Chester out, Howard out, Grovesnor Estates in

As someone who has lived in rented accomodation for six years or so, I feel I've got a handle on what makes a good or bad landlord.

Good landlords communicate with you regularly, replace things when they get broken, and don't hike the rent up every five minutes. Bad landlords leave their property decorated in a 1980's fashion, don't reply to your phone messages, and disappear off the face of the earth when you've spent your whole 'effin Friday afternoon off sitting around waiting for them to show up, grrr.

But enough of my house-related woes. United will soon have new landlords following today's news that Grovesnor Estates, the property development vehicle of loaded toff the Duke of Westminster, are buying the Abbey Stadium from Evil Ginger Associates, or Bideawhile as they're more commonly known.

I've been thinking about this all afternoon, and come to the conclusion that this news can't make the situation any worse than it is already. Even if Grovesnor have some kind of big nasty plan to build Abbey Heights on the land at some stage, as long as United keep paying the rent there's not really much they can do about it. So no change there then. And it was fairly obvious that there was too much bad blood on both sides for CUFC and Bideawhile to ever work together constructively on a new stadium project. Now we have a landlord with a completely clean slate, and one who appears to have considerably more clout than a couple of two-bob estate agents from Suffolk. Perhaps a new stadium can be pursued after all.

Still, I think Paul Barry is being a bit premature when he describes Grovesnor as a "friendly landlord". Only time will tell whether that is the case.

In other news, Chester's expulsion was confirmed this morning, meaning I am now refusing to look at the league table for fear of having a heart attack. Massive game tomorrow, absolutely massive.