still joining in for the spring KO rounds.

Back slightly more on the subject of Gavin's piece & I agree that the trend is worrying.

I do think it's more noticeable somewhere like England though because we've been used to such a competitive league. Without looking up my stats I think that 16 different teams have won the English league since the 1950s. Even Spain - which I consider to be an incredibly competitive league - has only had 7 winners in the same period. Get outside the "big five" leagues & in Portugal Boavista (once) are the only team outside their big three to win it since Belenenses in the 1940s. Most years it's been those three clubs (Porto, Sporting & Benfica) in some order or another in the top three.

I would imagine that quite a lot of other leagues have similar stats to Portugal. In other words - domination by very few teams - isn't new to fans in these countries - so it doesn't really bother them. But of course the increased dominance in Europe by a few elite clubs very definitely does...

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