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2010-09-05T11:04:00.004+01:00

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Football Observer Sunday: Football Gangs and the English Defense League (EDL)...The State of Portsmouth Finances

2009-12-27T11:34:00.003Z

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Mail on Sunday/Billy Briggs - This is England: Masked like terrorists, members of Britain's newest and fastest -growing protest group intimidate a Muslim woman on a train en route to a violent demo
27th December 2009
Their aim? To drive out Islamic extremism. Their weapon? The thugs of Britain's most violent football gangs

Some of the most violent football hooligans in Britain head towards Manchester to support a march by the burgeoning English Defence League (EDL), while a woman dressed in a black hijab appears intimidated

On Platform One at Bolton station a mob of around 100 men punch the air in unison. The chant goes up: 'Muslim bombers, off our streets, Muslim bombers off our streets...'

Their voices echo loudly and more men suddenly appear; startled passengers move aside. The group march forward waving St George Cross flags and holding up placards. The throng of men around me applaud. A train heading for Glasgow draws up on the opposite platform and the men turn as one, bursting into song: 'Engelaand, Engelaand, Engelaand.'
Some of the men hide behind balaclavas, others wear black hoodies. A few speak on mobile phones, their hands pressed against their ears to block out the cacophony.

'It's already kicking off in Manchester. This could be tasty,' shouts one. These are some of the most violent football hooligans in Britain and today they have joined together in an unprecedented show of strength. Standing shoulder to shoulder are notorious gangs - or 'firms' as they are known - such as Cardiff City's Soul Crew, Bolton Wanderers' Cuckoo Boys and Luton Town's Men In Gear.

The gathering is remarkable, as on a match day these men would be fighting each other. But it is politics that has drawn them together. They are headed for Manchester to support a march by the burgeoning English Defence League.
The police are here in force, too. 'Take that mask off,' barks a sergeant to one young man. He does so immediately but protests: 'Why are they allowed to wear burkas in public but we're not allowed to cover our faces?'
'Just do what you're told,' the policeman snaps back.
An EDL demonstrator is arrested at Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester in October
'It's always the same these days. One rule for them and another for us. I'm sick of this country,' a man standing next to me says in a West Country accent.

He draws on a cigarette then flicks it to the ground in disgust. He starts to complain again but when the tannoy announces the arrival of the train to Manchester Piccadilly he raises his hands above his head and starts another favourite.

'Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves... Britons never, never, never...' His companions join in. As the train comes to a halt the crowd surges forward.
The carriages are almost full so the men pack themselves into the aisles followed by policemen speaking into radios. A group of lads drinking beer at a table eye the new contingent warily.
One man wearing a baseball cap clocks their fear and reassures them.

'It's all right lads, nothing to worry about. We're protesting against radical Islam. Come and join us.'
Further up the carriage another bursts into song.

'We had joy, we had fun, we had Muslims on the run,' he starts up. Nobody joins in and a couple of his mates tell him to 'shut up' as they point to a woman dressed in a black hijab sitting at a table.
A man standing close to her is masked and holds a placard. It has a picture of a Muslim woman crying with red blood streaming down her face. 'Sharia law oppresses women!' the slogan reads.
The rise of the English Defence League has been rapid. Since its formation at the start of the summer the group has organised nearly 20 major protests in Britain's cities, including London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Luton, Nottingham, Glasgow and Swansea.
Its leaders are professional and articulate and they claim that the EDL is a peaceful, non-racist organisation. But having spent time with them, there is evidence that this movement has a more disturbing side. There is talk of the need for a 'street army', and there are links with football hooligans and evidence that violent neo-Nazi groups including Combat 18, Blood and Honour and the British Freedom Fighters have been attending demos.
Violence has erupted at most of the EDL's demonstrations. In total, nearly 200 people have been arrested and an array of weapons has been seized, including knuckledusters, a hammer, a chisel and a bottle of bleach.
As the EDL gains support across the UK, Muslims have already been targeted in unprovoked attacks. In the worst incident, a mob of 30 white and black youths is said to have surrounded Asian students near City University in central London and attacked them with metal poles, bricks and sticks while shouting racist abuse. Three people - two students and a passer-by who tried to intervene - were stabbed.
Following the Manchester protest, when 48 people were arrested during street violence, the Bolton Interfaith Council Executive issued a stark warning that race relations were under threat and Communities Secretary John Denham compared the EDL to Oswald Mosley's Union of British Fascists, who ran amok in the Thirties. In response to these fears, the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit, a countrywide police team set up to combat domestic extremism, has been investigating the EDL.
'The concern to me is how groups like this, either willingly or unwillingly, allow themselves to be exploited by very extreme right-wing groups like the National Front and the British Freedom Fighters,' Metropolitan Police chief Sir Paul Stephenson has said.

Welsh Defence League members burn an anti-Nazi flag in Swansea
I had met the English Defence League for the first time in Luton three weeks before the Manchester demonstration. After several calls, key members agreed to talk on the condition that I did not identify them. We met at a derelict building close to Luton town centre. Eleven men turned up. All wore balaclavas, as they often do to hide their identities, and most had black EDL hoodies with 'Luton Division' written on the back. They'd made placards bearing slogans such as 'Ban the Burka'.
The group's self-proclaimed leader, who goes by the pseudonym Tommy Robinson, did most of the talking. A father of two, Robinson explained the background to the rise of the movement.
'For more than a decade now there's been tension in Luton between Muslim youths and whites. We all get on fine - black, white, Indian, Chinese... Everyone does, in fact, apart from these Muslim youths who've become extremely radicalised since the first Gulf War. This is because preachers of hate live in Luton and have been recruiting for radical Islamist groups for years. Our Government does nothing about them so we decided that we'd start protesting.'
EDL demonstrators in Birmingham in September
Robinson could barely conceal his anger as he explained that the spark for him had been the sight of radical Muslims protesting when soldiers paraded through the town on their regiment's return from Afghanistan in May.
Following the incident Robinson set up a group called United People of Luton and, after linking up with a Birmingham-based organisation called British Citizens Against Muslim Extremists and another called Casuals United (largely made up of former football hooligans), they realised there was potential for a national movement.
'We have nothing against Muslims, only those who preach hatred. They are traitors who should be hanged and we'll keep taking to the streets until the Government kicks them out.'
More than 100 divisions have been set up across Britain and a careful co-ordination means the EDL is becoming efficient and a potential catch-all for every far-right organisation in Britain.
Robinson admits that he has attended BNP meetings in the past. Another prominent member and administrator of Luton EDL's Facebook group is Davy Cooling, a BNP member. Sean Walsh, an activist for the EDL in Luton, is a member of the BNP's Bedfordshire Facebook group.
Even within the EDL there are concerns over links to extremists. A former member called Paul Ray recently claimed that the group had been hijacked by BNP activists, including a man from Weston-super-Mare, Chris Renton, who helped set up the EDL website. Ironically, Ray himself has extremist contacts, including a German former neo-Nazi who is friends with Northern Ireland Loyalist Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair.
Casuals United was the brainchild of Jeff Marsh, a convicted football hooligan from Cardiff City's Soul Crew, one of the most feared gangs in Britain. Marsh operates behind the scenes, orchestrating activities with both Casuals United and the Welsh Defence League, a sister group of the EDL.
The public face of Casuals United is another Welshman called Mickey Smith. An avowed football hooligan, he is banned from Cardiff City's football ground. Together, Marsh and Smith organise the 50 or so gangs actively recruiting members across the UK.
The EDL insists it is separate from Casuals United, but dig a little and it becomes clear they operate hand-in-hand. Joel Titus is a cocky but politically naive 18-year-old Arsenal fan of mixed race. He tells me that the EDL youth division he runs has over 300 members across the UK.

'We want to hit every town and city in Britain,' he says.

Titus became involved with the movement through Casuals United. And according to anti-fascism magazine Searchlight, his role is to recruit football hooligans.
He sticks to the 'peaceful movement' mantra but a text I later receive from him ahead of an EDL demo in London reveals his involvement with the hooligans. It reads: 'Right lads, the "unofficial" meet for the 31st (London) is going to be 12 o'clock at The Hole In The Wall pub just outside Waterloo Station. I will be there just before that. Remember lads were (sic) going as Casuals Utd and if you could obtain a poppy to wear it would make us look good even if we are kicking off. lol. Cheers lads. Joel "Arsenal" Titus.'

EDL members meet at a rendezvous pub before travelling to Manchester
Alarmingly, the EDL is becoming more sophisticated and those orchestrating its activities at the top are far more astute than its foot soldiers. I meet two of the EDL's key figures in a Covent Garden pub - a respectable looking man called Alan Lake, and a man who goes by the moniker 'Kinana'.
Lake is a 45-year-old computer expert from Highgate, north London who runs a far-right website called Four Freedoms. This summer he contacted the EDL and offered to both fund and advise the movement.

'Our leaders in this country no longer represent us,' he says.

Lake's aim is to unite the 'thinkers' and those prepared to take to the streets. He describes this marriage as 'the perfect storm coming together'. Lake says that street violence is not desirable but sometimes inevitable.

'There are issues when you are dealing with football thugs but what can we do?'
He criticises fascist organisations, however, and says he will only support the EDL so long as it doesn't associate with the BNP. When I ask about extremists hijacking the movement, he says: 'There are different groups infiltrating and trying to cause rifts by one means or another, or trying to waylay the organisation to different agendas. The intention is to exclude those groups and individuals.'
These men are outwardly intelligent and their political nous combined with the brawn of the casuals makes them a quasi-political force.
Britain's neo-Nazis realise this. For Kevin Watmough, leader of the neo-Nazi British People's Party and a former member of the National Front, the rise of the EDL is reminiscent of the Seventies.
'The protests remind me of the National Front marches, but I wouldn't march with the EDL because they have blacks as supporters,' he told me.
But other neo-Nazis have joined EDL demos. These include members of Combat 18 and the British Freedom Fighters, who later posted videos of themselves on the internet.
Watmough lives in Bradford and can recall the 2001 riots, which came about as a result of tensions between whites and Muslims. Bradford, along with Oldham, another tinderbox northern city that witnessed riots in 2001, is a stated target for the EDL and Casuals United in 2010. Tension is likely here and in other towns where the EDL is also promoting spontaneous flash demos and the occupation of building sites for new mosques.
Professor Matthew Goodwin, an expert on far-right organisations who has advised the Home Office, says that the police are right to monitor the EDL and to take them seriously.
'(The EDL) is now well-organised and not just a minor irritant. It has become a rallying point for a number of different groups and to have them marching through sensitive areas is a major concern.'

Communities Minister John Denham has also condemned the rise of the EDL: 'If you look at the types of demonstrations they have organised, the language used and the targets chosen, it looks clear that it's a tactic designed to provoke, to get a response. It's designed to create violence. And we must all make sure this doesn't happen.' Daily Mail

Mail on Sunday/Daniel King - No Christmas pay for Portsmouth: Debts mean Pompey must sell their stars just to keep going
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Portsmouth's players and staff will be forgiven for being short on the Christmas spirit when they check their bank accounts on Thursday. At the end of the last three months, either those struggling on the pitch to keep the club in the Premier League or those firefighting off the field to stop them slipping into administration - or both groups - have neither been paid on time nor in full.

And even if their wages are paid by New Year's Eve, there is not much sign of 2010 being a new start. Over the past few months and years, a succession of businessmen of varying reputation and competence have passed the fit and proper person test of the richest league in the world to take ownership at Fratton Park. Yet one of the Premier League's oldest clubs continue to teeter on the brink of financial meltdown.

Yesterday, Portsmouth slumped to a 2-0 defeat against relegation rivals West Ham, a result which leaves them rooted to the foot of the table. Only once have the club who were bottom at Christmas survived, and the odds are firmly stacked against a happy ending for manager Avram Grant and his team.
Because if everyone does receive their December wages on Thursday, it will be the result of Portsmouth striking deals to sell key players such as French defender Younes Kaboul and England goalkeeper David James, who will move to new clubs as soon as the transfer window officially opens.

And even though the Premier League have given the club special dispensation to receive transfer fees before the window opens, unless they see evidence that the overall financial situation at Fratton Park has significantly improved and proof that outstanding debts to clubs have been paid, they will not lift the transfer embargo in place since October.
Grant, who as a former manager of Chelsea admits he is more used to dealing at the higher end of the table and the transfer market, was already facing a tough task to fill holes in his squad.

Without the ability to bring in players to replace the departing stars and to cover for the clutch of key men leaving for the Africa Cup of Nations, that now looks virtually impossible. Among those going to his continent's flagship event in Angola will be John Utaka, the Nigeria striker whose cross for countryman Kanu set up the only goal of the 2008 FA Cup final.

That triumph under Harry Redknapp, the club's first major trophy for 58 years, is the on-field highlight with which some of those involved seek to justify the current off-field crisis, but Utaka epitomises the reckless overspending that has brought the club to the brink.

Well-placed sources claim his contract costs Portsmouth a staggering £80,000 a week gross. Club officials deny his package is so generous, but admit a company with one of the lowest turnovers in the Premier League are paying some employees Champions League-level wages. Since signing from French club Rennes two years ago, Utaka has made 69 appearances and scored six goals, hardly the return you would expect from a striker who cost £7m and earns such high wages.

Portsmouth hope to sell him in January, possibly back to the Middle East where he spent four seasons earlier in his career. But the Utaka problem would not end even if they did find someone to take him off their hands.

Portsmouth have failed to keep to the payment schedule agreed with Rennes on the original transfer, and Rennes general manager Pierre Dreossi confirmed to The Mail on Sunday that his club are pursuing every avenue, including legal action and a complaint to FIFA, in order to recover their money.

How much do Portsmouth still owe? 'That is between us and them,' said Dreossi. Portsmouth say they have proposed a new timetable of instalments but are yet to receive a response. Rennes are just one of the football creditors Portsmouth will have to satisfy if they want the Premier League to lift the transfer embargo.

Chelsea are owed money from Glen Johnson's £18m move to Liverpool as part of a sell-on clause, Tottenham are due payments related to Kaboul and other players signed permanently or on loan, and cash-strapped Watford are expecting instalments on the transfers of Tommy Smith and Mike Williamson next month.

Football clubs, especially English ones, are unlikely to force the issue with Portsmouth unless it is absolutely necessary, thanks to the 'There but for the grace of God go I' mentality. But other parties may not be so tolerant.

As well as meeting a monthly payroll reported to total £1.8m, Portsmouth must find not only £1.5m to cover December's tax and National Insurance contributions but also about £2m as the latest instalment in clearing their £10m debts to HMRC.

If the decision to charge chief executive Peter Storrie, former manager Harry Redknapp and exowner Milan Mandaric with tax offences is any indication - all three deny any wrongdoing - the taxman is no longer in the mood to treat football with kid gloves.

The Mail On Sunday can reveal that French agent Jacques Perais met his London-based solicitor last week to discuss the £2m he is owed for his work on the £20m sale of Lassana Diarra to Real Madrid last January. Portsmouth, having already defaulted on the original contract, have missed the first two instalments of a revised payment schedule, the latest on December 20, and under a deal signed by Storrie and fellow director Tanya Robins on October 22, Perais can now claim the full sum of 2.25m euros.

Through a club spokesman, Storrie said Portsmouth were presented with a 'fantastic' deal for Diarra and it was standard practice to pay 10 per cent commission to the agent who facilitated it. The club's new owners are reviewing the Perais contract and a number of other deals as part of their efforts to get a grip on the debts, but the contract seen by The Mail On Sunday does not appear to leave much room for manoeuvre.

It is the ability of Perais, Rennes, the taxman and a number of other creditors to force Portsmouth to a new level of crisis that is focusing minds at the Premier League. They have already made it clear they will use all or part of the £7m television rights payment due to Portsmouth on January 10 to pay football creditors such as Chelsea if the club are unable to raise enough from transfers and other sources. But even if all those debts are cleared, those running the richest league in the world want to prevent a situation in which they lift the transfer embargo and Portsmouth bring in new players, only to fail to pay wages or meet debt repayments soon afterwards.

A Premier League spokesman said: 'The player registration embargo remains in place. We are in regular contact with Portsmouth and they are making us aware of any changes to their financial situation.'
The Premier League have also asked for clarification of the role of Daniel Azougy, the lawyer convicted of fraud and barred from practising in his native Israel. Portsmouth insist Azougy is acting as a short-term financial troubleshooter on behalf of owner Ali Al Faraj, not a shadow director or person of influence who would have to pass the fit and proper person test.
Ali Al Faraj's intervention in October saved the club from administration, unseating the laughable 'Dr' Sulaiman Al Fahim as owner after only weeks in charge, but since then Portsmouth have had to borrow £15m from Hong Kongbased businessman Balram Chainrai to stay afloat.

Research has revealed that Al Faraj is not listed as a director or shareholder of any company registered in Saudi Arabia. But there are suggestions that he may have connections with the Saudi Ministry of Defence. If that is the case, it might explain why he is shrouded in such mystery and companies might be held in other names. Sources have also told The Mail On Sunday that Al Faraj trades in commodities, including oil and gold, and that his property portfolio includes a building in the City of London with a value of £48m.

A number of issues remain to be resolved regarding property around Fratton Park owned by another previous owner, Alexandre Gaydamak, not to mention the multi-million pound loans he is said to have given the club. The fact that Chainrai, business partner Levi Kushnir, Azougy and others who have been linked to the club all have links to Gaydamak's father, fugitive from justice Arkadi, only adds to the confusion over Fratton Park. What is clear is that Chainrai, another financial backer or yet another new owner needs to come forward to refinance the club and secure their short and long-term future. And quickly.

On December 18, Companies House registered that Portsmouth had cleared a long-term debt, secured against Fratton Park, to finance house Singer and Friedlander. Despite the short-term cashflow problems, the Al Faraj regime remain upbeat, citing repayments to long-term creditors Standard Bank and Barclays as evidence that the club are in increasingly healthy shape.
Director Mark Jacob, a close associate of Al Faraj, said: 'We are confident that, both on and off the pitch, the start of the year will bring more positive news.'

The first test of that optimism will come on Thursday, when everyone from John Utaka to a part-time steward checks their bank balance. Daily Mail

How - and When - Clubs Find Mangerial Replacements

2009-12-26T21:16:00.000Z

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The Guardian/Paul Wilson
We can laugh at Manchester City but finding a new manager is no joke
The sacking of Mark Hughes was bungled, but sounding out successors is the way of the world

The Manchester City joke doing the rounds towards the end of the last century involved Francis Lee, the then chairman, spotting an old woman struggling to cross Claremont Road with two heavy bags of shopping. Lee stopped his car and wound down the window. "Can you manage, love?" he asked. "Bloody hell, don't tell me you're fed up with Alan Ball already," the old lady shouted back. "I'll come if you're desperate but I insist on a three-year contract."

All right, I didn't say it was a great joke. Just an old one that shows how little has actually changed, despite eight managers, four chairmen and untold millions from overseas bank accounts. Garry Cook may be the butt of all the jokes now, not to mention some trenchant criticism that he richly deserves for the way he supervised the ousting of Mark Hughes, but in the dozen or so years that have passed since Lee realised that any joke he happened to make about City was likely to come true, one significant thing actually has changed.

City are no longer a comedy club to the extent where they sack a manager without having a replacement lined up. Cook is having to put up with all sorts of abuse for staging preliminary talks with Roberto Mancini while he was still offering public support to Hughes, but in the real world that is what football clubs do. Everyone knows it, and Cook's biggest crime is not covering his tracks particularly well. Anyone who doesn't believe that should take a second or two to consider the alternatives. Either the club withdraw public support for their present manager, hanging him out to dry in an even more public manner than was Hughes's fate, or they stick with him right up to the point of relegation or dismissal, then start looking round for someone else.

There is no doubt that the latter is the honourable course, but the whole point of club management is to avoid relegation or a run of poor results, and that applies to the people around and above the manager, not just the poor sap in the dugout. Plus, once you are relegated, or once you have sacked another manager for only winning one of the last dozen games, you tend to find replacements of the highest calibre are not beating a path to your door. Given that most managers leave their jobs due to failing in some way – there are exceptions, and Manchester City do not have to look very far to find one – the only way a smooth transition can be organised is to have a replacement ready to step into the breach. The caretaker manager is an old- fashioned idea that no longer really works. Either the team keeps bombing, in which case you still need to find a new man in a hurry, or the team does so well you end up making the caretaker permanent, which is fine until you want to sack him six months later.

Even clubs where things are going well under long-serving managers, such as Arsenal and Manchester United, will not allow the present incumbent to ride off into the sunset before beginning their search for a replacement. A club such as Manchester City, with an ingrained reputation for both under-achievement and comedy plus a not unrelated habit of changing managers every couple of years, have to be hard-nosed and businesslike about the matter. Yet one of the very few chairmen I can think of to state publicly he would have no truck with talking to successors behind his manager's back was Francis Lee. "I want to trust my manager and he needs to trust me," Lee said in the mid-90s. "I am not about to lie to him or go behind his back."

Quite admirable, really. Certainly more principled than the way Cook has just gone about things. Yet, inevitably, Lee did eventually find himself with a managerial vacancy that was difficult to fill. He also stuck with Ball for too long, because he was a mate, and the pair of them did not see relegation coming until it was too late. In point of fact, or at least a much-loved part of City folklore, Ball famously did not see it coming until the last few minutes of the last game, because someone in the crowd with a radio had misinformed him about results elsewhere.

Despite his evident love for the club Lee did not last long as chairman. He eventually sold his shares to Thaksin Shinawatra. First and foremost Lee was a businessman, and he quickly realised that football decisions cannot always be worked out with a calculator or a profit sheet.

Just before City sacked Hughes, the Middlesbrough chairman Steve Gibson revealed he had sounded out Gordon Strachan before removing Gareth Southgate, even though the latter was a mate. Because you have to, was the gist of his argument. Having no manager, or being turned down by one's preferred choices, is worse for morale than keeping faith with the original. Following a rather charming form of protocol, Strachan obliquely replied that he could not consider Boro while they already had a manager, though might be interested in a club of that stature and a challenge of that sort should a vacancy ever arise. That's how things are done in the short-term world of football management and, for all Lee's misgivings, there is nothing really wrong with it.

While there is no excuse for Hughes finding out he was toast from the media rather than his employers, having been sounded out when Sven-Goran Eriksson was still in charge at City he knows as well as anybody how the system works. He will be disappointed at the way things have panned out, but compensation will arrive in several forms. He will not have been all that surprised." Guardian

Manager Claims: Rich Owners Don't Really Understand Football

2009-12-26T21:15:00.001Z

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Sporting Life - MONEY MEN DON'T UNDERSTAND - MEGSON
By Ian Parkes, Press Association Sport

Bolton boss Gary Megson believes football's mega-rich owners do not understand the game if they expect money to win matches.

Megson joined the debate that has raged all week relating to the controversial sacking of Manchester City manager Mark Hughes.

Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson claims the decision to fire Hughes immediately after Saturday's 4-3 win over Sunderland and announce the appointment of Roberto Mancini, was "unacceptable behaviour" on behalf of the City board.

Megson feels the axe that fell on Hughes underlined the impatience that runs rife through modern-day football, with owners like City's Sheikh Mansour demanding impossible standards simply because of the millions of pounds they have lavished on players.

"It (Hughes' sacking) didn't surprise me because nothing ever does surprise you in football," remarked Megson.

"It was really sad because you had a manager losing his job, and yet they've only lost two games all season.

"They were doing okay, people were talking about it taking a while for everything to bed down, and then he was not given a while.

"I think it's just purely and simply the nature of football in general, and the Premier League in particular.

"These people (the owners) when they put their money in, a draw away from home at Bolton or Birmingham, isn't an acceptable thing any more.

"It's as if the opposition doesn't exist, and just because you've spent a huge amount of money, you can plough on regardless and you are going to beat everybody.

"But it doesn't work like that."

Naturally, Megson joined in the chorus of sympathy for Hughes, adding: "I feel really sorry for Mark and the rest of the staff like Mark Bowen.

"I'm really saddened by it." Sporting Life

Football Violence, Fan Arrests and Banning Orders

2009-12-25T08:57:00.003Z

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- See: Complete Home Office Report: STATISTICS ON FOOTBALL-RELATED ARRESTS & BANNING ORDERS SEASON 2008-09

Football League - VIOLENCE DOWN AT FOOTBALL GROUNDS
23.12.2009
Arrests for violence at football grounds dropped last season, the Home Office Minister David Hanson announced today.

The number of fans arrested overall also fell last year, with no arrests at 67 per cent of all international and domestic matches.

'Statistics on Football-Related Arrests and Banning Orders' Season 2008-09', published today, revealed there were 3,752 arrests last season - down two per cent on the year before.

They also showed violent incidents were down five per cent, with just 354 fans arrested for violence out of the total attendance figure of 37 million at football matches last year.

Policing Minister David Hanson said: "Hooligans once blighted our national game, but we now set an example for the rest of the world in how we police football matches.

"I am pleased with the way clubs and police work together, but we must also praise fans for realising violence has no place in the modern game.

"We are not complacent and will carry on working to ensure this success story continues into the future."

The new figures mean just 0.01 per cent of 37m supporters attending matches in England and Wales last year were arrested. Fans were also well-behaved abroad - more than 105,000 fans travelled to 49 games in European club competitions last year, but just 30 were arrested.

The latest statistics revealed during the 2008/09 season:

• 3,752 arrests were made at domestic and international matches in England and Wales;
• there were 1.18 arrests per game;
• the number of football banning orders on 10 November was 3,180 - representing 956 new orders imposed last year;
• 92 per cent of individuals whose banning orders have expired are assessed by police as no longer posing a risk to football disorder. Football League

Football and Money Over the Past Decade

2009-12-24T21:51:00.000Z

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David Conn/The Guardian

The noughties: a decade when football's rulers ducked responsibility
The game boomed but so did insolvencies as the government called on football to rethink its relationship with money

When you take a longer view of English football than this week's managerial ousting or the latest results, to consider how the game developed over a whole decade, Sheffield Wednesday is a reliable place from which to get your bearings.

It was at Hillsborough, of course, that football's name as the people's game foundered in disaster on a landscape of neglect at the end of the 1980s. Ten years ago, at Christmas 1999, the Leppings Lane end in which 96 Liverpool supporters died had long become all-seated, and Wednesday's stint as a member of the breakaway, big-money Premier League was about to conclude in relegation.

Under the club's chairman, Dave Richards, a local engineer who joined the board six months after the disaster, and Trevor Francis as manager, Wednesday had, with the rest of the top clubs, enjoyed the luxury of no longer sharing their television money with the other three divisions of the Football League. Richards and his board had aimed to float on the stock exchange, like other Premier League clubs whose flotations made personal fortunes for their chairmen, but financially they were stricken by their excursion into the foreign player revolution.

Eric Cantona had spent a week at Hillsborough on trial in 1992 but the man who would define the elan of overseas stars left for championships with Leeds and Manchester United. Wednesday spent their TV windfall on outsized wages for the Holland midfielder Wim Jonk, the Belgium striker Gilles de Bilde and the Dutch striker Gerald Sibon. They were not exactly catalytic. Ten years ago this week Wednesday, bottom of the league, lost to Aston Villa, a 13th defeat in 17 matches.

Earlier that year, Richards had taken temporary charge as Premier League chairman following the exit of Sir John Quinton. Richards's appointment was supported by Ken Bates, then the Chelsea chairman, and approved by the clubs without a formal recruitment process.

In February 2000, with Wednesday looking certain to be relegated, Richards left the club to become the first paid chairman of the Premier League, a part-time position for which his salary in the first full year was £177,000. At the time his own business, Three Star Engineering, was in financial difficulties; in June 2001 it was placed in administrative receivership with debts of more than £1m.

Sheffield Wednesday went down with debts of around £20m from which they have never recovered. Richards remained Premier League chairman throughout the decade, becoming a Football Association director among several other senior administrative positions.

If the 1980s were a story of a great sport crashing into disaster because those who ran the game never kept pace with their responsibilities, the noughties can be viewed the same way. Football continued its 1990s revival, money poured in, the clubs became slicker on and off the field, yet the handling, harnessing, of the game's challenges lagged behind its development. The grounds remained safe because, after Hillsborough, that was the law. Even Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government was not prepared to leave safety to the clubs any longer.

Ministers in the new Labour government genuinely supported football, unlike Thatcher, who, according to her former minister Kenneth Clarke, had regarded fans as another "enemy within". Labour recognised that the commercial free-for-all which followed Hillsborough – the Premier League's breakaway, ticket price increases, players' wage inflation, club flotations, withering of the grassroots – had not been the best and only way the game could have rebuilt.

The government established the Football Task Force within weeks of winning its 1997 landslide, and its final report, on the bitterly debated financial issues, was delivered 10 years ago yesterday. The chairman, David Mellor, had striven for unity in other areas – in a remarkable accord, the Premier League agreed to contribute 5% of its next TV deal, matched by the FA and government, to improving the wastelands on which England's amateurs mostly play the game. Yet on the questions of financial control, the task force was divided, and two separate reports were issued.

The first, approved by a majority, including fan groups and academics, recognised that football was basking in success, but argued it needed reform to manage its good fortune in the interests of all. The report recommended a "fit and proper persons test" for club owners, democratic representation for supporters, a "Football Audit Commission" to oversee the game's governance, and reduced ticket prices "to embrace those who have felt excluded from football". Research had shown that although crowds were flocking back, many fans who had stayed loyal throughout the grimy years had been priced out, and the average age of a Premier League football fan climbed over the decade to 44.

The other report was produced by the FA and the Premier and Football Leagues themselves. It said they were "impressed" by supporters' trust initiatives, agreed that clubs should implement codes of conduct, even suggested an "independent scrutiny panel" to report on how well the game was governed. But repeatedly, the football authorities' argued against introducing any rules.

Clubs must have "freedom to act", the report said, and in a phrase of heroic confection, the men running football argued their "primary response" should be: "To adopt the contemporary principles of customer care and a more inclusionary approach to key stakeholders." With that clarity and keenness of vision, the game's rulers took football into the 2000s.

The Premier League was on the threshold of its next TV deal, from 2001-04; the live rights went exclusively to Sky again, and the total for the 20 clubs came in at £1.6bn.

Roy Keane, Manchester United's captain, made his memorable remarks about home supporters, having "probably the prawn sandwiches" and being unable "even to spell football, let alone understand it", in December 2000. At the time, Keane himself was reported to have set the new benchmark for players' wages, holding out for £52,000 a week.

Yet even such galactic earnings were eclipsed by the takings of chairmen selling out their shares. Alan Sugar, who had described the leaking of money to players as "like drinking prune juice while eating figs", made £22m when he sold part of his Tottenham stake to the investment group Enic in December 2000.

Martin Edwards, whose father, Louis, accumulated his majority Manchester United stake in the 50s and 60s, would make £93m from selling shares, in chunks, on the stock market, before the Glazer family bought United and ladled their borrowed multimillions on to the club. David Moores, the Littlewoods heir who had invested around £12m for his stake in Liverpool, would be paid £89m from selling his shares to Tom Hicks and George Gillett, who also borrowed to buy the club and made it responsible to pay the debt.

As Sky's profits soared from expensive subscriptions to homes and pubs, Carlton and Granada's joint venture, ITV Digital, paid £315m for three years of Football League rights. In April 2002, after one year, the company collapsed. Carlton and Granada refused to stand behind their company's agreement, Championship clubs each lost £4m they had fairly budgeted to receive, and the league plunged into crisis.

No Premier League club has collapsed into insolvency since the 1992 breakaway, but their overspending has been exported through relegation. Leeds, top of the Premier League 10 years ago with David O'Leary's sprightly side, "lived the dream" after that on borrowed money but did not fall into their £35m administration until 2007, under Ken Bates's chairmanship, and the unidentified offshore owners backing him. In 2002, of the three clubs relegated from the Premier League, Derby County were placed into receivership, and Leicester and Ipswich collapsed into administration.

Football, in its boom time, saw 40 professional clubs fall insolvent, leaving millions of pounds unpaid in tax, to police, fire and ambulance services, to hundreds of small businesses and, in all cases, to St John Ambulance. Yet the leagues' rules require that "football creditors" – other clubs and the players' rocketing wages – must be paid in full. Leeds owed HM Revenue and Customs £7m, West Yorkshire ambulance service £8,997, St John Ambulance £165, and Bates's backers' first offer, accepted by the administrator, KPMG, was to pay those creditors 1p in the pound. The former players still owed money from Peter Ridsdale's dream time all had to be paid in full, including, for example, Danny Mills, owed £217,000 on a contract which had ended three years earlier.

The grimmest spectacle in a gallery of mismanagement came at Chesterfield, the fourth-oldest professional club in England, formed in 1866. In May 2000 the club had been "bought" by Darren Brown, 29, who had, it turned out, borrowed the money to do so, then emptied the club of cash to pay his lenders and himself.

Brown was investigated by the Serious Fraud Office and ultimately sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to two charges of fraudulent trading. The club nearly went to the wall; it was saved by local businessmen in partnership with the Chesterfield Football Supporters Society, a supporters' trust newly formed as at clubs elsewhere to salvage the heritage from the wreckage.

An irony of football's jolt into finally recognising it did need some rules to protect its integrity in the cash cascade is that it was led by Lord Mawhinney, a former Thatcher minister. Mawhinney saw that the sport is not a free market, and that the Football League needed reforms to help it emerge from chaos. He was tough enough to insist solid changes were necessary, not waffle about "a more inclusionary approach to key stakeholders". The Football League introduced the game's first "fit and proper person test" in 2004, persuaded significantly by Darren Brown's pillage. Nobody convicted of a fraud offence could any longer be a director or 30% owner of a club, nor could anybody who had been involved with two club insolvencies. Observers noted that this would not have prevented Brown's takeover, because he had no convictions before he was handed the keys to Saltergate.

The Premier League followed, introducing the same test, five years after insisting in its task force report to the government that no new rules were needed. The league was flourishing, glittering, but facing a host of new challenges. Chelsea, in 2003, and now Manchester City, were bought by men from the world's rich list, willing to pump huge money in to increase players' wages and so skew competition. Other clubs were overspending to keep up, relying on burgeoning loans, from new owners or increasingly jittery banks. The Glazers' and Hicks and Gillett's "leveraged" buyouts were to saddle Manchester United and Liverpool with those enormous debts, which look to be biting at the decade's end. Contemplating their openness to all this, the Premier League introduced the rule designed to deter a small-time chancer in Chesterfield. And they wanted a pat on the back.

Mostly, the government acquiesced. The then sports minister, Richard Caborn, another Sheffield man, grew close to Richards, who was knighted for services to sport, largely for his work as chairman of the Football Foundation, which distributes the professional game's money to the grassroots.

Caborn, in tandem with Richards, seized on the 2004 sex saga involving Sven-Goran Eriksson, the England coach, the FA's chief executive, Mark Palios, and the secretary Faria Alam to demand a "structural review" of the governing body. That, carried out by the former Treasury mandarin Lord Burns, suggested modest changes, principally an independent chairman and two non-executive directors, which the Premier League itself does not have.

Lord Triesman, the former Labour Party general secretary and junior Foreign Office minister, was appointed as the new FA chairman, another interesting departure from the previous orthodoxy that businessmen must run everything. Triesman demonstrated that he wanted to lead reform, breaking with his predecessor Geoff Thompson's habitual public silence, and expressing reservations about the "Game 39" plan for global expansion of the Premier League's chief executive, Richard Scudamore. Last October Triesman also warned of the danger, in an economic crisis, of professional football carrying debts which he actually underestimated at £3bn. Triesman found common ground with Michel Platini, the president of Uefa, who was feeling his way towards tackling excessive debt and "sugar daddy" owners, and Triesman also suggested to the government there should be a review of the game's financial affairs.

The response to this for the FA chairman has, mostly, been relentless attack. Andy Burnham, who as a young task force administrator had helped secure government backing for the Football Foundation and the establishment of Supporters Direct to encourage supporters' trusts, returned as minister for culture, media and sport nine years later and called for football to "reassess its relationship with money". Burnham asked seven specific questions, calling for a unified response from the two leagues and FA, but they replied separately. The Premier League, which had furiously rejected Triesman's warnings, nevertheless agreed to take debts more seriously and to investigate the solidity of the money when a club is taken over. The Football League cited "competitive balance" – the financial gap between it and the Premier League – as football's "greatest challenge", but still there are no moves towards seriously addressing it.

Triesman proposed strengthening the FA's role in financial governance, but he was shot down by the Premier League representatives who sit on the FA's own board. These internal politics, long the greatest barrier to genuine reform of football, spilled over into the FA's bid to host the 2018 World Cup. Last month Sir Dave Richards resigned from the bid's board – prompting another deluge of negative, anti-Triesman coverage – in protest, reportedly, about the precise role Richards would be given and how far he was consulted on key appointments.

Over the decade, the former Sheffield Wednesday chairman has rubbed shoulders and made alliances with football leaders all over the world. He was paid £350,000 last year as the Premier League chairman. His former club ended the decade with £26m net debt, mired in a Championship relegation battle.

For the families of those who died at Hillsborough, the 20th anniversary in April saw a wholesale change in the way the disaster was viewed and reported. In place of false accusations made against the fans which had lingered for 20 years, there was universal sympathy for the families and a recognition that their treatment by the police and legal system had been a travesty. Prompted by Burnham and the junior justice minister Maria Eagle, the government promised that all documents held by the police and public agencies will be released.

For the families, the purpose is to pore over the whole, horrible truth about what happened and maybe, after that, be able to grieve properly, their fight completed.

After the disaster football moved on without much of a backward glance. Reform, the game's history tells us, takes years to catch up. Guardian

Watford Players Training on Christmas Day

2009-12-24T21:46:00.002Z

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Watford Observer/Frank Smith
- Watford’s players will be in training throughout the Christmas period as they attempt to improve the poor form which has seen them lose four of their last five matches.
- The Hornets players will be coming in to their London Colney base every day from now until they face Bristol City on December 28.
- “The players have a game Boxing Day [against Nottingham Forest] so they will be in training Christmas morning,” manager Malky Mackay said.
- “Then we are in all the way through as we have a game Boxing Day and then another game again two days later.
- “We are travelling down there to Bristol so we have to make sure we are in all the time now.
- “Christmas is a busy time for footballers and it is not a time of the year for taking time off. Martyn Pert [head of conditioning] gauges the rest they need and the recovery they need but, in the main, they just work all the way through.”
- Watford beat Queens Park Rangers live on Sky TV but that is their only victory in five, although they were unlucky not to come away from St James’ Park with at least a point in the 2-0 defeat to league-leaders Newcastle United.
- Mackay said: “We have got to make sure we get back to winning ways. I would be concerned if we weren’t actually playing well in games and creating chances.
- “We are doing that and looking still as if we are in games and will win more than we lose. I think for the players to be where they are at the moment with so much going on is great credit to the boys.
- “But we need to get back to winning ways and making sure we do not get beat, especially away from home.
- “We have got to make sure we turn the defeats away from home into something better than that.” - Watford Observer

Arrested for Illegally Broadcasting Premier Games

2009-12-21T14:31:00.000Z

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Burnley Official Site - Two Burnley Licensees Arrested
Posted on: Mon 21 Dec 2009
- Burnley Football Club has been asked to release the following information, following the arrest of two Burnley publicans for illegally broadcasting Premier League football.

TWO LICENSEES ARRESTED DURING RAIDS ON BURNLEY PUBS.

On Sunday 20th September, 2009, officers of Lancashire Constabulary licensing department carried out raids on licensed premises in the Burnley area.

As a result two licensees were arrested and questioned in relation to suspected offences under the Fraud Act and the Copyright Designs & Patents Act.

Amongst property seized by police was equipment used to receive Premier League matches via the internet and also equipment used to receive the matches via foreign decoder cards. Both licensees have been released on police bail.

Raymond Hoskin, Managing Director of Media Protection Services Ltd, who act on behalf of the Premier League, said: "We were called in by Lancashire Police to give technical assistance on equipment found on premises in Burnley.

"Use of illegal means, both by internet devices and unauthorised foreign decoder cards, have become a growing problem in the area following Burnley FC's promotion to the Premier League.

"The income of the majority of Burnley licensees who obey the law and pay the correct fees has been adversely affected by these activities and it is hoped that this prompt action by police will meet some of their concerns.

"We have paid covert visits to many licensed premises in the area and information on further possible offences is being examined.

"Those using foreign decoder cards or internet devices to illegally receive Premier League transmissions can expect to be dealt with.

"They should appreciate that in addition to convictions carrying appreciable fines and costs they are also placing their liquor licences in jeopardy. It is just not worth it." Burnley Official Site

FIFA's role in monitoring international football

2009-12-21T10:30:00.000Z

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EUFootballBiz

FIFA's role in monitoring international football

FIFA president Sepp Blatter spoke at the Arabian Sponsorship Forum at Emirates Palace hotel about the current financial strength of football and the role FIFA has to play in fighting "social devils."

The Abu Dhabi National states that Blatter acknowledged the role of former FIFA chairman Joao Havelange in using increased sponsorship revenue to make football more universal. “Football touches the world socially and culturally, and economically it has reached a dimension that means it also touches politics. But in our football society, we have all the devils of the wider world: violence, cheating, racism, doping, illegal betting, all that is in our game. That’s why FIFA must not only organise competitions, we must look after the social and cultural aspects of our game. There are 260 million active participants in football around the world, including players, coaches and referees. With all the family connections, the number involved – directly or indirectly – rises to over one billion. Almost one sixth of the world’s population.”

In speaking about sponsorships, Blatter also spoke about the changing dynamics of the relationships. “It was 35 years ago that I started to work with FIFA, then FIFA had no money.... We found Coca-Cola and Adidas and now we do not talk about sponsors, we talk about partners – they are married to FIFA.” Blatter said that FIFA is largely untouched by the global recession because of the strong ties built with blue chip partners over 30 years.

Frank Saoz, managing director of IFM Sport Marketing Surveys, indicates that football is the biggest contributor of the international sport sponsorship industry which is valued at USD 4.5 billion annually.

EUFootballBiz

Homophobia in Football Continues

2009-12-20T13:46:00.001Z

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Independent/ Nick Harris and Hugh Godwin

Two top gay footballers stay in closet

Max Clifford says football 'steeped in homophobia' as FA reveals Premier League stars are reluctant to speak up for gay rights

Clifford says he cannot foresee a prominent footballer coming out in the near future

PR advisor, Max Clifford, told The Independent on Sunday last night that he has represented two high-profile gay Premier League footballers in the past five years and has advised them to stay in the closet because football "remains in the dark ages, steeped in homophobia".

In the wake of the Wales and Lions rugby international Gareth Thomas coming out yesterday, Clifford says he cannot foresee a prominent footballer doing the same in the near future. "If he did, it would effectively be his career over, in my view," Clifford said.

"Do I think that's right? Of course not," he added. "It's a very sad state of affairs. But it's a fact that homophobia in football is as strong now as it was 10 years ago. If you'd asked me in 2000 whether I thought we'd have a famous, openly gay footballer by 2010 I would have said yes.

Related articles
Gay rugby star praised for bravery in coming out
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people....ut-1845913.html

"You look across society and see openly gay people in music, movies, television, politics, the clergy, and it's not a problem, nor in many sports. It's not that footballers are homophobic but the fans can be vicious."

The IoS can also reveal that a Football Association anti-homophobia campaign has been stalled partly because its organisers have failed to secure big-name Premier League players to speak out against homophobia in a film that would be screened at grounds around the country.

"Unfortunately there seems to be a reluctance by some players and some clubs to speak up for gay rights," says Peter Clayton, who chairs the FA's "Homophobia in Football" working group. Clayton, 58, represents the Middlesex FA in the corridors of power and is the only openly gay FA councillor ever. He told the IoS yesterday: "It would take a very courageous Premier League footballer to come out because fans are so vociferous in football in a way they aren't in any other sport. There are also barriers to a player coming out from some clubs, firstly because the players are commercial assets and the clubs don't want those assets damaged, and secondly because a player coming out would cause disruption.

"There are gay players in the top division in English football, and some of them are out to their clubs and team-mates and nobody gives a jot. But there is a reluctance by some players and clubs to make public appeals against homophobia, perhaps through fear they would be thought of as gay themselves.

"The FA takes this issue very seriously and it's very high on the agenda. There are lots of gay footballers in Britain at grass-roots level and it's no problem. We do need to stamp out homophobia at the professional level, though, and just like anti-racism work, it will take time and education."

Thomas, 35, who plays for Cardiff Blues and is Wales' most capped player, came out in an interview with the Daily Mail. "It's tough for me being the only international rugby player prepared to break the taboo," he said. "I can't be the only one but I'm not aware of any other gay player still in the game."

Tellingly, both Thomas and Nigel Owens, the Welsh international rugby referee who came out when he was 32 in 2003, and publicly four years later, contemplated suicide before sharing their stories.

Owens, speaking to the IoS before refereeing a Heineken Cup match yesterday, said: "Why don't more players come out? It's a worry for us as individuals, whether you're involved in rugby or any sport. It's never easy being gay or accepting you're gay. Coming out isn't easy. Telling your mother isn't easy."

There has only been one openly gay man in English professional football, Justin Fashanu, who was taunted, bullied, and killed himself in 1998.

Clifford added: "I've had two high-profile Premier League football clients in the past five years who've been gay or bisexual and my advice has been not to make that public. For a top player to come out, I would envisage they'd be a hard man, with an established reputation, and perhaps a year or two at most left in the game, so if coming out brought too much hardship, it wouldn't matter so much professionally."
Independent

Foreign Owners Of English Clubs Urged to Think Long - Term

2009-12-20T13:45:00.000Z

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Reuters - Foreign Owners Of English Clubs Urged to Think Long-Term
LONDON (Reuters) - Foreign owners cannot expect to buy instant success in English soccer, the head of the League Managers Association said on Sunday after Manchester City dismissed Mark Hughes.

Chief executive Richard Bevan accused the Abu Dhabi-owned club of changing the goalposts for Hughes, who was replaced by Italian Roberto Mancini within minutes of Saturday's 4-3 home win over Sunderland, and warned of further sackings elsewhere.

Big-spending City, the world's richest club, are sixth in the Premier League and have lost just twice this season while also winning only two of their last 11 league games.

"I spoke to Mark last night and he found out immediately after the game when he was called into a meeting and informed that his contract was being terminated," Bevan told BBC radio. "But I think the decision had probably been taken some time ago.

"He knew that there were key goals he had to hit and his target was the top six. He was very disappointed because they were on target for that ... to me it looks like the goalposts were moved.

"I think owners must realise, particularly overseas owners, that they can't just buy trophies in one season," he continued.

"If they feel that, then we will continue with the sackings and we will continue with affinity lost to our clubs in England. I'm pretty sure the Manchester City fans will be very sad to see Mark go.

"If you come in as an overseas owner, you need to embrace the city, the supporters and not just the trophy cabinet," said Bevan.

Sunday newspapers reported that a group of players led by Irish goalkeeper Shay Given had tried to confront City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak over the decision after the match.

MORE TIME

Hughes was the Premier League's second managerial casualty of the season after Portsmouth's Paul Hart was sacked by that struggling club's Middle Eastern owners.

Hart has since joined Championship (second division) Queens Park Rangers, whose owners include Italian former Renault F1 team boss Flavio Briatore. They have now had 11 full-time or temporary managers since 2006.

Tottenham Hotspur boss Harry Redknapp felt Hughes had not been given enough time.

"I couldn't believe it really, I'm disappointed," he told the BBC.

"Two defeats is certainly not a disaster and they've got a game in hand and were sitting just off the European places. I'm surprised that they have taken that decision at this stage in the season.

"Mark's a good manager and given time there's no doubt that they would have been very successful."

Half of England's 20 Premier League clubs have foreign owners and Redknapp said the landscape had changed.

"It is different now," he said. "You have got multi, multi-millionaire owners who all want to be number one.

"In their lives they have made so much money and they do what they want with their lives, they are so rich, and they all expect to win.

"The more that come in, the more you are going to see managers come and go. The merry-go-round will be even worse because they will all be disappointed they are not top of the league. They won't understand it."

(Reporting by Alan Baldwin; Editing by Sonia Oxley) - NYT/Reuters

Freak Footballing Injuries

2009-12-19T11:57:00.002Z

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Telegraph

Alex MacDonald's loan spell at Burnley ends early after he injures groin while sneezing
Falkirk confirmed on Friday they had ended Alex MacDonald's loan spell from Burnley two weeks early because he had suffered a groin strain while sneezing.

MacDonald, 19, was due to stay with the Scottish side until the end of the year but a groin problem made him unavailable for the remainder of his spell.

The forward made 13 appearances for Falkirk, scoring once.

Other freak footballing injuries:
ROY CARROLL: The West Ham goalkeeper was collecting balls from a goal during training when his foot got caught in the net and injured his knee.

RICHARD WRIGHT: Wright was ruled out of Everton's FA Cup fourth-round replay at Chelsea after suffering a freak injury during the warm-up. Wright ignored a notice warning him not to practise in the goalmouth and promptly fell over the sign, suffering a twisted ankle. The same player also damaged his shoulder falling through a loft as he was trying to pack away his suitcases.

RIO FERDINAND: During his spell at Leeds, the England defender managed to pick up a tendon strain in his knee watching television. Ferdinand had his foot up on a coffee table for a number of hours and ended up injuring a tendon behind his knee.

SEAN FLYNN: The then-Kidderminster captain suffered a broken nose, busted lip and bruised toes after tripping over his son's toy cars.

DAVE BEASANT: The veteran goalkeeper managed to rule himself out for eight weeks in 1993 when he dropped a bottle of salad cream on his foot, severing the tendon in his big toe.

DAVID JAMES: The England goalkeeper once pulled a muscle in his back when reaching for the television remote control and the keen angler also tweaked his shoulder when trying to land a monster carp.

ALEX STEPNEY: In 1975 the Manchester United goalkeeper Alex Stepney dislocated his jaw while shouting at his defenders during a match against Birmingham.

CHIC BRODIE: The Brentford goalkeeper's career came to an abrupt end in October 1970 when he collided with a sheepdog which had run on to the pitch. Brodie shattered his kneecap while the dog got the ball. "The dog might have been a small one, but it just happened to be a solid one," he reflected.

SANTIAGO CANIZARES: The Spain goalkeeper missed the 2002 World Cup after accidentally shattering a bottle of aftershave in his hotel sink. A piece of glass fell on his foot, severing a tendon in his big toe.

KASEY KELLER: The American international knocked out his front teeth while pulling his golf clubs out of the boot of his car.

ALAN WRIGHT: The diminutive former Aston Villa full-back strained his knee by stretching to reach the accelerator in his new Ferrari. He subsequently swapped the sports car for a Rover 416.

STEVE MORROW: The former Northern Ireland defender broke his collarbone after falling off the shoulders of Tony Adams while celebrating the 1993 League Cup final win against Sheffield Wednesday.

SVEIN GRONDALEN: The Norway defender had to withdraw from an international during the 1970s after colliding with a moose while out jogging.

ALAN MULLERY: The England star missed the 1964 tour of South America after injuring his back while brushing his teeth.

DAVID BATTY: The former Leeds and Blackburn midfielder managed to re-injure his Achilles tendon when he was run over by his toddler on a tricycle.

DARREN BARNARD: The former Barnsley midfielder was sidelined for five months with a torn knee ligament after he slipped in a puddle of his puppy's urine on the kitchen floor.

LEE HODGES: The then Barnet player slipped on a bar of soap in the shower and wrenched his groin.

CHARLIE GEORGE: Arsenal's 1971 FA Cup hero managed to cut off his toe with a lawnmower.

KIERON DYER: The Newcastle midfielder damaged his left eye when he collided with a pole in training - ruling him out for two weeks.

LEROY LITA: The England Under-21 international damaged a muscle while stretching after he woke up.

MICHAEL STENSGAARD: The Danish goalkeeper was forced to retire after suffering an injury to his shoulder while he attempted to fold down an ironing board.

DEREK LYLE: The Dundee striker fell through a glass table in his home which required 16 stitches and he missed his side's Scottish Cup quarter-final against Queen of the South.

DARIUS VASSELL: The then Aston Villa striker missed several games after he drilled through his toe nail with a home power drill thinking it would relieve the pressure on a swollen toe. The attempt at DIY surgery succeeded only in giving the toe an infection which required medical attention.

KEVIN KYLE: The Kilmarnock striker spent a night in hospital in 2006 when his eight-month old son kicked a jug of boiling water over his crotch.

LIAM LAWRENCE: The Stoke midfielder fell down the stairs and injured his ankle after tripping over his dog.

KIRK BROADFOOT: The Rangers defender suffered burns after an egg he had poached exploded in his face while he was inspecting it Telegraph

Cardiff Latest Club to Offer Season Tickets With Refunds if Get Promoted

2009-12-19T10:33:00.002Z

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Cardiff become the latest club to do this. Sounds a great deal for fans...

Cardiff Official Site
Fri 18 Dec 2009
Cardiff City are offering their fans an amazing opportunity to watch Premier League football for FREE next season - and help Dave Jones strengthen his squad in January.

Anyone who buys a 2010-11 season ticket before December 31 will have their money REFUNDED if the Bluebirds win promotion this season.

And the cash that comes in will go towards bringing in players during the New Year transfer window.

Yes, you could be watching Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool at Cardiff City Stadium absolutely free of charge. If you have already bought your season ticket for 2009-2010 the offer applies to you.

Manager Dave, who came up with the idea, said: "It's a no-brainer. If we get to the Premier League, you will watch your football for nothing. If it doesn't happen, then you're still buying to support the club.

"I've asked the chairman that if anybody buys a season ticket before December 31 and the club get promoted, then we should reimburse all the supporters who have bought a ticket and the money will enable us to go and get players in. It's a fantastic offer and a fantastic gesture by the board.

"The fans have been brilliant in the time I've been at Cardiff City and this is their chance to give us that extra push."

Buying a season ticket before the end of the year will also freeze the price for the next FIVE years. Here's how the inflation-busting offer works:

*Fans who buy a 2010-11 season ticket before December 31, 2009 will become Platinum Ambassadors and will be guaranteed NO price increases for five years.

*If the Bluebirds are promoted, fans who bought before December 31 will be reimbursed in full. This also applies to supporters who have already bought their 2010-11 season tickets.

*The offer applies to fans old and new - you don't have to be an existing season ticket holder to benefit.

*Prices start from as little as £14 per game for an adult and just over £2 per game for under 16s. Yes! £2 a game.

*We will still be offering our highly successful under-9s go free policy in the Braces Bread Family Stand.

*The offer is open until December 31, 2009.

*You still buy tickets season by season and you do NOT have to guarantee to buy for all five years

*You can still buy tickets after 31/12/09, but you don't get the five-year deal or the chance of free Premier League football.

*If we change owner, the offer still stands.

*Juniors who reach adult status during the five-year term will become liable for the full adult price in the season AFTER they reach the age of 16. Adults who reach the age of 60 during the five-year term will pay the concession price for the season AFTER their 60th birthday.

HOW TO BUY

To become a Platinum Ambassador, you can purchase outright online at www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk

By phone on 0845 345 1400

Or in person at the Cardiff City Stadium ticket office.

Alternatively, in response to feedback from our fans, we are now offering a five-month INTEREST FREE instalment option via Zebra Finance for all our supporters. Sign up now and you don't have to make your first payment until January 2010. To take advantage of this option, all you need to do is complete the finance form available by phone or in person from the club ticket office and we will do the rest.

So enjoy a big freeze this Christmas - become a Platinum Ambassador today Cardiff

Two Clubs Jointly Pay Tribute to Murdered Fans

2009-12-18T22:07:00.001Z

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Very good by both clubs

BBC -Clubs' tribute to murdered fans

Charlton Athletic and Millwall are to dedicate Saturday's south London derby at The Valley to the memories of Rob Knox and Jimmy Mizen.

The boys were supporters of the respective clubs and were murdered in street violence incidents in 2008.

The two clubs aim to use the game to spread a hard-hitting message aimed at combating knife crime.

Sponsors' names on team shirts will be replaced with the Street Violence Ruins Lives campaign logo for the match.

Millwall manager Kenny Jacket said he was delighted to be involved with the campaign.

"It is an initiative that we back wholeheartedly," he said.

"Football is a massive part of people's lives. In south London, Millwall and Charlton go back many generations and to integrate the two is a really good idea."

Charlton chief executive Steve Waggott said: "Street violence is a huge problem in our society. This game will really help raise the issue in the minds of football fans and the wider community."

Millwall striker Neil Harris told BBC London 94.9 how important the campaign was for him.

"I think this game is a fantastic opportunity for south London to send out a message between two rival clubs," he said.

"Young kids look up to us as players and it is important that we send out the right message both on and off the pitch."

Mizen's parents, Barry and Margaret, said it was paramount that the clubs, the families and the fans came together on this special day.

"What a time to bring people together, near Christmas," said Margaret. "This time of the year is always difficult, but to know that we're all together is a really good thing."

It will be the first time in 13 years that the Lions, who trail Charlton by 13 points in the League One table, travel to The Valley. BBC

South London Press/Tobt Porter

Margaret Mizen: Jimmy would have been proud of Millwall and Charlton

Thursday, 17 December 2009

THE parents of murdered teenagers Rob Knox and Jimmy Mizen will walk onto the pitch at The Valley before Charlton host Millwall on Saturday to kick off a campaign against street violence.

The players will wear specially-designed shirts to launch the campaign, which the Mizens this morning said they hoped will spread to other clubs, because of the power football can exert.

Margaret Mizen, whose son Jimmy was murdered in a Lee bakery last year, said: "I know for a fact that my son would be so proud of Millwall for doing this - and Rob Knox of Charlton.

"It will be a great day and a sign of the co-operation which can happen between clubs to try to stop the violence on our streets."

Husband Barry added: "I would like to think this will be the beginning of something more. Changes need to happen because of the levels of agression people seem prepared to show each other.

"Real changes can only come if we all do something. It is great the players are making their stance clear because football is influential. I would like to see it spread out to other supporters at other clubs because everyone has a part to play."

Lions manager Kenny Jackett said: "Me and the players back this campaign 100 per cent. It is a very good initative. Football has played a very important part in the two families’ lives so we wanted to support them." South London Press

Watford Win Last Gasp Reprieve

2009-12-18T22:02:00.001Z

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Guardian
Lord Ashcroft offers to repay Russos to keep Watford out of administration• Former chairman answers Graham Taylor criticisms
• Club hopes rights issue will raise £7.5m
Matt Scott guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 December 2009

Lord Ashcroft, Watford's majority shareholder, has offered to repay the Russos' £4.88m loans into the Championship club in an effort to avert administration.

The Vicarage Road board is awaiting legal confirmation after receiving acceptance in principle from the club's former chairman Jimmy Russo.

Once the transaction is complete Watford will proceed with a rights issue that is aimed at providing £7.5m in working capital for the club. That sum, raised from shareholders in an exercise that will be underwritten by Ashcroft, would cover the £5.5m that is required before June 2010 to keep the club afloat, while also providing a useful financial cushion.

Russo confirmed that he would accept Ashcroft's deal. "Definitely, not a problem," he told Radio 5 Live. "The sad thing is this could have all been resolved without all the pain that's gone on over the last week or so.

"We've been asking him [Lord Ashcroft] to come to the table virtually every week. But now that he's prepared to pay my debt, that's great. It's good for the club. I'm absolutely delighted. But ... why leave things to the last second?"

Russo confirmed that his threat to take the club into administration was more than mere posturing, although he would have done so reluctantly.

"When you make an announcement that you are going to put the club into administration, you've got to go through with it," he said. "Was it something I wanted to do? No, never. It's something they should have taken into account when they decided my presence was not wanted on the board, despite all the good things that we'd done for the club."

He added: "I'm relieved that this has been sorted out and disappointed that it's taken so long."

Russo also mounted a robust defence of his position after the interim Watford chairman, Graham Taylor, branded him a "bad man" earlier today for allowing the club to come to the brink.

"I thought that was a disgraceful comment," Russo said. "He should have been more selective with his words. How can somebody who has rescued the club four times, have a contribution of £9m in the club, never been paid a penny ... become a bad man? I think Graham should apologise for that comment. I think that was totally out of order and I don't think I deserved that. He should really look at that again and pick up the phone, if he's big enough."

Watford confirmed the £7.5m rights issue is going ahead. "The feeling inside the club tonight is one of huge relief," a Watford spokesman said. "The right decisions have been made by both parties for the future of the football club." Guardian

Watford Observer
Jimmy Russo and Lord Michael Ashcroft reach Hornets agreement
Friday 18th December 2009

By Anthony Matthews »

Watford fans can breathe a huge sigh of relief tonight after their club was saved from administration.

Former chairman Jimmy Russo has accepted an offer from major shareholder Lord Michael Ashcroft to repay the £4.88m lent to the Hornets.

Russo who, along with his brother Vince and close business associate Robin Williams resigned at Tuesday's annual meeting, had threatened to put Watford into administration after rejecting the terms of a £7.5m right issue proposed by Lord Ashcroft's Fordwat company yesterday.

But a deal has now been done and Russo told BBC Radio 5 Live tonight: "I'm relieved to have all this sorted out but it's disappointing it has taken so long.

"It has rescued the club and it is good for the club and I'm delighted. I didn't want to put them into administration.

"I wish the football club all the best and they have got a good future."

Despite this positive development Russo hit back at interim chairman Graham Taylor for labelling him a "bad man" following this week's events.

"I thought that was a disgraceful comment," his predecessor reportedly said. "He should have been more selective with his words.

"How can somebody who has rescued the club four times, have a contribution of £9m in the club, never been paid a penny ... become a bad man?

"I think Graham should apologise for that comment. I think that was totally out of order, and I don't think I deserved that.

"He should really look at that again and pick up the phone - if he's big enough."

Watford Observer

EARLIER TODAY

Watford Observer

Watford Supporters' Trust chairman gives his views on Watford FC crisis
11:19am Friday 18th December 2009

By Frank Smith »

Following Tuesday's dramatic AGM, Watford Supporters' Trust chairman Graham Sterry released this statement on Thursday morning with his own views on the current situation:

'I attended the AGM of Watford Leisure etc in my capacity as Chairman of Watford Supporters Trust. Since the AGM, the Supporters Trust has not been able to meet to formulate its views and there will undoubtedly be differing views and interpretations of events – some informed by having been there and through experience. Some not.

My own interpretation of events is that the 3 directors representing the interests of Valley Grown Salads (Vince and Jimmy Russo and their nominee director Robin Williams) resigned because it was clear to them that they would inevitably be voted off the Board. A major shareholder had ensured that voting be on the basis of shareholdings of those voting. That is normal practice in a formal poll. Since the Russos between them own less than 30% of shares and the counter parties own in excess of 50% of shares, there could be only one result. The VGS directors resigned rather than be voted off the Board.

However, at the same time, they demanded the immediate repayment of loans made to the Club by VGS. That immediately would force the Club into administration since it would be unable to meet its commitments. Were that to happen, the Club would immediately be docked 10 points by the Football League.

Most of the clubs in the Championship have levels of indebtedness markedly greater than ours at Watford. In saying that, I am not making light of the loans that the Russo’s have had to make to Watford; nor of the efforts that they have made to make the Club successful. But I am astounded and disappointed that anyone with the best interests of the Club at heart would take such action. It is that single act of demanding immediate repayment of the loans that forces us into administration.

Jimmy Russo was understandably emotional when he resigned. He stated, quite rightly, that he had tried to keep the Club afloat since he had taken over as Chairman. During that time, the other major shareholders (Lord Ashcroft and Graham Simpson) had not invested any new money into the club. VGS had been forced to make loans to keep the Club going. The last £1million would have run out before Christmas. In previous statements Jimmy had stated that following that he would be forced to place the Club into administration unless the other major shareholders made money available. He told the meeting that despite his phone calls, Fordwat representatives had not spoken to him. He further stated that they, VGS, had the funds and would invest, but only if VGS could acquire the Club from Lord Ashcroft and Simpson, on their terms. VGS had made a proposal to acquire their interest, but had had no response at all.

During the course of the continued AGM, and after the VGS directors had all left the meeting, it was made clear that proposals had been received by VGS and also proposals presented by Lord Ashcroft and Simpson. The Board had resolved that both of these proposals would be evaluated urgently by a sub-group of the Board comprising the independent directors, including Stuart Timperley and Graham Taylor. That evaluation was incomplete. It was obvious that the independent directors were frustrated that VGS directors had resigned and pulled the administration trigger before the independent directors had been allowed to complete evaluation.

That makes it very clear that this is all about the outright ownership of the Club. We have two groups of people who have invested in the past – one for many years - both claiming to have the funds and, crucially, the desire to continue funding the Club. We should be comfortable but for their inability to work together. Instead we are being pitch forked into administration as a device to wrest control of the Club. The Supporters Trust can only regret and abhor such destructive behaviour. We should not be facing administration.

Just to finish off, with Graham Taylor as Acting-Chairman for the meeting, the AGM continued with voting on the Resolutions before the meeting. In particular these included the election or otherwise of the Board of Watford Leisure. Graham Taylor, Stuart Timperley, David Jansen and Julian Winter were re-elected. We shall continue to support them fully in their efforts for our Club. They are going to need it, and we need them to be successful.'

Watford Observer

Prize Winning Football Websites

2009-12-13T13:29:00.001Z

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- When Saturday Comes Ian Plenderleith
And the winner is... 11 December 2009 ~

It’s five years since WSC last handed out any awards to worthy websites. And even then, we didn’t actually hand anything out. These are virtual awards that reflect the cyber-realistic nature of the internet and so will be better appreciated by the keyboard-bound phalanx of dedicated writers who would never desert their terminals just to attend some fancy web awards dinner at the Savoy. Besides, they were fully booked until next Christmas.

Those five years have seen a significant decline in webzines while blogs, forums and Twitter feeds have emerged as the instant conduit for football’s weary, frustrated and furious fans. Ambitious commercial ventures, aside from betting sites, have largely become part of internet history and the big-name media outlets have established themselves as the main source for news and mainstream features. The consequent chase for reader responses to impress advertising executives has meant that considered, quality writing has often been sacrificed.

But are we discouraged? Not at all. Considering the payback, we are amazed that in the non-commercial substrata, there are still independent websites ready to invest energy in producing work full of conviction, originality, wit and well-hewn prose. It’s true that, in terms of numbers, there are simply not that many good football sites any more and many of those we’ve praised before are now extinct or obsolete. But those with more staying power sustain the notion that bewildering devotion and unquenchable hope continue to pump the barely visible heart that keeps football alive and just about bearable.

Worthy Websites: Gold Awards

Pitch Invasion http://pitchinvasion.net/
& Two Hundred Per Cent http://www.twohundredpercent.net/

There’s not that much difference between a website and a blog any more, thanks to advances in layout innovation that simplify the once arduous tasks of constructing and maintaining a site. These two general sites have exploited the new possibilities and moved ahead of the competition with consistently excellent coverage. Their strength is to use quality writing as a vehicle for intelligent, commentary-led journalism looking at football from a photographic, historical, cultural, political and economic perspective. Fresh daily content proves that these sites are committed and they deserve your support to endure in the frequently bland, barren landscape of online football writing.

Play The Game http://playthegame.org & Transparency In Sport http://transparencyinsport.org/
The only sites devoted to uncovering bribery, corruption and all other kinds of shenanigans in the world of professional sport and in particular football. Play the Game is the site of the Danish-based watchdog that values integrity in both sport and the journalists that cover it, while Transparency In Sport is the site of FIFA vice-president Jack Warner’s nemesis, investigative reporter Andrew Jennings. Both are essential reading in the run-up to this coming summer’s sponsor-driven, fake FIFA love-fest.

Worthy Websites: Silver Awards

Football Filter http://www.footballfilter.com/
Superbly laid out single-page overview of headlines from the main media outlets, selected blogs, football magazines, messageboards, most recent podcasts and more besides. A simple but immaculately executed aid to swift surfing.

The Political Economy of Football http://footballeconomy.com/
Wyn Grant’s sobering site is the only useful guide to the messed up financial state of the British game. It now includes yearly profit and loss figures for most teams going back to the mid-1990s and an easily accessible archive of stories, club by club. Newcastle’s articles alone could justify an extra site.

Football And Music http://www.footballandmusic.co.uk/
We all know football and music don’t mix, but at least they don’t mix in a grimly fascinating way. Here’s where this superb site comes in, an ongoing documentation – with YouTube and MP3 links – that explores the almost impossible disunity of two art forms we love to watch collide.

Run Of Play http://www.runofplay.com/
This blog sums itself up well: “Our aim is to bring you the latest football news from around the world with style, scepticism, and wit.” The blog is nicely subtitled “Attacking Football”. Sharp, feisty and funny.

Worthy Websites: Bronze Awards

The 100 Football Grounds Club http://100groundsclub.blogspot.com/
Many of us like the idea of being a groundhopper but only in theory. Our vicarious visits to places like Norton and Stockton Ancients and Darlington Railway Athletic come courtesy of the hardy souls who not only make the trips but write about them too, at length, and in a nerdish but weirdly compelling fashion.

European Football Weekends http://europeanfootballweekends.co.uk/
OK, room for one more groundhopping blog, because these lads don’t take themselves too seriously on organised weekends, wearing EFW T-shirts, in a bus, drinking beer on the autobahn on the way to a German fourth division game. The jocose banter makes you feel like you’re on the bus too. A boozy, enjoyable trip.

The Global Game http://theglobalgame.com/
Not updated as often as it used to be, but this stellar North American site is still the flag bearer for the kind of in-depth football writing that has declined just as weak satire, mindless ranting and banal tweeting have risen to the fore. Its archives are a treasure.

Viva Rovers http://vivarovers.wordpress.com/
Read how Lindsay Lohan and Tom the Cabin Boy from Captain Pugwash became Doncaster Rovers fans. Dry wit combined with well-informed football analysis.

Cod Almighty http://codalmighty.com/
“Town: static, shocking, shaming.” That’s a one-paragraph summary of Grimsby’s first-half performance against Bath City in the FA Cup. Brilliantly scathing on a daily basis.

Hans van der Meer http://hansvandermeer.nl/
Exquisite photography from the game’s lowest reaches. Stills that move. You will stare at your screen for hours. Why are there not more sites like this. Ian Plenderleith - When Saturday Comes

Notts County Takeover Complete

2009-12-13T13:27:00.000Z

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Notts County Takeover Complete
Soccernet Notts County takeover complete as Sven stays on

Notts County executive chairman Peter Trembling has completed his takeover of the League Two club from Munto Finance.

Trembling has paid a nominal fee to the Middle Eastern consortium only five months after they took control at Meadow Lane, and he has revealed that Sven-Goran Eriksson will stay on as director of football.

Trembling said: "I would like to thank Munto Finance for the way they have conducted the sale of the football club. They have been responsible for changing the outlook of a club which has previously finished in the bottom six of the Football League for four times in the past five years.

"Now we cherish ambitions to secure promotion this year and deliver sustainable progress into the Championship and beyond."

Trembling has already passed a Football League fit and proper person test and revealed he will be seeking new investment.

He added: "This is clearly an important day for the club and one which will hopefully draw a line under several weeks of speculation. I must stress, however, that a great deal more still needs to be done if we are to fulfil our ultimate objective of Premier League football.

"We have restructured the ownership of the football club in order to secure new and prolonged investment and we anticipate this will be an ongoing process.''

Magpies chief executive Gary Townsend will be asked to join the board of directors and Sir John Walker will stay on as a director. Soccernet

Kettering's Involved Chairman

2009-12-13T13:25:00.000Z

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Observer/Paul Wilson
Dressing-room sackings are more Dog and Duck than FA Cup

Interfering chairman made Kettering look amateurish

The Kettering player-manager Lee Harper saw his assistant dismissed this week following the 5-1 FA Cup defeat at Leeds. Photograph: Andrew Couldridge/Action Images.

One of the great things about football is its almost endless capacity to surprise. Another is that despite all the money around these days the game at the top level continues to be recognisable as the game we have all played on park pitches or school fields.

These thoughts were initially prompted by the Hackney Marshes aspect of Steve Sidwell's part in the goal Aston Villa's James Milner scored against Hull City last week, when the non-playing substitute turned ball-boy to allow a throw-in quick enough to catch the opposing goalkeeper out of his ground. They were reinforced by what happened at Elland Road on Tuesday night when Kettering were knocked out of the FA Cup, a sequence of events straight from the Dog and Duck end of the football spectrum.

In case you haven't heard the tale, here is a brief precis of what happened. The score after 90 minutes of the second-round replay was 1-1. Leeds United were not having everything their own way and home players were beginning to argue among themselves, so with the prize of a trip to Manchester United on offer, the Poppies were entitled to feel they might get lucky on penalties if they could survive the next half hour. Trouble was, they couldn't. With some of his outfield players exhausted and begging to come off, assistant manager John Deehan sent on substitutes, Kettering conceded four goals in extra-time and at the final whistle Deehan was sacked by an irate and bitterly disappointed chairman, Imraan Ladak. Lee Harper, the Kettering goalkeeper and player-manager, told reporters he was "gutted by the result but shell-shocked and flabbergasted by what had happened in the dressing room afterwards", and said he was considering his own position after such unjust treatment of his assistant. He has since made his peace with Ladak and pledged to carry on, though the latter acknowledges there was a substantial difference of opinion.

Football has seen countless trigger-happy chairmen, though dismissing a manager during a game – Ladak admits he was angry with the substitutions and the possibility exists he would have acted even sooner had it been feasible – is something new. Especially as, by Kettering standards, this was the biggest game of the season. The highlight, their Cup final. Old Trafford would have been better, for sure, yet by all accounts the Conference side did their fans proud at Elland Road and were only exposed by their fitness levels late in the game.

Ladak is no stranger to dismissing managers. He was the chairman who brought in Paul Gascoigne a few years ago then shipped him out a matter of weeks later on discovering he was not quite what was needed, and Harper and Deehan had only been in charge since last month. Deehan, who has a decent managerial CV after spells at Norwich, Wigan and Aston Villa, was the experienced head Harper brought in to help him take his first steps as player-manager. "He's a football man, he knows what he's doing," Harper said. "The lads gave it everything on the night and when you bring football people in they need to be left to run the team."

If that sounds like a thinly veiled accusation of interference, it is only what Kettering fans have been saying all week. When Ladak is not being charged with sticking his nose into team selection he is usually being branded an attention-seeker or egotist. Yet the chairman gave a detailed interview with the club's website the following day that lasted over an hour, and while stopping short of apologising, offered an explanation and an expression of regret that his actions had overshadowed an otherwise memorable evening. "I have taken some of the positive spotlight away from the club and that is not normally something I would choose to do," he said.

It turns out that Ladak was irked to see one particular player take the field. A player who will remain nameless here, but whose identity Ladak is not at all concerned to protect. A player, according to Ladak, who cannot be bothered travelling to all the club's training sessions, who was not involved in the preparations for the Leeds game, who has been actively seeking to leave and whom the chairman never wanted to see play for Kettering again. A player, in short, who Ladak said "was only on the bench at Elland Road to make up the numbers".

Not the best plan, perhaps, but needs must, and it might have worked without Kettering's original 11 dropping like flies in extra-time. Deehan sent on the only fresh legs he had and paid the penalty. It is hard to know who is right and wrong in this sorry tale, though it is just possible that rather than being a pompous publicity seeker, Ladak is a man with principles who cares too much about his club. Perhaps he needs to be even firmer in future, and insist that bad influences and bad attitudes are kept well away from the team. Put them on the subs' bench, even as decoration, and sod's law will come into play. Ladak probably ought to try counting to 10 occasionally too, and leaving big decisions until the following day. "Lots of things go on within football clubs, and it is not right to put every single reason why you might be unhappy into the public domain," he said. There is an obvious lesson to be learned here. Sacking a member of the coaching staff in the dressing room at the final whistle puts all your problems into the public domain. As well as making you look a bit Dog and Duck.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/....up-leeds-united
Observer

थिस इस अ टेस्ट ऑफ़ थिस साईट

2009-12-10T12:40:00.000Z

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थिस इस अ टेस्ट ऑफ़ थिस साईट

(I Typed: "This is a Test of This Site" )

King's Lynn on the Brink

2009-12-08T19:53:00.000Z

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- BBC 8 December 2009
King's Lynn are likely to be wound up on Wednesday

King's Lynn face going out of business on Wednesday with their latest date at the High Court in London.

With mounting debts and a near-£70,000 tax bill, the club are likely to be wound up unless a saviour can be found who can ensure financial stability.

Chairman Ken Bobbins told BBC Radio Norfolk that an 11th-hour rescue is unlikely, despite his best efforts.

He said: "No, I don't think so - the phone's been pretty busy today but nothing positive has come out of that."

Bobbins also confirmed that an anonymous individual had been in talks regarding a takeover, but the Football Association's ownership regulations got in the way.

He said: "He came forward with a proposal which we thought was OK, would have saved the club, but he wanted to take the club over as a sole trader.

"Now he is already an extremely successful businessman in another area of sport, with rules equally as complex as the FA's, if not more so.

"Unfortunately when we approached the FA they wouldn't allow him to do it with King's Lynn Football Club."

Meanwhile the Unibond League Premier Division club have received some sympathy from celebrity astrologer Russell Grant.

A keen non-league football fan, Grant told BBC London's Non-League Show that Lynn's trouble stems from when they were moved into Blue Square North after winning the Southern League in 2008.

"Two years ago they got bunged from the south to the north," he said.

"Because of the cost of players, the cost of travelling and having to change their squad they had to drop all the players from the south and east.

"And look what's happened, it doesn't take a great astrologer like me to forecast that this was the beginning of the end." BBC

Watford Football Agents Report

2009-12-07T10:30:00.000Z

Watford Observer/Frank Smith

Watford pay agents almost £600,000 in a year
30th November 2009

Watford FC paid agents almost £600,000 in the calendar year ending September 30.
Between October 1 2008 and September 30 this year, the Hornets paid £573,913.16 for ‘agency activity’.

The sum included money paid by the club on ‘behalf of the players’, for example when the club pays an agent and the money is then deducted from their wages.

Some of the payments during the year also related to agreements made before that period, such as agent fees for players who left the previous year.

FA regulations state all clubs must reveal how much they paid agents during the above period on their website before the end of today.

watfordobserver.co.uk/sport/watfordfc/watfordfcnews/4768553.Watford_pay_agents_almost___600_000/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/sport/w....most___600_000/

Watford Official Site

PAYMENTS TO AGENTS 2008/09
Mon 30 Nov 2009
THE Club confirms that the total amount paid to agents in the period 1 October 2008 - 30 September 2009 was £573,913.16.

The amount shown is the aggregate of all payments made to agents during the reporting period shown for agency activity, including payments made by the club on behalf of players.

The total amount includes payments contracted in the current and prior years.

The information above is published in accordance with FA regulations that have been introduced this year

watfordfc.com/page/NewsDetail/0,,10400~1890970,00.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.watfordfc.com/page/NewsDetail/0,,10400~1890970,00.html

Football - European Lower League Corruption and Bribery

2009-12-07T10:26:00.001Z

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New York Times - December 7, 2009
In Lowly Leagues, a Soccer Culture Ripe for Bribery
By KATRIN BENNHOLD

In this small stadium in Bavaria, most stands are not just empty — they are covered in slippery grass and moss. There are no television cameras. Among the sponsors advertised on the hoarding is Delphi, a local Greek restaurant.

At stake for the visiting soccer club from Ulm: Moving from ninth to sixth place in one of Germany’s three fourth-division regional league tables.

Or, as even its manager, Markus Lösch, acknowledged: “Nothing at all.”

Two weeks ago, Ulm, a charming Swabian town on the Danube, was best known for having the tallest church spire in the world and being the birthplace of Albert Einstein. Now Ulm, and a handful of other German towns, have become associated with the biggest betting scandal in European sporting history, a scam that has laid bare the little-known, often bankrupt, underbelly of the world’s favorite sport.

But for a few sweet hours Saturday, none of that mattered. SSV Ulm beat FC Eintracht Bamberg, 3-1. The Ulmers dominated the pitch. They played a beautiful game and loved every minute of it.

Who cared that only 39 fans in Ulm’s black-and-white colors made the 250 kilometer trip to Bamberg, or 155 miles, and that not even the local sports reporter from the Neu Ulmer Zeitung bothered to come?

For those few hours — with music blasting in the steaming locker room and the post-match euphoria — everyone could forget that three of Ulm’s best players were just fired for allegedly fixing matches.

“Ulm players aren’t bribable,” the 39 fans chanted, in spirited self-deprecation. “Too bad you didn’t cheat today,” retorted a Bamberg fan across the two metal fences separating them.

Of the 200 European soccer games under investigation by prosecutors, 32 took place in Germany and more than half of them — 18 — in the lowly fourth division, where experts are unsurprised that betting rings appear to have flourished.

In the higher leagues, cheating is both harder and less tempting.

The scrutiny of television cameras means a deliberate handball or conveniently missed penalty are less likely to go undetected. The ignominy of fixing a match stacks up poorly against the rewards of high pay and bonuses, and shares of hefty TV fees.

In the lower leagues, a poisonous combination of high expectations, meager success and astonishingly low pay make players in Germany’s 33 standard regional division clubs vulnerable targets for bribery.

These men operate on the fault line between professional and amateur soccer, where youthful dreams of greatness live side by side with end-of-career cynicism and frustrated mediocrity.

The athletes play below the radar of public interest, and often below the poverty line.

Sponsors, media and fans are scarce. Twenty-six of the regional league clubs have balance sheets in the red, according to the German Football Association. Their average deficit exceeds €2 million, about $3 million.

Regional players earn as little as €150 — the legal minimum for a basic monthly salary, excluding match bonuses, in Football Association guidelines. Five figure salaries are very rare, the six and seven figure wages of top stars a mere dream. Some clubs are so poor that they are forced to lure players with promises of jobs with corporate sponsors or mileage payment for attending training.

“The regional leagues want to play professionally but they don’t have the money the professional leagues have,” said Theo Zwanziger, president of the German Football Association, which is based in Frankfurt and governs German soccer. “That makes the players in those leagues generally the most susceptible.”

In his office underneath the grandstand of the local stadium, the Ulm trainer, Ralf Becker, put it more bluntly: “They are all potential offenders.”

“When guys earn 500 euros to play soccer, you can’t allow bets worth thousands of euros and expect that it won’t have an impact,” said Becker, who thinks all betting on fourth division matches should be banned. The betting on fourth division matches happens largely in private betting companies. The state-run outfit largely sticks with top league soccer.

“They have all the pressures of professional football: The fear of injuries. The weekly competition to be selected to play. The 90 minutes on the playing field on the weekend. The knowledge that your career is over at 35,” said Becker, himself a former professional player who had to stop at 34 because of an ankle injury.

“But Bundesliga players earn at least 10 or 20 times more.”

The three fired Croatian players Davor Kraljevic, 31, Dinko Radojevic, 31, and Marijo Marinovic, 26, are a case in point. They are under investigation for allegedly rigging four matches last season and two matches this season for several thousand euros each.

Earning between €3,000 and 4,000 a month, they were among the best and highest-paid players on the club. But, as one official familiar with the investigation explains, their choice was between €350 in taxable bonus payments if the club had won, and about €5,000 in cash per rigged match.

“Their calculation was: Get paid well to lose or get paid poorly to win,” the official said, who declined to be identified because the investigation is ongoing.

The three were the backbone of the game: Center back, center midfielder and striker — a straight axis to the goal. Or, as some Ulmers say jokingly these days: the axis of evil.

Marinovic is suspected of having staged a handball that gave a penalty to Kassel in a match Ulm lost, 3-0, last season. Radojevic, the club’s top goal scorer, missed a penalty in a match this autumn against Darmstadt. Kraljevic, according to investigators, moved in the same circles as Ante Sapina, the Croatian ring leader of a 2005 match-fixing scandal who is once again believed to have orchestrated the rigging.

Many players bitterly recall a club dinner the night before police raided the homes of the Croatian players and presented evidence to the club.

“We were all trying to understand why we were losing so many matches where we were winning 1-0 at halftime,” an Ulm player, Florian Treske, said.

The 163-year-old SSV Ulm club is in many ways a microcosm of the bitter-sweet world of German soccer, a blighted, little reported universe of shattered hopes, financial woes, low-level corruption and rarely realized dreams.

In 1997, Ulm started on the long climb that resulted in the near impossible: it rose from third to second division and then — for one short exuberant season — into the Bundesliga.

Holger Betz, 31, who was a goalkeeper for the club then, recalls the thrill of playing in front of 85,000 people.

But the fall was as spectacular as the rise. By 2001, Ulm was back in third division and insolvent, virtually bankrupted by the decision to keep on expensive players. A former senior official of the club is under investigation for failing to pay payroll charges on players’ salaries in the years after.

Since then, the club lives on €1.5 million a year and has been a typical fourth-division melting pot of would-be and former stars and a large group in the middle who are neither.

Twenty year-old players like Burak Tastan with boyish ambitions to join the German national team play side by side with former stars like Heiko Gerber, who spent 10 years in Bundesliga clubs and at 37 is winding up his career.

There are, too, those like Betz who spent virtually his entire career here. There are mid-level foreigners hoping to make it in the mythical soccer country Germany, like the fired Croatians.

Now the Croats have been sacked, no Ulm player earns more than €3,650 a month before tax. Players get €150 for just attending a match, and progressively more in the case of victory.

The average pay, said Lösch, the manager, is closer to €1,800 and some earn as little as €200. A few, like Betz, work part-time.

“Nobody here drives a Porsche,” Becker said.

Parked outside the stadium during training on Friday was an Audi Q7, a small Citroën, a Renault Twingo and a couple of bicycles.

Tastan, whose parents emigrated from Turkey and who speaks German with a Bavarian accent, drives his father’s car. He rents a tiny studio flat on the fourth floor of a high rise outside of Ulm for €390 euros a month. He won’t say what he earns but says it is enough to live on, just.

Rigging a game for money?

“Never,” he said. “I could not do that to the fans.”

Some older players are less starry eyed about their supporters. Andreas Mayer, 28, has changed club seven times. Fans, he said, are fickle. “People come when you’re successful,” he said.

Mayer has been insulted by fans, even spat upon. Earlier this season, when the club came back from a match against Stuttgart in which they drew 0-0, rows of sitting fan had blocked the home stadium challenging the players to explain themselves. The whole club had to get out of the bus and get a drubbing.

“The negative sides leave their mark,” Mayer said. “Not everything is positive in football.”

But for all the frustrations, many here have an undiminished passion for the game. They are local heroes. Local children ask them for their autographs. They are, in many ways, living their boyhood dream.

Tastan for one feels fortunate to be paid at all to do what he loves most. Maybe, he admits, some players earn the same as waiters or hair dressers. “But we get to play football all day,” he said. New York Times

Portsmouth Financial Problems

2009-12-06T20:29:00.000Z

- Portsmouth Financial Problems
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When Saturday Comes (WSC)

Problems mount at Fratton Park

Image 5 December 2009 ~ With only seven points from twice as many fixtures, Portsmouth welcome Burnley to Fratton Park this afternoon desperately needing a win. They have lost their last five matches – including their midweek exit from the League Cup – and are steadily sliding towards the Championship. As unthinkable as it sounds, however, the players may have more pressing concerns than their dire run of form. The arrival of a new owner, Saudi businessman Ali al-Faraj, and new manager Avram Grant was supposed to signal an upturn in the club's fortunes. But for the second time in the past three months players have not received their wages on time.

Only last week Grant seemed positive that the new regime would provide funds for new players in January: "The new owners want to give money to buy new players because they know this squad was put together at the last moment. Now is the time to improve the team." But before Portsmouth can buy in January they must circumnavigate their transfer embargo. The club were banned from signing new players earlier in the season after they failed to pay installments on transfer fees.
The club's previous failure to pay up led to Al-Faraj taking the club over from the previous owner, fellow Saudi Sulaiman al-Fahim. Where the club go from now is unclear.

Contrary to Grant's intimation that funds will be available in January, Portsmouth's chairman Sulaiman Al-Fahim has now cast doubt on the club's ability to pay their debts. Al-Fahim, the club's former owner, had backed Al-Faraj to lift the embargo but has now altered his view. "I would like to apologise for saying publicly last month that I was confident the transfer embargo would be lifted. I said this in good faith. As the embargo is still in place, it seems there is still an ongoing issue. Avram Grant needs this situation clarified one way or another as we are now less than a month away from the January transfer window."

Portsmouth have claimed they will pay their players by the end of the coming week but their latest cash crisis shows how perilous the club's finances have become. If wages are late by more than two weeks players have the right to terminate their contracts. David James was aware of this ruling back in September and has since spoken of the turmoil he faced in keeping it to himself. "In the midst of the wages chaos there was a moment where the players came together and wondered: 'Just what are we dealing with here?' Privately, I had been told about a ruling that if a club do not pay wages within two weeks of them being due you can terminate your contract. I sat in a meeting with the other players, armed with that knowledge and wondered whether to share it. Things were so bad at that point that I worried that if I told the lads about it they might think 'sod it, this is the perfect excuse to leave'."

Talk of players terminating their contracts might seem reactionary but the excessive wages that clubs pay are crippling finances throughout the leagues. Gordon Taylor, the PFA chief executive, argued yesterday that while financial difficulties are understandable in the lower divisions, Premier League clubs should generate enough revenue to turn healthy profits. “You can understand much better problems in the Football League and lower down – Chester City, Bournemouth, Crystal Palace and Watford,” he said. “But there can’t be any good reason in the Premier League with the money they enjoy from television income alone, never mind sponsorship. That is what life is about in football, paying the wages of the players."

Despite what Taylor believes, Portsmouth are simply not making enough money to support the £1.8 million they pay to players in wages every month. Everton – who have a stadium twice the size of Fratton Park – finished fifth in the League, reached the FA Cup final and played in the UEFA Cup in the 2008-09 season but still made operating losses of £6.7m. Wage structures are bloated and ready to burst even in the highest reaches of English football. Portsmouth's players are every bit as liable as their counterparts in the lower leagues.

At least one Portsmouth player at today's game will not have to concern himself with economics. David Nugent, who is currently on loan at Burnley, will watch the match from the stands. The loan arrangement between the two clubs stipulate that he cannot play against his parent club. No doubt Nugent would like to show Portsmouth's new boss what he can do, but he won't be too dismayed – his loan terms also require that Burnley pay his wages. When Saturday Comes

The Romanov Era at Hearts

2009-12-06T20:28:00.002Z

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The Romanov Era at Hearts

The Sunday Times/Douglas Alexander
December 6, 2009

Vladimir Romanov’s reign at Hearts is lost in translation

“Our goal has to be champions of Europe. I want us to be at the stage where to do anything else, to come back without the trophy, would be shameful. I think we’re looking at three years.”

— Vladimir Romanov, October 15, 2005 Hearts go into today’s televised match at Hamilton lying firmly in the bottom half of the Premier League. Although things were initially promising under Romanov — they finished second in the Premier League, splitting the Old Firm, and won the Scottish Cup in 2006 — they have been unable to sustain their challenge.

Subsequent finishes have been fourth, eighth and third and Csaba Laszlo, the current coach, says a long-term strategy to stabilise the club is required. “It is always up and down, up and down. I would like to try to stabilise for the next two, three, four, five years, as long as possible.” The closest Hearts have come to winning the Champions League was a defeat by AEK Athens in the qualifiers for the group stage in 2006. This season, they were beaten 4-2 on aggregate by Dinamo Zagreb and failed to reach the group stage of the Europa League. Romanov, it transpires, is no Nostradamus.

“I think that the club will no longer be in debt at end of the year and a budget of £10m will be made available. Buying players will be the decision of the head coach and Anatoly Byshovets [the then director of football]. They will look after the team, my only input will be to ensure that their transfer activity is within the club’s budget.”
Related Links

* Ibrox fans have right to demand answers

— Vladimir Romanov outlines his strategy for Hearts in an interview with Russian newspaper Izvestia, October 3, 2004 Hearts are still in debt and it has increased alarmingly under Romanov. It was £19.6m when he initially transferred it to his own bank, Ukio, in 2005. According to the latest figures available, it is now £30.477m, down from a previous peak of £36.249m due to a £12m debt-for-equity scheme and £10m banked from the sales of Craig Gordon and Roman Bednar. So despite bringing in £22m, Hearts managed to reduce their debt by less than £6m. In layman’s terms? They are losing money at a dangerous rate and are not being run as a viable business. Ukio, meanwhile, earn interest on the debt and can call it in whenever they wish.

As for the “budget of £10m,” it may have gone on the wages of a ludicrously bulky squad, but has hardly been visible in transfer fees. Hearts have paid for seven players under Romanov, at a total cost of £2.25m. They were forced to pay £850,000 for Mirsad Beslija, or £122,000 per start, after Genk, his previous club, complained to Uefa about late payment following a dispute about agents’ fees. Laryea Kingston cost £500,000, as did Juho Makela, Michal Pospisil was a £300,000 signing, while David Templeton, Lee Johnson and Chris Hackett arrived for a combined £100,000. In contrast, Hearts have brought in £17.3m in sales, a net transfer profit of £15.05m during Romanov’s reign.

It was quickly shown that “buying players will be the decision of the head coach” was a myth. George Burley’s contract was terminated a year later, the manager complaining players such as Ibrahim Tall had been signed without his consent and Romanov revised his hands-off strategy when interviewed by this newspaper shortly afterwards. “I don’t think there is one manager out there who can be given a free hand to do the job on his own,” he said.

A pattern of sporadic, damaging interference followed by long periods of indifference has persisted since. Including caretakers, Hearts have had nine managers since Craig Levein declined to stay on after Romanov’s takeover. Laszlo is comfortably the longest serving at 17 months, almost gold watch territory at Tynecastle. Yet he cites only David Obua, Ismael Bouzid and Suso Santana as his signings.

He does not mention David Witteveen, the ineffectual Austrian striker, Ian Black, signed from Inverness, Dawid Kucharski, a Polish defender, the Slovakian keeper Marian Kello and Audrius Ksanavicius a Lithuanian forward. Kucharski admits he did not meet Laszlo before agreeing to join Hearts, but did meet Romanov when he underwent a medical in Kaunas, Lithuania. Laszlo has repeatedly aired frustration at the lack of striking alternatives available, and did so again last week, yet he is careful not to directly criticise Romanov for this and maintains they have a good working relationship.

“I am the manager and we must have a concrete agreement,” he said on Thursday. “If you don’t trust each other, no chance. Mr Romanov gave me Bouzid, Obua and Suso, so I cannot say Mr Romanov doesn’t trust me. That is the truth. We had a lot of conversations about other players and Mr Romanov told me even to think about this player and I said ‘no’ and the player didn’t come. We are in the right direction, that is the point. Your question is more for the past, but at the moment we are in the right direction.

“If your boss tells you something and you always say ‘Yes, oh yes’ and you know 100% it is wrong and you don’t tell him, this is not development. I tell him a lot of time and maybe this is why I am [still] here. If I think it’s no, I say so, but he can convince me and I can convince him.”

Yet Laszlo fails to convince us. It is obvious Romanov can veto any signing by him and insist on any he wishes. If the manager disagrees too often, he can simply be dispensed with, a point which Laszlo may be approaching.

“I’ll put all my efforts into keeping the stadium and build an even better venue to meet the requirements of today and tomorrow — better than anything in Glasgow,” — Vladimir Romanov, November 30, 2004

Another grand plan which has been scaled down considerably. Yes, Hearts have remained at Tynecastle, the main reason Romanov was accepted without scrutiny by fans, but their redevelopment proposals for it have been relatively modest compared to his initial boasts and, so far, have not progressed beyond artists impressions and models.

More than two years ago, they announced they were “at an advanced stage” in replacing the existing main stand with a new 10,000 all-seater one which would increase the stadium’s capacity from 17,240 to 23,000 and would include a hotel, conference and leisure facilities and car park. Yet nothing much has happened since.

Last February, they announced a further 12-month delay to the start of the project and last week Edinburgh City Council unveiled plans to relocate a secondary school to the proposed development site until the end of 2015, “given that Hearts have reviewed the timing of the development of their new stadium”. It was also confirmed the council have still not received the information required to grant Hearts planning permission and that the club have not paid a bill for the adjacent Tynecastle Nursery, which would have to be moved if they begin work. Children at the nursery are often read fairytales.

Vlad’s Victims

Hearts have tried nine managers during Vladimir Romanov’s controversial reign

John Robertson Nov 3, 2004 — May 9, 2005 Tynecastle goalscoring legend left after reaching two semi-finals and finishing fifth

George Burley Jun 30, 2005 — Oct 21, 2005 Set a winning pace in the SPL and was gone — the first of four bosses in a memorable season

John McGlynn Oct 21, 2005 — Nov 8, 2005 Stepped up as caretaker and won three of four games

Graham Rix Nov 8, 2005 — Mar 22, 2006 The disgraced former Chelsea coach was shown the door 10 days before a Scottish Cup semi-final against Hibs

Valdas Ivanauskas Mar 23, 2006 — Oct 23, 2006 Oversaw a second-place finish in the SPL and a Scottish Cup triumph, but forced to step out of the firing line due to illness

Eduard Malofeev Oct 23, 2006 — Nov 14, 2006 Tangled with a fourth official and failed to win a game in a six-game caretaker spell

Valdas Ivanauskas Nov 14 2006 — Mar 2, 2007 After the phantom tenure of Eugenijus Riabovas, who came and went within a week, Ivanauskas briefly returned

Anatoly Korobochka Mar 2, 2007-Dec 31, 2007 Director of football worked in ambiguous tandem with Stephen Frail with first team

Stephen Frail Jan 1, 2008 — Jul 9, 2008 Took sole charge but left after an eighth-place finish

Csaba Laszlo Jul 11, 2008 — present A significant tenure by Romanov standards. Reality, however, is beginning to bite. The Times

November Players of The Month Winners: Crystal Palace's Darren Ambrose, Huddersfield's Robbie Williams and Morecambe's Lawrence Wilson

2009-12-05T10:34:00.002Z

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Congratulations!

Football League
AMBROSE NAMED PLAYER OF THE MONTH
Posted on: 05.12.2009
Crystal Palace midfielder Darren Ambrose was celebrating today after being named Coca-Cola Championship Player of the Month for November.

Ambrose has been in outstanding goal-scoring form in recent weeks and this certainly continued throughout November, with the midfielder netting in each of his side's four league fixtures. He began the month by getting on the score sheet in the Eagles' away draw with London rivals Queens Park Rangers before grabbing the only goal in their home win over Middlesbrough. Further strikes followed against Coventry City and Watford to leave Neil Warnock's men unbeaten during the month and with the Coca-Cola Championship Play-Off places firmly in their sights.

Also short-listed for the November award were Kevin Nolan of Newcastle United, Darius Henderson of Sheffield United and West Bromwich Albion's Simon Cox.

Robbie Williams of Huddersfield Town won the award in League 1 and Morecambe's Laurence Wilson was given the League 2 accolade.

The decision to present the Coca-Cola Championship Player of the Month award was made by the Coca-Cola Player of the Month awards panel which includes former World Cup referee Jack Taylor, on behalf of The Football League, Steve Bates, Chairman of the Football Writers' Association, Malcolm Clarke, Chairman of the Football Supporters' Federation and Steve Watts, Marketing Assets Manager, Coca-Cola Great Britain.
http://www.football-league.co.uk/champio....2248204_1896064

WILLIAMS NAMED PLAYER OF THE MONTH
Posted on: 05.12.2009
Huddersfield Town defender Robbie Williams was celebrating today after being named Coca-Cola League 1 Player of the Month for November.

Williams led by example with his performances during November, helping his side register three wins from four league fixtures. The defender kicked-off the month in the best possible style, netting the only goal to see Lee Clark's men take all three points at Oldham Athletic. His fine form continued with an instrumental display in a comprehensive home win against Wycombe Wanderers before getting another match-winning goal in the Terriers' victory over Hartlepool United to help maintain their Play-Off push in Coca-Cola League 1.

Also short-listed for the November award were Chris Lines of Bristol Rovers, Nick Bailey of Charlton Athletic and Southampton's Adam Lallana.

Darren Ambrose of Crystal Palace won the award in the Championship and Morecambe's Laurence Wilson was given the League 2 accolade.

The decision to present the Coca-Cola League 1 Player of the Month award was made by the Coca-Cola Player of the Month awards panel which includes former World Cup referee Jack Taylor, on behalf of The Football League, Steve Bates, Chairman of the Football Writers' Association, Malcolm Clarke, Chairman of the Football Supporters' Federation and Steve Watts, Marketing Assets Manager, Coca-Cola Great Britain.
http://www.football-league.co.uk/league1....2248206_1896066

WILSON NAMED PLAYER OF THE MONTH
Posted on: 05.12.2009
Morecambe defender Laurence Wilson was celebrating today after being named Coca-Cola League 2 Player of the Month for November.

Wilson's excellent performances in the Shrimps' defence helped his side concede just the one goal and remain unbeaten in November. The 23-year-old was also among the goals during the month, netting twice in three games. The first secured a narrow home win over Cheltenham Town and the second a comprehensive away win at Darlington to help Sammy McIlroy's side march up the table in Coca-Cola League 2.

Also short-listed for the November award were Brett Pitman of Bournemouth, Andy Morrell of Bury and Rotherham United's Adam Le Fondre.

Darren Ambrose of Crystal Palace won the award in the Championship and Huddersfield Town's Robbie Williams was given the League 1 accolade.

The decision to present the Coca-Cola League 2 Player of the Month award was made by the Coca-Cola Player of the Month awards panel which includes former World Cup referee Jack Taylor, on behalf of The Football League, Steve Bates, Chairman of the Football Writers' Association, Malcolm Clarke, Chairman of the Football Supporters' Federation and Steve Watts, Marketing Assets Manager, Coca-Cola Great Britain.
http://www.football-league.co.uk/league2....2248208_1896065

Standing Row at QPR...Views of Football Fan Groups

2009-12-05T09:38:00.003Z

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- Kilburn Times reports Standing Row at QPR

Football League - THE BIG INTERVIEW
Posted on: 03.12.2009

The two leading supporter's group representatives, Malcolm Clarke and Dave Boyle, have spoken exclusively to football-league.co.uk to give their opinions on the current state of the game.

Clarke is the elected Chair of the Football Supporters Federation (FSF) whilst Boyle is the Chief Executive of Supporters Direct (SD) and both men are well known within the corridors of football's highest powers acting as crucial links between the terraces and the boardrooms.

Boasting 142,000 individual fans, the FSF is the national supporter's organisation whilst SD provides advice to trusts on how to organise and acquire a collective shareholding in their clubs on a not-for-profit basis for re-investment.

In the following interview, the pair tackle the hottest issues including foreign ownership of clubs, the positives and negatives of the current structure as well as the community work underway through clubs across England and Wales.

Football League: How has the game improved for fans?

Malcolm Clarke: That is a complicated question to answer. At the top of the game there are a lot of traditional fans who have been priced out of watching live games because of ticket prices that are way above the rate of inflation.
However, there have been a lot of improvements in The Football League with a lot of the clubs taking the lead with initiatives, especially when it comes to attracting families. I think Football League fans would, on the whole, be happy with the product they get. Plus the Championship is very competitive and that is want fans want to see.
Ticket pricing is very good at Football League clubs; Bradford for example is very innovative. The fear of the wealth gap between the Championship and the Premier League is still there and the gap should be reduced. At the moment there is still a temptation for Championship clubs to go for broke in an attempt to join the land of milk and honey [the Premier League].
Last season there were massive points deductions for some clubs in The Football League which was needed at the time to prevent another situation like that at Leicester City but we welcome the measures of The Football League to get clubs to give assurances about payment of tax bills before entering financial difficulty, not after. The Football League is moving on, there is now much greater regulation at the front end which is stopping clubs from living beyond their means. We hope and believe that this will result in clubs paying their tax bills and the arrangement that HMRC can notify the League of defaulters is very healthy.

Dave Boyle: The most obvious thing would be the attendances, clearly fans are liking what they see - especially at a Football League level. The numbers don't lie and overall the trend is positive and it shows that people still love football.

FL: How does football need to move forward and improve?

MC: Money needs to be spread down the pyramid, which like any pyramid, needs to have a strong base and we are completely against the idea of a 'Premier League 2' division because the game's wealth needs to be spread more evenly to keep a competitive balance in football. Promotion and relegation must be retained at all levels.
The Football League is not in danger from the wealth and superiority of the Premier League, but the danger is for those clubs attempting to make the step up from the Championship and being tempted to act imprudently.
Also, people who go to away games are the industry's best customers and it is important that football looks after their best customers.
Discrimination against away supporters still happens at some clubs which is clearly wrong. The Football League should abolish their policy of allowing clubs to do four local promotions a year because away fans are often charged more to watch these games - these kinds of offers should also be available to the away support. It is not a massive problem but it does still happen so removing this ruling from the handbook would help.

DB: I am an AFC Wimbledon fan and in the past teams used to share the gate receipts and that was hugely positive for smaller-town clubs who didn't suffer as a result. But now that doesn't happen and fans are depressed about it.
A crucial part of football is knowing that one you might be able to get to the top-flight however improbably, such as Carlisle United in 1974. In the past there was an outside chance that that could happen but now there's a sense that this just isn't the case anymore. In reality, the difference between the improbable and the impossible is small; in football, the difference is enormous.
I would agree that The League has made great stride in getting its house in order but we have to and need to celebrate the fact that we have the richest football culture, and I am not talking about money. We have very strong gate numbers and if we are proud of it then we have to have a structure that allows clubs to go from the bottom to the top and the top to the bottom.
We have to introduce a more equitable distribution of finances if we want it to become meaningful.

FL: In your opinion, is the increase of foreign ownership having a negative impact on football?

MC: For me nationality is not the issue. What is important is knowing who the potential owners are and why they want to buy a football club. You need to know whether they have a sustainable business plan and that they are suitable people to run the club. We would like to see stronger regulation in the testing of potential owners.
I think that the fit and proper persons test is based too much on financial issues and concentrates too heavily on the rear-view mirror. The owners need to be suitable and have a sustainable plan for the future and although progress has been made compared to 10 years ago, The League needs to look at moving on to the next stage in terms of governance of club ownership.
It is very unhealthy for clubs to have very large debts with a single owner and I would like to see more regulation of debt. Debt in a business sense is not a bad thing as long as it is part of a business plan.
Personally, in the long term the preferred model should be a cooperative mutual ownership. Look at Barcelona - you don't get much bigger than them and they are owned by their members, as are all the top German clubs. Although that is not achievable now it should be a long term aspiration.
Some fans are frustrated if their owners don't connect with the local community around the club.

DB: We are in favour of accountability for fans. There is little mechanism in place for dealing with people in power in football who are making wrong or bad decisions and we need to create better ways of challenge these people in high positions.
The problem with football is that people are too loyal to their clubs and they don't fight to have changes made. They are not like normal consumers who make sure they are getting a good deal being picky with their purchases. In other business, people would move on and things would change in response. At the end of the day, clubs know fans will turn up week in, week out - that is what makes us fans.

FL: How important is the community work carried out by Football League Clubs?

MC: This is an area where many Football League Clubs often take the lead. Despite social mobility, and by that I mean people moving away from their hometowns, people still associate very strongly with their local community and still want to see the link between their club and that community.
That community link is still vital because teams carry the names of their local town and even if people have moved away from that area, it is still extremely important to them because a football club puts their town on the map. This is especially true in The Football League where teams are constantly fighting to get media coverage.

DB: It is very pleasing to see people grasping the Enjoy the Match and Fans of the Future campaigns because with an eye to the future, a 10-year old bum on a seat is more important than a 40-year old bum on a seat and it is great to see The Football League recognising this. Clubs need to have a view for who their fan base is as well as how big it is, and the efforts by The League are very welcome and credit should go to theme for doing it.
There is an increasingly ageing population and we need to something to ensure that we are not behind it, other countries tend to have lower prices so they don't need to introduce these kinds of initiatives but The League should still be congratulated.

FL: Policing of football grounds has been raised as an issue, and in particular Section 27 of the Violent Crime Reduction Act of 2006, what's your position?

MC: Section 27 allows the police to ban people from certain areas for up to 48 hours to prevent trouble, but it is piece of legislation that was never designed for a football context but for pubs and clubs on a weekend.
It has been used inappropriately by some police forces; South Yorkshire police have just agreed to pay compensation to Plymouth fans who were prevented from attending their team's match with Doncaster Rovers after the police enforced the Act. We are also investigating similar actions directed at Grimsby fans by Gloucestershire Police during their visit to Cheltenham.
Football supporters still aren't treated as they should be because the image from 1970s and 80s still exists in some people's minds. There is general prejudice towards fans. Some people don't see a diverse group of people and that can sometimes result in institutionalised prejudice.
But football has moved on a great deal. Fights with opposing supporters when they used to try and 'take the other team's end' don't happen now. I feel safer taking my daughter to football than walking near my home on a Saturday night. One problem is that non-football fans often mistake fans' boisterous enthusiasm for criminality.

DB: Our organisation doesn't have a brief on this because we focus more on the ensuring that fans have accountability but I know that it is an issue the FSF are fighting for.

FL: What are you view points on the reintroduction of standing areas in stadia?

MC: It is quite clear that a certain percentage of fans still want to stand and prefer it because it feels more natural. Lord Taylor predicted that after all-seater stadia were introduced [in 1989 following the Hillsborough disaster] fans would soon get used to it and the desire to stand would disappear. But that hasn't happened, if anything, quite the reverse.
It has been demonstrated in Germany for example that you can introduce standing area in complete safety. The Football League, clubs in Leagues 1 and 2 can still have standing areas and that is deemed safe, so why is it safe in those leagues but not in the Championship or Premier League? the notion that the safety of a ground is a function of the level of football played on the pitch is an absurdity.
I think that eventually we will be successful on this front, because the current strategy just isn't working and eventually another approach must emerge. I am optimistic that this will happen and that we will see safe standing areas in grounds again.

DB: My own personal view is the same as Malcolm's, but because Supporter's Direct focuses more on the ensuring that fans have accountability, this is an issue we leave to the FSF.

FL: Do you believe that it is time to introduce goal-line technology into football?

MC: Most supporters that we speak to support goal-line technology. Other technology divides opinion because the human element that referees provide is seen by some as part of the game whereas other believe that the credibility of referees suffers if we don't use technology.

FL: With just seven months to go before South Africa 2010, World Cup fever is setting in. What is your role in the build-up to and during next summer's tournament?

MC: Our members who are going are excited, because South Africa is a different place and most fans won't have been there. The main concerns are personal security and cost for fans but we always provide fans with access to an Embassy wherever England or Wales play.
Our aim is always to give supporters the maximum amount of information on the destination, such as the local cultures, the potential risks, transport and accommodation. If we give the maximum information possible, people then have to make their own decisions.
I think that England can do well and hopefully we can win the bid for 2018/2022. I remember the excitement in 1966 and we are doing all that we can to bring the World Cup back again in one of those years.

FL: In your opinion, who are the strongest candidates to take the Carling Cup, Championship, League 1 and League 2 crowns this season?

MC: Well I'm a Stoke City fan and my second team is York City so I hope that the former stay clear of The Football League and the latter get into it!!
Otherwise, in the Carling Cup, I think Arsenal's youngsters could do well if they can keep their current form going. Leicester City have impressed me so-far this season. I saw them at Queens Park Rangers and they looked very strong so that would be my prediction for the Championship. Sooner or later Leeds United have to bounce back and I think that this could be thier season to get out of League 1. In League 2 it would be great to see one of the old traditional Football League clubs gain promotion. I would love to see Rochdale go up, there have been in that division for so many years and come so close it would be great to see them step up to League 1.

DB: I hope that the Carling Cup is won be a team for who it really means something. They should thrust the trophy into the air like they have just won the Champions League. I come from a family of Preston North End fans, it is a very admirable club who have lost two play-off finals in recent years and I think it would be good for Preston to gain promotion from the Premier League - it would be wonderful for the game to have the original English champions there. In League 1, it would have to be Exeter City because they are a flagship trust in The Football League, the club is fantastically well run and they deserve to keep their position in The League. Their efforts show that being owned by your fans isn't going to lead you to relegation. I grew up near Rochdale and I think that they deserve not to be the buck of all the quiz questions about the longest stay in the bottom tier so a long-overdue promotion would be wonderful for their long-suffering fans. Football League

Snippets: Man Unted Refinancing...Crystal Palace Season Ticket Selling...Lincoln's AGM

2009-12-05T09:27:00.003Z

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When Saturday Comes (WSC)/Andrew Scowcroft
- Crystal Palace desperate for cash
- 4 December 2009 ~ During Crystal Palace’s 4-1 win over Blackpool, my friend Chris and I had the break-up conversation, the one in which I said: “I’m not renewing my season ticket.” Although October 3 seems ridiculously early to bring it up, it was the date that Crystal Palace published its season ticket brochure for 2010-11. The marketing department has developed the same affliction as supermarkets. If the Christmas displays go up before the season ticket prices, heads will roll. If I feel so inclined I can buy a season ticket up to the end of the 2014-15 season. However I don’t, which probably isn’t great news for the players who are suffering as a result of Simon Jordan’s cashflow crisis.

So the win over Blackpool has not led me to reach for my debit card. Nothing about the win was exceptional. Blackpool’s defence gifted us goals, the slip to allow Alan Lee a free header for the first being the funniest as most Palace fans assumed that even free headers were a skill too far for him. In 2006, I renewed my season ticket on the back of one of Palace’s best displays in recent years as Ben Watson tore through Norwich showing a range of passing beyond his years in a 4-1 win. The next week I felt cheated by a turgid display at home to Leeds.

It is, of course, an overactive imagination that leads me to imagine that Jordan might offer incentives to the players linked to season ticket deadlines, especially as paying the players at all is proving to be a problem. October is too soon to renew. Even a good performance cannot take away from the memory of the 2008-09 season when Palace scored 26 goals at home – with 13 coming in just four games.

The price of the ticket is due to rise steadily throughout the season. This, obviously, rewards the committed, the financially confident and the financially risky. The steady decline in average attendances over the last four seasons, from a post-Premier League high of 19,457 to 15,220 last year suggest there aren’t many of those.

Palace fans like to laugh at away fans who pay high our high prices but we don’t do enough to question where that money goes. Or ask what happens to our season ticket money or the £29.50 plus home fans pay for Category A match tickets. When the season ticket cut-off points were introduced the first rise was at the end of January, then December. The constant creeping of these dates does not inspire confidence in the finances of the club. Although I’m confident that the guarantees about safeguarding season ticket payments until that season begins, I’m worried that the club is borrowing against future income, or at least guaranteeing its overdraft.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the wages crisis is all the creation of the marketing department. Perhaps that’s why the club keeps writing to me to let me know it has extended the first deadline, exclusively for me. Andrew Scowcroft When Saturday Comes

Lincoln City Official Site - Football Club AGM
- A large number of shareholders were represented at The Club AGM which was held on Thursday evening in the Trust Suite.

The main items of business were to approve a special resolution that the Club adopt a new up to date set of Articles. The reason for doing this was simply to bring the Club up to date with the 2006 companies act.

Alongside this approval shareholders also voted in favour of re-appointing directors Chris Travers, Stuart Tindall (on behalf of Lindum Group) and Jean Foster (representing the Supporters Trust gold membership).

Following on from the official meeting The Lincoln & District Football Supporters Club gave a donation of £5,000 and a fans' forum was held which gave manager Chris Sutton his first opportunity to discuss issues with supporters.

The Directors would like to pass on their thanks to all those who attended and those who sent apologies and proxies for the meeting. Lincoln

The Times/James Ducker, Helen Power

Glazer family hit the wall over refinancing of Manchester United -

The Glazer family, the owners of Manchester United, are struggling to refinance their enormous debts amid concerns about the impact they are having on the club.

The Times understands that the Americans have been trying unsuccessfully to secure a refinancing package for part of the club’s £699 million debt for months, having failed in 2007 and last year, because of the bleak global economic climate.

Fans’ groups have cast doubt over whether they will ever see the £80 million raised from the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portugal forward, to Real Madrid last summer reinvested in the squad.

Dragan Djuric, the Partizan Belgrade president, meanwhile claimed this week that United pulled the plug on a deal to sign Adem Ljajic, the Serbia Under-21 midfield player, because “maybe they are in financial crisis”.

United dismissed Djuric’s claims and a spokesman for the Glazer family has maintained publicly that there is plenty of money available for Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager, to spend on players, but supporters are unlikely to be pacified until they see the arrival of some big names or evidence that the spiralling debt is under control. The main concern is understood to centre around the £175.5 million worth of debt that the Glazers are personally responsible for, not the £518.7 million of loans secured against the club.

It is these so-called Payment In Kind (PIK) notes, money borrowed from US hedge funds that “rolls up” at an annual interest rate of 14.25 per cent, that the Americans are believed to have been trying to refinance.

The intention was always to pay off these loans within a few years of the takeover in May 2005, but while they managed to redeem some of the original PIK debt of £275 million, the credit crunch has made this difficult.

By the time the debt matures in 2017, it will stand at £580 million unless the Glazers can pay part or all of it off before then, or secure a preferential rate of interest. With the club also facing rising capital repayments from 2013, the PIK debt is a concern. It grew from £152 million to £175.5 million in one financial year.

Previous reports that the Glazers could persuade the banks to refinance by offering securitisation against future match-day revenues are said to be wide of the mark; ticket sales are already factored into the borrowing.

As such, given that the 14.25 per cent interest rate was agreed the last and only time the Glazers have been able to refinance, in August 2006 when the financial climate was rosier, they will do well to secure a lower rate unless they have something tangible to offer would-be lenders.

It is understood that United are operating well within the financial terms set by their lenders. However, Perry Capital and Citadel — the two US hedge funds that provided the Glazers with PIK loans — get a range of rights over the club in the event that their financial performance falls beneath a certain level, including the right to appoint their own directors to the board.

Ultimately, they could seize control of the club should revenues plummet.

Documents obtained by The Times also reveal that the terms of the loan put a cap on United’s spending.

A spokesman for the Glazer family said: “We continue to keep our financial options for the club under review just like any other business.” The Times

Everton's Financial Loss

2009-12-02T08:41:00.000Z

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Guardian/Andy Hunter

Everton suffer £6.7m annual loss despite record £79.7m turnover• Increase in player wages central to disappointing figures
• Club still keen to build new stadium after Kirkby rejection

The cost of Everton's pursuit of Champions League football was exposed yesterday as the club posted a record turnover of £79.7m for last season yet still suffered an overall operating loss of £6.7m. The figures come less than a week after the club's long-term future under Bill Kenwright and David Moyes was placed in doubt by the government's rejection of a proposed stadium move to Kirkby.

The latest financial results are for the year ending 31 May 2009 and Everton's most productive season in over a decade; courtesy of a second successive fifth-placed finish in the Premier League plus an FA Cup final. The increase in broadcasting revenue and gate receipts helped produce a record turnover, up £4m and 5.3% on the previous year, plus an operating profit of £6.3m excluding player trading. The wage bill rose to £49.1m, however, and the amortisation of players' registrations of £13m led to the overall loss of £6.7m.

Everton paid a club record £15m to Standard Liège in August 2008 for Marouane Fellaini, although they recouped a potential £10.5m from Fulham through the sale of Andy Johnson in the same month. The full financial picture, including club debts and overall loss, has not yet been filed at Companies House.The figures show Everton reinvested most of their additional revenue into Moyes' squad as they sought to maintain progress under their astute manager. But the record turnover undermines the club's argument that Everton had to leave Goodison Park to survive. Kenwright, the Everton owner, had admitted the club's involvement in the "Destination Kirkby" project was over, although Tesco – whose plan for a huge retail development around the stadium was also rejected last week – and Knowsley Borough Council may attempt to resubmit a smaller commercial proposal for the town.

Everton and Liverpool City Council are now expected to meet to discuss possible stadium options, with the council vociferous in its objection to Kirkby and adamant an alternative site could be found within the city. A shared stadium with Liverpool is not on the Anfield club's agenda.

"He [David Moyes] is the most important figure at the club and we all strive – on a daily basis – to provide him with the tools necessary if we are to continue to evolve and develop into a genuine, meaningful force within both English and European football," said Kenwright. "Our wonderful FA Cup run quite possibly deflected attention from what was another hugely satisfying Premier League campaign. To again finish fifth in what remains Europe's toughest and most unforgiving league was a magnificent achievement – one which guaranteed another European campaign to continue the steady progress which has hallmarked David Moyes' tenure as manager. Maintaining our progress, continuing to punch above our weight if you like, will be very difficult but I stand by My Tuchusertion that we have a manager who will go down as one of our all-time greats and a squad of players that is among our very best over the last two decades."

A more immediate concern for Moyes is tonight's Europa League tie at AEK Athens, where he could be forced to play 17-year-old Shane Duffy thanks to an injury crisis. Sylvain Distin, the only established central defender in Everton's travelling party because of injuries to Joseph Yobo and Phil Jagielka plus the ineligibility of John Heitinga and Lucas Neill, is a doubt with a hamstring problem.

Should Distin fail to recover, and with Jack Rodwell also unlikely to return from a groin strain, Moyes may have no option but to select Duffy alongside right-back Tony Hibbert at the heart of the defence. "This is what makes the game even more difficult. People can talk about us winning only one of our last 11 games, but tomorrow we might have some younger members of the squad, we could have a really young centre-back playing depending on how Distin is." said Moyes. Everton would qualify for the knock-out stages with victory at the Olympic Stadium should BATE Borisov fail to beat leaders Benfica in the other Group I tie.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/dec/01/everton-losses-david-moyes

Everton Official Site

Financial Results Announced
by Matthew Gamble | Tuesday 1 December 2009

A top five Premier League finish and a double appearance at Wembley Stadium in season 2008/09 all contributed to positive financial results for the year ended May 31 2009.

The Everton Football Club Company has posted its year-end results with a 5.3% increase in turnover, mainly as a result of broadcasting income and gate receipts.

Revenue generated from the sale of match tickets and corporate hospitality rose to £21.9 million whilst the cash received from television was up £2 million to £48.6 million, reflecting a record number of 17 live televised Premier League games involving Everton.

Turnover overall increased £4 million to £79.7 million, which is a new Company record. However, this was offset somewhat by the increase in the wage bill to £49.1 million – a rise from 59% to 62% as a proportion of turnover.

As a result of the increased turnover, and further investment in the playing squad, the Company posted an operating profit excluding player trading of £6.3 million. The inclusion of the amortisation of players’ registrations of £13 million gave rise to an overall operating loss of £6.7 million.

Chairman Bill Kenwright said in his statement to shareholders: “Our wonderful FA Cup run quite possibly deflected attention from what was another hugely-satisfying Premier League campaign.

“To again finish fifth in what remains Europe’s toughest and most unforgiving league was a magnificent achievement – one which guaranteed another European campaign which continued the steady progress which has hall-marked David Moyes’ tenure as manager.

“Maintaining our progress, continuing to punch above our weight if you like, will be very difficult but I stand by My Tuchusertion that we have a manager who will go down as one of our all time greats and a squad of players that is amongst our very best over the last two decades.

“As has always been the case, David was fully supported by myself and by my fellow Board members. He remains the single, most important figure at the Club and we all strive – on a daily basis – to provide him with the tools he believes are necessary if we are to continue to evolve and develop into a genuine, meaningful force within both English and European football.”

http://www.evertonfc.com/news/archive/financial-results-announced.html

Cost of Football Agents

2009-12-02T08:40:00.000Z

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David Conn/The Guardian

Impoverished grass-roots facilities pay the price for agents' richesThe £70m that Premier League clubs paid to middle men for player deals is a gross measure of football's loss

As the aftershock settled on Monday night's revelation that England's 20 Premier League clubs had paid £70.7m in fees to agents this year, thoughts flooded in of other areas which could benefit enormously from so generous a slug of football's wealth. This is a league shimmering with riches, laying justifiable claim to be the world's most watched, yet in the neighbourhoods around most clubs' grounds are patches of playing fields, many without changing rooms or drainage, which would be transformed by a drop of that agents' bounty.

The Premier League agreed with the government in 1999 to share a fraction of its television windfalls with the impoverished grassroots and, together with the FA and government, currently pays £15m to the Football Foundation for investment in the facilities on which millions of enthusiasts are expected to play the game. That, then, is £55m less for the grassroots nationwide, than the £70.7m paid to a small clutch of individual agents.

Financial difficulties at the FA following the collapse of Setanta have meant the governing body has been forced to defer £3m of its payment to the foundation this year; the Premier League has refused the FA £5m towards the bid to bring the 2018 World Cup to England; all clubs have a duty to make ends meet but the £70.7m does show the £308,000 tax bill which almost sent Accrington Stanley out of existence earlier this month in stark relief. The volunteers mostly running clubs at non-league level fret about the cost of turning floodlights on during these leafless months or replacing balls booted out of sight. The list is truly endless.

Malcolm Clarke, the chairman of the Football Supporters' Federation, reacted to this first publication of the Premier League's payments to agents by saying there were "dozens of areas any fan could think of" where the money could have been better spent.

"Just think what fans have to pay in high ticket prices to watch matches," he said. "It is mystifying that so much of supporters' money is paid out to agents. It is not clear to fans what work agents actually do or why they have to be paid such high fees in commission."

The Premier League's list and club-by-club breakdown was revelatory, although not accompanied by much in the way of explanation, but Mel Stein, of the Association of Football Agents, presented his own.

"I don't think these figures are unreasonable," he said. "Think of the value agents bring to clubs. There are people in football, such as at the leagues, who do not earn much and they are jealous of agents earning a decent living."

Jerome Anderson, a leading players' agent for almost 30 years since he first represented a 21-year-old Charlie Nicholas and a 15-year-old David Rocastle at Arsenal in the early 1980s, mounted a spirited defence of his profession. He argued that football today is a complicated global industry, in which the Premier League clubs collectively earn billions, and agents help deliver the players whose popularity fuels the league's attraction.

"Clubs pay agents freely because we have the experience and knowledge to identify players, or conclude deals," Anderson said. "It's easy to look at these figures and think they're excessive but people should appreciate the expertise, genuinely, which goes into the work."

That would be easier to do if clubs and agents were more open about the deals done and for what the money was paid. Agents' work is still generally shrouded in darkness – or commercial confidentiality – which in recent years has been opened to only chinks of light. For a brief period following the exposé that Sir Alex Ferguson's son, Jason, worked as an agent on several United deals, the club published all payments it made to agents, deal by deal. That produced precious insights, including the £500,000 paid to the agent Pini Zahavi to coax Fulham's chairman Mohamed Al Fayed into considering selling Louis Saha to United for £12.8m in January 2004. Ruud van Nistelrooy's agent, Rodger Lindse, was paid £1.339m for renegotiating the Dutch striker's contract in 2004, and £1.5m was payable to Paul Stretford's Proactive agency for working on Wayne Rooney's move from Everton to United for £20m in August the same year.

However, after a few years of being the only ones practising such openness United, under the new ownership of the Florida-based Glazer family, stopped doing so. Since then we have made do with the odd scrap where a club or agent has confirmed a payment or a case has reached the spotlight of the courts. In 2005 we learned that £3m was the maximum potentially payable to Zahavi when Yakubu Ayegbeni moved to Middlesbrough, and Zahavi was also paid £900,000 by Chelsea this January when Wayne Bridge moved to Manchester City – one of the deals covered by the figures released this week.

As for what agents do for this money, the Premier League made it clear that they no longer act solely as the advisers to players. The £70.7m was earned in a number of ways, including being employed by clubs directly, to help sign a player, or assist in selling one. Agents were also paid for representing players when signing with a club or renegotiating an existing deal.

Both Stein and Anderson confirmed that agents are generally paid 5% of the value of deals, either of a transfer fee when acting for a club or of the overall sum of a player's pay during the course of a contract where an agent represented the player. Some critics argue that, like other professionals, agents should be paid a fee according to the time taken to do the work – stories of agents making a few phone calls for a £1m fee make the eyes water. Anderson, though, argued that clubs are willing payers of a system which has helped to transform the Premier League into the spectacle it is.

Long-held suspicions that some of the fortune paid to agents finds its way back to managers or club officials in "bungs" was given credibility by the proven case of George Graham. As Arsenal's manager he received £285,000 from the agent Rune Hauge after signing the midfielder John Jensen as long ago as 1992. Since then the Premier League has held its inquiry by Quest and the City of London police marched into an investigation of football "corruption" but no "bungs" have been found. Up to 30 cases have been referred to Fifa by the FA for sundry alleged irregularities in the past two years but, to the FA's intense frustration, nothing has yet been concluded on any of them.

The FA, which pushed for the Premier League to publish agents' fees, hopes that exposure may lead to reform, to the extraordinary £70.7m reducing over time, as the Football League's total has since its clubs began publishing their total payments in 2004-05.

Many questions remain about which agents are paid how much, by whom, for doing what, and where the money goes, but the sum of public knowledge did take a welcome, £70.7m step forward this week.

Five big agencies: Who advises whom in the Premier League
Stellar Group

Leading clients
Peter Crouch, Ashley Cole, Ledley King, Kolo Touré, Carlton Cole Agent: Jonathan Barnett

Background
Jonathan Barnett, Stellar's chairman, is a cricket rather than football fan. He set up Stellar in 1994 after Brian Lara, one of his clients, introduced him to
a property developer called David Manasseh. The late Les Sealey was its first football client and over the past decade the business has snowballed, with Stellar having offices in Africa and South America and a client base of more than 500 sportsmen and women

Base Soccer

Leading clients
Aaron Ramsey Agent: David Baldwin
Tom Huddlestone Gary Porter
Aaron Lennon Leon Angel
Gilberto Silva Frank Trimboli
Arsène Wenger Leon Angel

Background
Established in 1997 and run by Leon Angel, who is also a chartered accountant, Base Soccer has continued to grow and now represents more than 100 players, both at home and overseas, and also works on behalf of managers and clubs

Wasserman Media Group

Leading clients
Jamie Carragher, Robbie Keane &
Steven Gerrard Agent: Struan Marshall
Michael Owen Rhodri Burgess
Joleon Lescott Simon Bayliff

Background
WMG acquired SFX and its enviable list of football clients in 2006, with the US Sports marketing giant going on to play an influential role in many of the deals involving leading Premier League players, including Joleon Lescott's move to Manchester City and Michael Owen's transfer to Manchester United in the summer

First Artist

Leading clients
Andrey Arshavin, Marco Materazzi, Pedro Mendes
& Harry Redknapp Agent: Phil Smith

Background
Jon Smith set up First Artist in 1986 and now runs the company alongside his brother, Phil. It also has interests in media, events and entertainment management. First Artist represents Arsenal's Russia forward Andrey Arshavin and the Tottenham Hotspur manager, Harry Redknapp. It was involved in the summer transfers of Emmanuel Adebayor, Niko Kranjcar and Sébastien Bassong among others

SEM

Leading clients
Eduardo da Silva & Kieran Gibbs Agent: Jerome Anderson

Background
Jerome Anderson formed Sport Entertainment and Media Group (SEM) in 1984, when he began representing Charlie Nicholas. Anderson has been well connected at Arsenal ever since and in the past he looked after the interests of Thierry Henry. SEM also works for clubs and Anderson was a key figure during Manchester City's spending spree under their former manager Sven-Goran Eriksson
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2009/dec/02/football-agents-premier-league

Paul Kelso/Telegraph

Agents fees: Premier League clubs and players to blame
The revelation that agents received more than £70m from Premier League clubs in a year will provoke familiar howls about “money going out of the game”, but to blame the middle-men for making a living, albeit a generous one, is to miss at least two thirds of the picture.

Agents flourish only because clubs and players allow them to. Breathtaking though it might be to discover that Pini Zahavi, patron saint of the middle-men, was paid £900,000 for assisting Wayne Bridge’s transfer from Chelsea to Manchester City, somebody at Eastlands willingly wrote the cheque.

It is a point made to me this morning by Mel Stein, chairman of the Association of Football Agents (AFA), talking in general terms rather than specifically about the Bridge deal.

“No one is holding a gun to anyone’s head to work with agents,” Stein said. “These are commercial arrangements willingly entered into by two parties. Of course a club could do the deals themselves but they don’t, and the reason is they would not do it as well. Agents perform a valuable role.

“Players on the whole are hugely appreciative too. We look after our clients and they tend to reward that with loyalty to an agent who has looked after their interests properly.”

Talk to clubs individually and they all agree that they would like to pay less. One former Premier League chief executive told me earlier this season that the huge fees he had to pay to agents was his biggest gripe about the game. “I just don’t understand why in a mature industry we have to pay these huge fees.”

One explanation was that the chief executive ran one of the less fashionable clubs in the division and needed agents’ help to persuade players to sign up. A more important factor is the viciously competitive nature of the transfer market. Players are the single most important asset in the game and, as wage inflation proves, clubs will do everything they can to secure the ones they want.

If that means that the agent gets a very good drink out of the deal then so be it. In short, every club is paying agents to get deals across the line, so every club has to keep on doing so, and as long as players trust their agents clubs will view the fee as a price worth paying.

For there to be any meaningful reform of a game that is never less dignified than on transfer deadline day all 20 clubs would have to agree to stop the carousel. But as we have seen with several other areas of financial regulation self-interest runs to deep for that to happen, and the devil will continue to take the hind-most.

In the mean time the clubs will keep paying. Despite the description “players’ agent” it is very rare that the players themselves shell out. One of the key changes to the FA’s regulations secured by the clubs and AFA was to allow clubs to pay agents on players’ behalf, as long as the fee is disclosed as a taxable benefit. So the club get their player, the agent gets his fee, and the player gets his new deal without ever having to calculate just what his agent’s five per cent has cost him. Perhaps if they did, the fees might come down.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/sport/paulkelso/100004148/clubs-and-players-to-blame-for-the-rise-of-the-agent/

Premiership Spending on Football Agents

2009-12-01T22:54:00.001Z

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Guardian/David Conn

Premier League clubs revealed to have spent £70m on agents• Figures published for last two transfer windows
• Manchester City pay out most in fees at £13m

The first publication by the Premier League of the amount its clubs spend on agents revealed that more than £70m was paid out in the year from 1 October 2008 to 30 September this year. That period takes in transfer windows in January and this summer. The figures also included any amounts paid to agents on deals done in previous years.

Manchester City, who spent around £170m in transfer fees during the year, under the ownership of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, were by some distance the largest spenders, paying out £12.9m in agents' fees. Chelsea were the next highest, having paid £9.6m, while Liverpool, surprisingly given Rafael Benítez's relatively quiet transfer dealings, paid £6.7m. Other big spenders were Tottenham Hotspur, at £6.1m; Wigan, at £5.5m; and Arsenal, at £4.8m.

All the clubs were asked by the Premier League to publish their figures on their websites but few were accompanied by detailed explanations and none included breakdowns of the total figures or named individual agents or deals. The Premier League explained that the payments were made by clubs directly to agents for bringing players in, renegotiating their contracts or for facilitating their sale.

Payments to agents for negotiating salary packages must come out of the players' wages, under Football Association regulations, but clubs can pay the agents on the players' behalf as an administrative service. The Premier League made it clear that the total included such payments made by clubs.

City issued a fuller statement than most other clubs – their spending largely explained why they topped the list. City's chief financial officer, Graham Wallace, said the figure related to payments for 35 players and included instalments paid on deals signed in previous years.

"The level of player acquisition over the past year has been unprecedented as we have sought to rebuild our playing squad," Wallace said. "Squad building at this level and within such a short time frame is unlikely to be repeated."

Chelsea issued a brief statement but declined to make any further comment or provide an explanation. Most clubs similarly issued details on their websites, as agreed with the Premier League, but despite the publication of the list, none contained an explanation of how the level of agents' payments is arrived at.

The Football League has been publishing the amounts paid by its clubs to agents since voting to do so in September 2003, in a move aimed at promoting transparency and reducing the amounts paid. Premier League clubs are understood to have been motivated by similar considerations now. The overall figure is certain to raise concerns about financial excess in England's elite league and questions about what agents actually do for their money.

The Premier League clarified that the £70.7m represented the total instalments paid on 803 separate transactions carried out by its 20 clubs, but released no further explanatory detail. As with the Football League's method of publication, there was a club by club list of amounts paid to agents, but no breakdown of payments according to which deals they related to, or which agents were paid.

All transfer fees and payments to agents must be made through the FA, but almost no detail finds its way to the wider public. Of the deals done during the period, only the £900,000 which Chelsea said was paid to Pini Zahavi when Wayne Bridge moved to Manchester City in January has been publicly confirmed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/nov/30/david-conn-premier-league-agents

Premier League Official Site

Premier League statement Figures have been published regarding payments to agents for the period 1st October 2008 to 30th September 2009.

The figures published below are inclusive of:

• Fees paid to agents by Clubs in respect of acquiring and/or renegotiating Player Registrations.

• Fees paid to agents by Clubs on behalf of players in respect of acquiring and/or renegotiating Player Registrations.

• Fees paid to agents during the defined period relating to previous transaction costs (i.e. Player Registrations prior to 1st October 2008) that have been amortised over the length of a Player Contract.

• Fees paid to agents by Clubs to facilitate the outward transfer of Player Registrations.

Player Registrations (transactions) include:

• Domestic permanent transfers.
• International permanent transfers.
• Domestic temporary transfers (loans).
• International temporary transfers (loans).
• Extension of existing Player Contracts.
• First professional registration.
• Free transfers.

Premier League

Arsenal £4,760,241
Aston Villa £1,708,374
Birmingham City £974,982
Blackburn Rovers £1,610,885
Bolton Wanderers £3,166,611
Burnley £468,398
Chelsea £9,562,223
Everton £2,008,407
Fulham £1,469,258
Hull City £1,599,188
Liverpool £6,657,305
Manchester City £12,874,283
Manchester United £1,517,393
Portsmouth £3,184,725
Stoke City £716,042
Sunderland £2,007,040
Tottenham Hotspur £6,066,935
West Ham United £5,527,548
Wigan Athletic £3,576,972
Wolverhampton Wanderers £1,235,703

Total (across 803 transactions)
£70,692,513

http://www.premierleague.com/page/Headlines/0,,12306~1891147,00.html

Independent/Sam Wallace

Agents cost Premier League clubs £70m a year

City spent £13m in fees – while Chelsea come second despite signing only one major new player United show how to do business without middlemen

Manchester City paid a staggering £12.87m in fees to agents over the last two transfer windows, it emerged last night, the highest of any Premier League club. The revelation came as English football's top teams disclosed that collectively they have paid the game's middlemen £70.6m over the last 11 months.

The 20 Premier League clubs released the figures yesterday in a drive towards greater transparency but it was City's payments that showed the hidden costs of their efforts to break into the top four. Over the last two windows they have signed Gareth Barry, Carlos Tevez, Emmanuel Adebayor, Kolo Touré, Joleon Lescott, Roque Santa Cruz, Nigel De Jong, Craig Bellamy, Wayne Bridge and Shay Given, spending millions along the way in agents' fees.

It is also understood that the agents' fees for the Robinho deal from Real Madrid, which took place in the summer transfer window last summer was also included in City's £12.8m figure. Officially the figures are for the period from 1 October last year to 30 September but some fees, like that for Robinho, were paid later on in the year and therefore fall within this survey.

Privately, City admit that the sums are big but point out that this was "an unprecedented squad-building exercise that is unlikely to be repeated". The figures include fees paid to agents for renegotiating existing players contracts, for loans in and out the club and even free transfers – which generally command an agents' fee.

For the period concerned City either bought, sold or renegotiated contracts for 35 players. Stephen Ireland, Michael Johnson and Micah Richards all agreed new deals within that timeframe. The £12.8m also includes the fees that were paid to agents to get rid of the Brazilian midfielder Elano to Galatasaray.

In second place were Chelsea who have spent £9.56m despite their relative inactivity in the transfer market. They bought Yuri Zhirkov, from CSKA Moscow for about £18m, and Nemanja Matic in the summer transfer window and acquired Ross Turnbull on a free transfer. Daniel Sturridge joined from City for a compensation payment. In January only Ricardo Quaresma on loan from Internazionale and the youngster Gokhan Tore from Bayer Leverkusen joined.

Nevertheless, Chelsea spent the vast majority of their agents' fees on renegotiating contracts for existing players including Florent Malouda, Didier Drogba, John Obi Mikel, Ashley Cole, Michael Essien, Michael Mancienne, Salomon Kalou, Alex and John Terry, although it is not clear whether the captain used an agent. Frank Lampard's new deal was agreed in the summer of last year and it is likely some of the fee to his agent Steve Kutner would have been included in these figures.

The industry standard for agents is to be paid 5 per cent of a player's contract over the duration of that deal. For a player like Barry, earning around £120,000-a-week in a five-year contract (that's about £31m in total) will earn his agent about £1.5m in fees. Barry's agent is his friend and former fellow Brighton and Hove Albion trainee Michael Standing who has no other clients.

The next clubs after City and Chelsea in the list were Liverpool (£6.65m), Tottenham Hotspur (£6m), West Ham United (£5.52m) and Arsenal (£4.76m) but remarkably Manchester United come out as disproportionately low in the table in 15th place.

Incredibly only Burnley (the lowest with £468,398), Stoke City, Birmingham City, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Fulham paid less to agents than United. The club's chief executive David Gill does have a reputation as one of the best negotiators in the business and a check of United's deals and contract renegotiations over the last two windows gives a clue to their low costs.

They have signed only Zoran Tosic, Michael Owen, Gabriel Obertan and Antonio Valencia over the last two windows but they have signed up a lot of players to new deals including Edwin Van der Sar, Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Darren Fletcher and Rafael Da Silva. Wayne Rooney's expected new contract, when his agent Paul Stretford comes to the table in the new year, is unlikely to be quite so cheap in terms of agents' fees.

Wigan Athletic (£3.57m), Bolton Wanderers (£3.16m) and Hull City (£1.59m) all paid more than United. It reflects the difficulty of getting players to sign to the less fashionable non-London clubs where agents – especially those from overseas – expect to be well paid to "persuade" their clients to sign.

Sources at West Ham indicated the club's high fees were a result of up to 12 contract renegotiations, including new deals for senior players such as Carlton Cole and Scott Parker. Dean Ashton, the one-time England striker, now sadly contemplating an injury-enforced retirement, signed a five-year deal last summer and his agent's fees were paid within the timeframe of the report.

The 20 Premier League clubs voted to publish the fees because they felt the system needed greater transparency. Two years ago they voted that players should pay their agent's fees from their own pocket but that was found to be unworkable. It is understood that £70.6m figure includes clubs paying P11d "benefit in kind" taxes for players to cover work done for them by agents.

Additional reporting: Dominic O'Shea

The powerbrokers The main movers and shakers

Kia Joorabchian The 38-year-old Iranian-born, British-based businessman is a university dropout and frontman for Media Sports Investments, a firm with undisclosed backers, that made millions from "owning" Carlos Tevez and others. He's not a registered agent, although his sidekick, Nojan Bedroud, is.

Pini Zahavi The Israeli "super agent", 66, is a former journalist who has made a fortune estimated at £60m from brokering deals including Rio Ferdinand's £30m move to Manchester United from Leeds in 2002, the sale of Chelsea to Roman Abramovich in 2003 and the sale of Portsmouth recently to Ali al-Faraj.

Jonathan Barnett Barnett's first sporting clients were not footballers but cricketers Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and then Brian Lara, who introduced him to a property developer, David Manasseh, in 1993. Barnett and Manasseh started the Stellar Group just as the Premier League went astral.

Jerome Anderson Formed his Sport Entertainment and Media Group (SEM) in 1984, having had a background in financial services and as an adviser to players including Charlie Nicholas. Forged close links with Arsenal especially while building a multi-sport agency that now works in rugby, golf and boxing too.

Colin Gordon Former journeyman striker, 46, who played for Swindon, Reading and Birmingham among others, and whose KeySports Management represent more than 60 players including Theo Walcott and David James. Said in an interview this year: "Are agents corrupt? Not all – but the majority [are]."
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/agents-cost-premier-league-clubs-16370m-a-year-1831694.html

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The Times/Matt Putzenson

Figures reveal nothing about agents’ real earnings - Commentary: Matt Putzinson

The headline figure may have been startling but, actually, yesterday's disclosure of the £70,692,513 given to agents told us nothing. If they had been brave, the Barclays Premier League clubs would have revealed how every penny was spent.

Because without that detail, how are we — and paying fans — able to work out which of it was spent wisely? Some of it must have been.

Five per cent of the fee to an agent who brings you an ace goalscorer? Great business. The £500,000 that was promised to Jimmy Bullard’s agent when the player moved from Fulham to Hull City? Baffling, given that Bullard was not exactly hot property and that, with a £5 million fee, that cut was 10 per cent.

Between 2003 and 2005, Manchester United published precisely how much they paid agents when they signed a player or agreed a new contract. We found out that Ruud van Nistelrooy’s representative Rodger Linse had a £2.5 million fee agreed when the striker joined United in 2001; Cristiano Ronaldo’s agent, Jorge Mendes, was paid £1.13 million on his £12 million move in 2003; Paul Stretford received £1.5 million when Wayne Rooney signed in August 2004; £680,000 went to agents when Kléberson joined United for £5 million in August 2003.

The agents hated it, obviously, but it was a refreshing burst of transparency. Now we have a list full of anomalies and that raises more questions than answers about how the £70 million was spent.

A sport that does not disclose transfer fees as a matter of course is acting like it has something to hide.

The Premier League argues that publication will force every chief executive and chairman to stop, however briefly, and consider their performance relative to their rivals. That much may be true. But whether they do anything about it is a matter of personal choice. There are no rules to prevent bad practice because there are barely any rules at all when it comes to football transfers.

Fifa once issued a “guideline” that agents should receive 5 per cent of a transfer fee, but a club over a barrel before deadline day may agree more. Less commonly, a club in a strong bargaining position may haggle less.

In this unregulated world reside good and bad executives, decent agents and spivs, players who know where every penny is going and those who are blissfully ignorant that an agent is diddling them out of a small fortune. As long as the £30,000 a week is landing in their bank account, what do they care?

Gary Neville would rid the world of agents altogether, certainly when it comes to personal contract negotiations. But let us accept that they serve a purpose. A world that employs headhunters, recruitment consultants and insurance brokers recognises the need for middlemen, however reluctantly.

Where football does not help itself is in the lack of regulation. Fifa is considering scrapping all controls on agents so that anyone can become an “intermediary”, which is hardly progressive.

The system of transfer windows turns what is already a hugely competitive industry into a frenzy of activity in which good sense often goes out of the window in the rush to sign a player in the minutes before deadline.

Then there is the issue of whether the players themselves should pay the agents. Some clubs continue to argue strongly for it, others believe they can save money on tax by keeping the present situation.

All they can agree on is that the £70 million is too much. “Do we like spending it? Of course we don’t. But somewhere along the line we let the agents get too powerful,” said one exasperated chairman.

The first thing they can do is be more transparent. It is one thing to publish the total; another entirely to let us judge how it has been spent.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/c....icle6938311.ece

Scottish Football Getting Too Costly For Average Supporter

2009-11-23T07:02:00.001Z

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Herald/Scotland
SCOTTISH FOOTBALL IN CRISIS: Game is becoming too expensive for average fan

Fans have to pay between £36 to £38 to attend and Old Firm game
Christopher Jack

0 commentsPublished on 19 Nov 2009

Money, money, money.

It might not make you happy but it will almost certainly make you sit back and wonder where it has all gone.

With the season in full swing and Christmas fast approaching, fans have something in common with their clubs. Finances are being stretched more than ever.

Football is an expensive business but for the ordinary punter, it is becoming almost too expensive. With season tickets, replica shirts, hats, scarves, programmes, pies, drinks and transport all competing for a slice of your wage, questions soon begin to arise as to whether it is actually worth it?

Many fans have turned their backs on the weekly pilgrimage to watch their teams but there are many other avenues down which they could part with their cash.

Here are a few examples of where the football finance could be used elsewhere and how it compares to the beautiful game.

SEASON TICKETS

Old Firm fans can expect to have to stump up at least £400 if they want to see their team in action with prices steadily rising towards, and beyond, the £600 mark.

Motherwell fans can see their team in action for between £270 and £370 while Kilmarnock supporters are asked to pay £300 for the privilege of watching their club in action.

MATCH TICKETS

Prices, invariably, are higher for the games that set the pulses racing and there are none more so in Scotland than the Old Firm derby. For these fixtures, fans have to pay between £36 to £38.

Elsewhere, for example Rangers v Kilmarnock, the tickets are cheaper but for a family of four to have a day out at the football, it is still more expensive than the alternatives. Rangers’ pricing of £22.50 for adults and £6.50 for children is considerably cheaper than Celtic’s £25 and £16 to see them take on a similar standard side in St Mirren. With totals of £58 and £82 respectively, it is hardly a cheap and cheerful outing for mum, dad and the two kids.

Admission to Fir Park or New Douglas Park is £22 for adults and £12 for children while Hibernian charge £20 and £10 respectively.

THE OTHER OPTIONS

Rugby For fans who don’t mind swopping a round ball for an oval one, a season ticket for Magners League side Glasgow Warriors can be purchased for just £160.

Golf Those who prefer birdies and pars can play a round of golf at clubs around the country for less than the average SPL match ticket.

Dinner Feeding the 2.2 kids can be done for around £20.

Cinema A family of four can attend the latest Hollywood blockbusters for £20 at most cinemas, again, cheaper than one ticket for SPL football.

Tenpin bowling For less than a single SPL ticket, a family of four can play two games of bowling.

Concerts X Factor live (£28.50), Lynyrd Skynyrd (£38.50), Jimmy Carr (£22.50) and Jools Holland (£31.50) span the music and entertainment tastes of the family and are of a similar or less price than some SPL fixtures and Rangers’ (£40 v Stuttgart) and Celtic’s (£32 v Hapoel Tel Aviv) European ties.

Pantomime The traditional festive family event costs around £10 for adults and £8 for children or about the same as a first division fixture.

THE VERDICT

Clubs must act now to stop the dwindling crowds and air of disinterest and discontent that is sweeping across the national game. Finance is essential to football clubs but it is even more so to those who keep them going, the fans. The love of ones team may last forever but the money to keep the love burning will not. It is time clubs gave something back to the fans and, in the long run, they might just reap the benefits.

Herald

A Fans Group Calls for a Fans Forum

2009-11-22T05:50:00.000Z

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QPR1st- Bring back the Fans Forum!
Saturday, 21 November 2009

Supporters provide the Club with its biggest source of income and at the very least should expect to be treated as valuable customers. Yet of course fans are more than just customers- they have an emotional connection with the Club and want a sense of involvement and participation.

Fans Forums provided exactly that, an opportunity for ordinary fans to put their questions to the Team Manager and Captain, as well as the Chairman or another representative of the Board. Those who were unable to attend could still enjoy the event through radio or the internet.

It is a great shame that a Fans Forum has not been held since the time of John Gregory, despite repeated requests from QPR1st and other Supporters Groups. Yet again we call on the Club to restore them.

QPR1st

None of Allegedly-Fixed Games Played in the UK

2009-11-21T06:55:00.001Z

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The Times -November 21, 2009

Police in UK join Europe-wide probe into football ‘match-fixing’Tony Barrett

Seventeen people have been arrested in Germany and Switzerland as part of an investigation into a match-fixing scandal that a Uefa official has called the biggest in European football.

German prosecutors investigating about 200 games in Europe — including at least three in the Champions League and 12 in the Europa League — ordered more than 50 police raids in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the United Kingdom on Thursday, leading to the arrests. The matches under investigation were played in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia, Turkey, Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Austria. None was played in the UK.

All the matches under suspicion are believed to have taken place this year, although neither Uefa nor the German authorities was prepared to specify if they were qualifying games or group-stage matches.

Prosecutors believe that a criminal gang has bribed players, coaches, referees and officials to fix games and made money by betting on the results.

Peter Limacher, the Uefa head of disciplinary services, said that he believed it was European football’s biggest match-fixing scandal, but stressed that the arrests provided evidence that the detection system is working.

“We at Uefa are stunned by the magnitude of this,” Limacher said. “We feel a certain satisfaction, but we are deeply affected by the scope of game manipulations by international gangs.”

In a statement, Gianni Infantino, the general secretary of Uefa, said that the body would continue to impose “zero tolerance” on any form of corruption in European football.

“Uefa will be demanding the harshest of sanctions before the competent courts for any individuals, clubs or officials who are implicated in this malpractice, be it under state or sports jurisdiction,” Infantino said.

German police confirmed that officers in the UK had been helping in the inquiry. The Metropolitan Police said that they had carried out a search in the Greater London area after a request from German law enforcement officials." The Times

Top Scottish Clubs Own a Hundred Million Pounds

2009-11-20T08:29:00.001Z

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Herald Scotland - Top Scots football clubs owe £100m

Scotland’s top football clubs are carrying debt totalling nearly £100 million
Graeme MacPherson

0 18 Nov 2009

Scotland’s top football clubs are carrying debt totalling nearly £100 million which will burden many of them for years to come.

According to official figures, Rangers and Hearts owe about £30m each, Kilmarnock and Aberdeen approximately £9m each, Dundee United £6.6m, and Hibernian £3.6m.

Deficits at the remaining SPL clubs are less acute.

According to one leading expert in the field of Scottish football finance, it would take major changes in those clubs’ circumstances for them to be finally be rid of that financial millstone.

Kicking off a series of investigations in The Herald into football’s finances, Stephen Morrow, head of Sports Science Studies at the University of Stirling,said: “It is difficult to see, in the current trading model that Scottish football is in, how they could find a way to pay that off. That’s not to say they can’t manage that debt.

“They can look after the interest payments on it but unless something changes to the structure or the finances of those clubs – or something substantial changes to their trading environment – then all they will be doing is very, very slowly bringing the debt down. But nothing dramatic is ever likely to happen.

“You’re not getting something new for it like a new stadium or training facility, you’re just using those sums to tread water.”

Mr Morrow does not expect an SPL club to enter adminstration in the immediate future but acknowledged that those with high levels of debt needed to tread carefully.

“I don’t necessarily think so at the moment [that a club could go into administration]. [But] there is always that risk as you have clubs effectively living on the edge as, if you have a club with a high level of debt, it doesn’t take much for it to go wrong.”

Contrary to public perception, though, Morrow dismissed suggestions that the banks are considering making major changes to the facilities offered to most Scottish clubs.

“In the overall scheme of things, with regards to bank debts and obligations, we are still talking about relatively small sums of money here,” he said. Herald Scotand

The First Chairman To Fail the "Fit and Proper" Test

2009-11-18T08:28:00.001Z

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David Conn/The Guardian
Chester City chief becomes first owner to fail fit and proper person test• Stephen Vaughan will have to sell or give up his majority stake
• Liverpool businessman bought the club in 2001

Chester City owner Stephen Vaughan will be forced to sell or give up at least 70% of his stake in the club. Photograph: Rick Matthews

Stephen Vaughan has become the first owner of a professional football club required to reduce his shareholding because, according to FA rules, he is no longer a "fit and proper person". Vaughan, a Liverpool businessman who bought the Conference club Chester City in 2001 and owns 100% of the shares, was last week disqualified from acting as a director of any company until November 2020, following his involvement in a £500,000 VAT fraud.

The FA's rules, which apply to Conference clubs, state that anybody disqualified as a company director cannot hold 30% or more of a club's shares. The FA will write to Vaughan requiring him to sell or give up his majority stake in City within 21 days of the disqualification taking effect on 25 November. If he does not comply, the club could ultimately be expelled from the Conference.

Relegated from the Football League last season and in administration over the summer, City already have the threat of expulsion hanging over them, unless they pay money owed to the Professional Footballers' Association, Wrexham and Vauxhall Motors FC by 30 November.

According to an undertaking Vaughan signed with the Insolvency Service, he committed the VAT fraud while a director of Widnes Vikings rugby league club, which was then in administration, in October 2007. It stated that he "caused" Widnes to buy clothes from a UK company in three transactions worth £2.9m, plus VAT of £505,265.

Payment for the clothes was not made to "the alleged supplier", but to an account at the First Curaçao International Bank, based in the Netherlands Antilles. The clothes were sold on the same day to a company based in Spain; overseas buyers do not have to pay VAT, and Vaughan tried to reclaim the £505,265 for the club from HM Revenue and Customs.

HMRC refused to pay, and proceedings were begun against Vaughan which led to him admitting the transactions were a "carousel" in which the VAT was fraudulently claimed from HMRC.

In a statement, the FA said: "We are aware of the Insolvency Service decision and will be taking necessary steps under the requirements of the fit and proper person test."

The case could test the rules' effectiveness, however, because according to City's managing director, Bob Gray, Vaughan may hand the shares to one of his sons. "He has to relinquish his shares," Gray acknowledged, "but who he gives them to is up to him. He could keep them within the family." If that happened, the FA would have to be satisfied that Vaughan was not still "exercising direct or indirect control" over the club's affairs, which the rules prohibit for somebody declared not "fit and proper". Guardian

More re Swindon

2009-11-17T10:40:00.000Z

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Swindon Advertiser

A political tool or a real threat?
Tuesday 17th November 2009
By Anthony Marshall »

TO say there have been some dark days at the County Ground over the past decade (and beyond) is something of an understatement.

From Terry Brady to BEST Holdings, and Bill Power to Bob Holt, Swindon Town have never been too far away from off-the-pitch controversy, so just when it looked like everything was relatively rosy in Wiltshire, those past demons had to rear their ugly heads again.

National reports yesterday claim the club face a winding-up order from property company St Modwen over the non-repayment of a £2.45m loan dating back to 2005 - the borrowing itself being £1.45million, with £1million interest.

The Guardian newspaper claims that St Modwen - who originally became involved in the club when Swindon were looking to move to a purpose-built stadium - issued a demand for repayment three weeks ago following the end of a grace period.

But with no response from current Town chairman Andrew Fitton and the club’s board of directors, the report alleges that there is “no alternative now but to go to court.”

To the cynical eye, the article appears to be merely a political tool aimed to force Fitton & Co to cough up their readies, with little chance of a winding-up order ever coming to fruition.

However, it will have done nothing to help the nerves of Swindon’s long-suffering supporters, who have been thrown from one nightmare to the next under a succession of County Ground regimes.

This time does appear different though, with the fans placing their trust in Fitton’s consortium. Their honesty, willingness to communicate with supporters and general transparency since their arrival in January 2008 has been a real bright spot over the last couple of years.

And Alan Hayward, of supporters group Red Army Loud and Proud, is one of those more than happy with the current regime in place, and confident the situation will be sorted before any winding-up threats become reality.

He told the Advertiser: “This hasn’t come as a huge surprise or a shock because it has been floating around since the AGM (in October) and been sitting in the background, much like the Bill Power case.

“It just seems like two years down the road they (St Modwen) really would like their money back now.

“Most people have got a lot of faith in Andrew Fitton and the new board, and they will deal with it.

“Everybody trusts their financial acumen and business experience. Even if it got to a court case and they had to cough up a couple of million then I think they would.

“I certainly couldn’t see them pulling out and walking away - they are too far down the road for that. But my feeling is that it is all in hand and we will be fine.”

Since their arrival almost two years ago, Fitton and his fellow directors have only had the club’s best interests at heart - shelling out around £7.5million to date, improving the look and feel of the County Ground to express a much more professional approach, and investing heavily in the playing staff.

And while this latest revelation may make unsavoury reading to some, Swindon’s faithful band of supporters should have every belief that there remains a very bright future for their club. Swindon Advertiser

Bournemouth Pay Off a Tax Debt

2009-11-17T10:17:00.002Z

-Bournemouth Official Statement -

EDDIE MITCHELL STATEMENT
Posted on: Mon 16 Nov 2009

"Thanks to the hard work of the staff, the Board and our supporters, combined with the performances of the team and Eddie and Jason's efforts to get those good performances, we have been able to pay the HMRC debt.

These efforts are something that needs to be kept up for a long time so that we will be rid of all our debts. This is an inroad in to the debt, but we have to carry on the good work and make sure that our tax is paid when its due and continue to make inroads in to other debts. Whilst we can pat ourselves on the back now, we must keep the hard work going.

Currently, this will not affect the embargo we are under. We have now satisfied two important requirements of the Football League and are now up to date with our HMRC debts. When we feel it is appropriate, we will go back to the Football League and see if we can't at least get loan players. I do not want to go back to them until such time that we feel confident that the Football League will back us.

There is no resting on our laurels. All the staff, the board, the management, the players and all the supporters must keep up all the hard work and continue to play their part." Bournemouth

Notts County Finances (Continued)

2009-11-17T10:17:00.001Z

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Guardian/Matt Scott

Notts County begin probe of 'financial anomalies' under former board• Chairman claims 'ongoing due diligence' unearthed problem
• HM Revenue debt 'resolved' last week, Peter Trembling adds

Notts County today claimed they are opening an investigation into unspecified "financial anomalies" allegedly relating to the time of the supporters' trust's ownership of the club.

The Meadow Lane club's chairman, Peter Trembling, confirmed that they had last week "resolved" the debt to HM Revenue & Customs, for which a winding-up order was served on the club in September and for which they had been due to appear in court on Wednesday. However, it remains unclear whether it has been paid off in cash.

Trembling added: "In dealing with this matter and as a result of further and ongoing due diligence, we have uncovered a number of financial anomalies that are being investigated.

"In an ideal world a longer period of due diligence would have been entered into before the acquisition of the club. However, the circumstances of the club and the start of the football season dictated that the purchase had to be completed in a much shorter time frame in order to protect the long-term best interests of the club."

The announcement came as a shock to the club's former board under the chairman John Armstrong Holmes. He claimed: "They came in and had free rein to go through all the club's finances at the time.

"They spent more than a month doing it, in June and July. We're in November now and I and the directors have no idea of any 'anomalies' they are talking about. They had all the financial information before the deal was concluded on 31 May.

"On 3 June they began internal due diligence and had accountants looking over the books, including the payment schedules agreed with HMRC. All financial matters were perfectly clear to them from the outset."
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Guardian

How They Punish an Owner in the USA (NFL)

2009-11-17T09:59:00.003Z

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$250,000 is how much it cost Bud Adams to flip the bird to Bills fans.

NFL Owner Fined $250,000 Titans Owner Flipped Off Bills Fans

BY LUKE FUNK

MYFOXNY.COM - The NFL has fined Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams $250,000 for making an obscene gesture at Bills fans.

It happened Sunday in Nashville. After the Titans beat the Bills 41-17, Adams was seen "flipping off" fans from his luxury suite at the stadium.

Adams apologized later in the day for the display of his middle fingers.

"I do realize that those types of things shouldn't happen," Adams said in a statement. "I need to specifically apologize to the Bills, their fans, our fans and the NFL. I obviously have a great deal of respect for Ralph Wilson and the history we have shared. I also understand there will probably be league discipline for my actions and I will accept those."

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell happened to be at the game Sunday and even had breakfast with Adams that morning.

He was in the suite with Adams until the fourth quarter of the game.

http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/national/091116-Bud-Adams-Fined

New York Times
Owner of Titans Is Fined $250,000 for Crude Gesture

The N.F.L. fined the Titans owner Bud Adams $250,000 on Monday for making an obscene gesture at Buffalo fans while celebrating Tennessee’s victory over the Bills on Sunday in Nashville.

Commissioner Roger Goodell notified Adams of the fine, and the league spokesman Greg Aiello said it was for conduct detrimental to the league. Adams was seen making the gesture while in his luxury suite and again on the field after the Titans’ 41-17 victory.

Adams, 86, issued an apology a few hours later, saying he had been caught up in the moment.

The Titans declined to comment after the fine was issued. But Adams said in his earlier statement that he expected league discipline for his actions and would accept any punishment.

“I do realize that those types of things shouldn’t happen,” Adams said in the statement. “I need to specifically apologize to the Bills, their fans, our fans and the N.F.L.”

Adams and the Bills’ Ralph Wilson were original owners in the American Football League, and Sunday’s matchup was a legacy game, with both teams in throwback uniforms. The two franchises have been involved in some emotional playoff games.

The Bills staged the greatest comeback in N.F.L. history on Jan. 3, 1993, against what was then the Houston Oilers in a 41-38 overtime victory, and the Titans pulled off the Music City Miracle in 2000, a game-winning kickoff return for a touchdown with three seconds remaining.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/sports/football/17nfl.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTxHuUGG_2c&feature=player_embedded

Swindon Town's Latest FInancial Trouble

2009-11-16T09:04:00.000Z

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Guardian/Nick Fletcher

Swindon football club facing crisis over unpaid loan• Property group St Mowden is demanding £2.45m
• Swindon Town was taken into administration twice before
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Swindon Town, the League One football club, faces a winding-up order from the quoted property company St Modwen tomorrow over the non-repayment of a £2.45m loan dating back to 2005.

Swindon is controlled by a consortium whose shareholders include the City grandee Sir Martyn Arbib and the serial entrepreneur Andrew Fitton, the chairman of the club who has businesses in engineering and technology. Fitton's consortium – which also includes Jeremy Wray, brother of one of the founders of online gaming group Betfair – took over Swindon Town in 2007. The sellers included the Wills family, who made their fortune from the tobacco industry.

St Modwen originally become involved when the club was considering moving from its County ground to a purpose-built stadium.

The plan would have seen the original site redeveloped for housing and leisure use. In 2005, as part of this partnership, St Modwen lent the club £1.45m, which went towards paying off a VAT bill. Swindon Town had already gone into administration twice before, and was facing the prospect of going under again unless it settled the debt to the tax authorities.

When Fitton's consortium took over, St Modwen asked for its loan to be repaid, since the proposed move from the County ground – which is owned by the local council and leased to the club – had fallen through and the property developer had no further interest in the matter.

The two sides agreed a two-year grace period for the outstanding amount to be repaid, but that deadline ran out in August with no settlement forthcoming.

Three weeks ago St Modwen issued a statutory demand for repayment. Since then it has heard nothing to indicate the debt will be repaid, and believes it has no alternative now but to go to court. It is claiming the original £1.45m loan plus £1m in interest.If Swindon's directors do not pay up, and St Modwen is successful in its winding up order, the club will go out of business and its assets will be sold for the benefit of creditors.

It will join a growing number of football clubs which have found themselves in severe financial difficulties with the likes of Stockport County already in administration, and even Premier League club Portsmouth struggling to pay players' wages earlier this season - The Guardian

Manchester City Spending (and Income)

2009-11-15T10:55:00.001Z

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Independent/By Ian Herbert
- City facing Euro ban if they don't break even
- Cook angry that Sheikh's spending is frowned upon – unlike the debt of rivals
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The Manchester City chief executive Garry Cook has said the club cannot put a date on when they will begin to break even, despite the Uefa president Michel Platini's proposal that clubs who fail to balance their books within three years will be barred from European competition.

City's wage bill has more than doubled to an estimated £90m since Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan took ownership 14 months ago. And the unpredictability of future wage demands makes it impossible to predict when the club will, as Platini desires, be spending only what they earn from their television income, ticket receipts and commercial activities. The European Club Association backs Platini's proposals that clubs who fail to do so will be excluded from Europe.

"You can't predict the wage base," Cook said. "From a business standpoint it's not the smartest thing to start to predict long-term financial profit and loss statements. That's not lack of discipline or naivety – that's the reality of a business model which is a moving target. It's foolish to put a line in the sand and predict dates by which you break even."

Though no transfer window will be quite like the summer's in which City spent £120m, their Abu Dhabi owners proved then that they will react to changing conditions in the transfer market. That they spent so voraciously was, in part, a response to their discovery that the economic downturn had made it a buyer's market.

City are aware that as Chelsea have less ambition to buy, and that Liverpool and Manchester United have high levels of debt, they are able to consider themselves the main players in the Premier League market.

Cook's chairman, Khaldoon al Mubarek, argues that Platini's proposals would curb the freedom of owners to buy and invest in "mid-tier" clubs and deliver a monopoly on European success to what are already the richest clubs. City, Cook indicated, will lobby through the Premier League against any plans which create a disincentive to prospective foreign investors. "We should always allow investment in the Premier League. It's the greatest league in the world – a truly global entity – and we should always allow that investment, as long as everybody manages the integrity and the Premier League puts governance in place to control who [invests] and how."

There is indignation at City that the levels of investment by Sheikh Mansour are being frowned upon in a way that debt-leveraged clubs are not – even though the Sheikh's capital investment at every level of the club has gone some way to quell initial suspicions that he was simply out for rapid glory.

Evidence of the investment was everywhere among the 83-strong City contingent in Abu Dhabi last week. In Cook's company at the Emirates Palace hotel, for instance, was one of the specialists brought in by the Arabs to ensure City's training pitches include four levels of grass to allow them to prepare for the exact conditions of various Premier League games.

While Liverpool's £30m Champions' League income is vital to cover their American owners' annual debt repayments, Cook said City will be able to budget for seasons in which they do not make it to the tournament.

Not qualifying, Cook said, has "a financial impact on your overall performance as an entity, a business, and you have to adapt and react to that. But what I don't want anybody to think is that we don't worry whether we are in it or not because we don't need the money. I'm building a financial plan that includes playing in the Champions' League. I also have a scenario B, in the event we don't make it – because that's good business".

The longer City take to break through to the top four, the longer they will need to provide extra wage incentives to entice players to the club and Cook believes that Britain's new 50 per cent higher tax rate – seven per cent higher than Spain's equivalent – will make the task of bringing in players tougher. "It is going to be challenging getting players in because there's [additional] financial demands on a club to bring those players in. But there is that emotional effect of the game which says the Premier League is one of the best leagues to play in."

City have no intentions of allowing Robinho to leave for Barcelona, though there is a view within the club that the Catalans have been unsettling their £160,000-a-week Brazilian. Mark Hughes sees the player as an important component of an assault on a top-four place this year, an attainment Cook believes is within City's reach. "When do I want to be in the Champions' League and when is it feasible?" he said. "I want us to be in the Champions' League next season, I want us to be playing Champions' League football every season." Independent

Fans Should Be More Reaslistic/Accepting Of Club's Limitations

2009-11-14T11:13:00.001Z

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Mark Bright/Metro
Football fans must be more realistic
By MARK BRIGHT - Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Metro columnuist Mark Bright calls for football supporters across the country to be be realistic and accept their club's limitations.

Many years ago at Crystal Palace I attempted an overhead kick during training. Someone shouted: 'Don't let your ambition exceed your ability, Brighty.'

Many a true word said in jest. It's something that's stayed with me throughout my career and led me to think about fans' ambitions.

Take two of my former clubs, Charlton and Sheffield Wednesday. At Charlton the fans felt Alan Curbishley had taken the club as far as he could. New Valley fans had renewed ambition, Curbishley left, and Charlton supporters now find themselves watching League One football.

Sheffield Wednesday fans also had delusions of grandeur. Trevor Francis led the club to five appearances at Wembley including League and FA Cup finals. But the general feeling was Trevor was too soft and out he went.

He was replaced by David Pleat, who in my opinion is the least impressive manager I have worked with. To me he lacked structure, complicated the game and confused the players.

It was the beginning of the end for Wednesday and the biggest club in Sheffield are currently maintaining a mid-table presence in the Championship.

My point is, maybe fans need to be more realistic with their ambitions. I think we all agree the 'Big Four' of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool are virtually impregnable.

Attempting to break that monopoly are Manchester City, Tottenham, Aston Villa and Everton. City fans quite rightly expect to be watching Champions League football next season after Mark Hughes' huge spending spree of around £116million this summer.

Last year, while nowhere in City's league, Aston Villa manager Martin O'Neill spent big to try to break the top four and finished sixth.

Shouldn't fans, as much as they hate it, just say, we're a mid-table team and as long as we stay in the Premier League we'll be happy, but we must throw everything at the League and FA Cups?

Bolton, Stoke, Blackburn, Wigan, Fulham, West Ham, Portsmouth and Hull are all in danger of relegation sooner or later, while Birmingham look to have won the Lottery but we'll have to wait and see.

The reason I believe this is because, along with the promoted teams, all the above cannot afford a bad season but the bigger clubs can have a bad season and still survive.

But the aforementioned teams need only look at Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham Forest, Ipswich, Crystal Palace, Sheffield Wednesday and West Brom. Not to mention Luton, Coventry and Middlesbrough.

Fans should be careful what they ask for, because change isn't always for the good. Metro

"The Crown Jewels" - Pay TV and Major Sports

2009-11-14T08:17:00.000Z

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David Conn/Guardian

The decision to strengthen the crown jewels is a bold oneAdministrators are entitled to be frustrated by David Davies' recommendations as the Premier League gets off scot-free

David Davies and his Crown Jewels panel have shown backbone in expanding the list of sporting events recommended for protection on "free to air" television, facing down BSkyB's dominance of televised sport, and the intense lobbying from sports governing bodies already howling about the Sky millions they now stand to lose.

Yet before they protest too much, the England and Wales Cricket Board and other governing bodies should acknowledge Davies' panel's headline finding in the report delivered to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport today. Even after 17 years of Sky dominating live sport on TV, since BSkyB first claimed the Premier League football rights in 1992, 82% of British people still believe they are entitled to watch major sporting events without paying extra, because they have already paid a licence fee.

We have become used to Sky's capture of sport over the years, there is admiration for the quality of its coverage, and sports have enjoyed golden windfalls on BSkyB cheques. It seems a far-off world in which, when the Premier League rights were first sold exclusively to Sky, 67 Labour MPs signed a motion in Parliament protesting against it as a seizure of the people's game. Buying up sports rights exclusively here has transformed BSkyB's fortunes from a financial drain then pitching Rupert Murdoch's whole News Corporation empire into serious financial difficulties, to a cash cow fundamental to his empire's current corporate profits and political power.

Yet for all Sky's undeniable success, the pay broadcaster has still accumulated under a quarter, six million, of British homes as subscribers. Despite huge marketing spend and a tempting offer of exclusive sport and other programmes, the overwhelming majority of British people remain unwilling to pay for Sky. For many, £400 or so for TV packages annually is an expensive luxury they cannot justify, and some still reject it on principle, resisting the idea that in Britain, where the major sports were invented, we have to pay Rupert Murdoch's company to watch them live.

Davies' panel's job was to decide which events should qualify as having "national resonance," and they decided all competitive home football internationals do, the Open golf and rugby union World Cup, as well as the Ashes. The ECB is taking issue with the selection and the rigour with which it was arrived at, but the Ashes provided to Davies' panel the clearest evidence of free-to-air's broader public benefit. In 2005, the peak Ashes moments drew more than eight million viewers to Channel Four, while this year, for another tense, gripping England series victory, Sky's audience struggled to reach two million.

The ECB, seething at the prospect of losing money - BSkyB has paid £300m for exclusive cricket rights from 2010-13 – is arguing that the process was flawed, and that the BBC should be encouraged to bid competitively against Sky to show cricket live on terrestrial TV, not be anointed effectively as the sole broadcaster. The BBC is under a duty to pay "a fair price" and Davies recommends sports governing bodies can appeal to the BBC Trust if they feel they are being short-changed, but the ECB does not accept that is a robust appeal process.

Those are all valid arguments, and Ben Bradshaw, the secretary of state for culture media and sport, now has to consult and consider the recommendations, weighing in the balance the "economic impact" of removing the Sky dollars from the sports recommended by Davies.

Yet the sports should also celebrate the prospect of retaining a mass, terrestrial audience, and Davies, partly, is challenging them to make the most of it, commercially and in other ways. His strengthening of the "crown jewels" list is a vote for the principle, which has been under pressure in these free market, multi-channel days, that sport fundamentally still belongs to everybody. Most people appear to agree with that, including fans of the sports complaining most today.

The ECB's argument that its grass roots programmes will suffer does have some validity of course, but the bulk of Sky's money, to any sport, does not find its way to the grass roots. Last year the ECB's largest spending by far, £32.8m, went to the 18 first-class counties, who spend most of their money in wages to cricketers, while £12m went under the broad heading of "enthusing participation at grass root and recreational level." Listing would mean that the governing bodies affected would suffer a drop in income, but they can reorder their priorities for how they spend the money.

One competition, though, has escaped glaringly lightly. The Premier League did not fall to be considered at all, because the tradition of the "crown jewels" is that they protects moments of "national resonance" which have never included club league football, only the FA Cup Final. Yet the Premier League's own success, achieved despite Sky's live monopoly but with the ever-present tempter of Saturday night highlights, has turned matches between its top clubs into "watercooler moments" too. The audience even for a Manchester United v Chelsea match is still barely 2 million on Sky (although Sky claim more people watch games in pubs), while viewing figures would swell above 10 million if prime Premier League matches were shown live on terrestrial TV. It is an irony that the English Premier League is watched extremely cheaply by multitudes around the world, but costs a chunky direct debit to see live here.

It does seem a little cruel on the ECB, FA and SFA that they will now appeal desperately to the government against the recommended listing, while the world's richest league is sailing away with a £1.7bn TV deal already struck for 2010-13 exclusively with Sky and ESPN, and has never shown a single live match free to air, in 17 years. Guardian

In Germany: Fans, Not Private Investors, Own The Clubs

2009-11-14T08:15:00.000Z

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David Conn/The Guardian
Bundesliga votes to keep clubs owned by members
The overwhelming majority of German clubs opted this week to remain under the control of their fans

The clubs of the German Bundesliga this week voted overwhelmingly to keep the rule that they must all be controlled by their members, and cannot be taken over by private investors. Even Bayern Munich, Hamburg SV and the other great names of the Bundesliga have to be owned 50% plus 1, a majority, by their members ( there are two exceptions, Wolfsburg and Bayer Leverkeusen, which were originally works teams).

Many fans treasure this system, believing it has been instrumental in keeping German football close to its fans and roots even in the slick, commercial modern age. Ticket prices are low, affordable to young fans and the grounds, among the best in the world, boast the highest average attendances in Europe.

The national supporters group Unsere Kurve had led a mass campaign to retain the 50+1 rule, and on Tuesday delivered a petition signed by more than 100,000 fans of all clubs.

Keeping the "50+1" rule is a statement of confidence in the system which directly rejects the English approach, where football clubs are in reality companies, available to be bought and sold by businessmen from anywhere. Several Bundesliga clubs have grumbled throughout this decade that the rule has held them back from attracting private investment which could improve their finances. Yet at their meeting this week, an application from Hannover 96 to overturn the "50+1" ruling was overwhelmingly rejected, with 32 clubs voting against it, 3 clubs abstaining - and only Hannover 96 themselves voting for the proposal.

Dr Reinhard Rauball, the League Association president, said after the vote:

"The Bundesliga is remaining true to its principles and maintaining its reliance on the factors which have made a decisive contribution to the success of the professional game in Germany in recent decades: stability, continuity and proximity to fans."

This is a sporting tradition we should study more closely. In Germany, they have preserved member-ownership of even their greatest professional clubs, maintain accessible ticket prices, their clubs field teams in a wide spread of sports, and are centres for massive community use of excellent facilities.

That is enlightened, and very different from the landscape here, where sport began and is blessed by splendid qualities, yet where we have never truly agreed on the values it should have, or how best to protect them. Guardian

FIFA to Give Up Regulating Agents

2009-11-13T06:34:00.000Z

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The Guardian/Matt Scott
Fifa to give up regulating player agents• Fifa to withdraw from global transfer market supervisory role
• FA and French federation oppose move

[b]Fifa is preparing to abandon all rules relating to player agents, in a move that could turn the global transfer market into a free for all.[/b]

A circular that football's world governing body has distributed to all of its 208 national associations is canvassing opinion on a proposal that will see it withdraw from its role as regulator of the international transfer market. The development was the talk of an agents' conference at Wembley yesterday, with one delegate claiming the move signals that football is heading "back to the wild west".

At a time when criminal inquiries are under way on both sides of the Channel over allegedly illegal activities in football transfers, the proposal has already met with a cold reception in France. In that country the statutory authorities also regulate sports agents under national laws. The French football federation's legal director, Jean Lapeyre, said: "We are going to make clear to Fifa that our stance towards this sort of idea is hostile."

Fifa's stance is a pragmatic one. It has made clear that only one in five transfers worldwide employs a licensed agent and under its one-member, one-vote policy the removal of costly red tape is likely to gain considerable support.

Currently the administrative burden on regulating agents lies with the national associations and even the tiny island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, off the west coast of cental Africa, has three licensed agents working from its shores.

For major football nations such as England, that is not a problem. Indeed, the Football Association has been a world leader in its enforcement of agents' regulations, bringing in additional rules and licensing arrangements following the Quest inquiry into allegations of "bungs" in football.

The FA refused to comment yesterday on how it will respond to Fifa's survey. However it is believed privately to be dismayed that the progress it has made in recent years could be undermined.

There is some speculation that Fifa will even forbid national associations from having any involvement in governing the activities of agents, which the FA would certainly resist. However, there is a strong feeling among agents that Fifa's withdrawal from the regulatory space will be of benefit to world football.

"It would be a blessing if Fifa backed out," said Mel Stein of the Association of Football Agents. "They do nothing, they respond to nothing: the whole regulatory structure is a mess. This is them throwing their hands up, they can't cope."

There is a severe backlog of cases at Fifa. Among them is the FA's complaint about Pini Zahavi's presence at the meeting at which Chelsea "tapped up" Arsenal's then left-back, Ashley Cole. As an agent registered in Israel, the FA has no authority over Zahavi and must rely on Fifa's role as the international regulator. Yet more than three years since it was given an extensive dossier relating to the incident, Fifa says only that the case is "ongoing".

By contrast, the FA has won praise. "The FA has tried very hard to come to terms with the commercial reality and has done some very good work. It would be a terrible shame to throw the baby out with the bath water," Stein said. He believes that the AFA and its European counterparts would be willing to self-regulate if Fifa does strip back federations' rights to govern transfers.

A Fifa spokesperson said: "Fifa has engaged itself very actively in trying to find a solution to the regulation of international transfers, working together with its member associations and also with the clubs. It is also fair to recall that players' agents are not licensed by Fifa, but by the national associations already since 2001."

West Ham sweetener

West Ham United's fans might want rid of their club's current owner but they owe Straumur more than they think. Such has been the disastrous financial landscape – with millions owed to clubs, players, former managers and wronged parties – at Upton Park that Straumur has covered projected cashflow deficits with a £5m injection in recent weeks. A spokesman for Straumur refused to comment but it is likely the cash infusion was a gift, since any shareholder loans would presumably be vetoed by other banks whom the club already owe about £50m. The recovery in global financial markets has improved Straumur's fortunes no end, but it comes to something when a collapsed Icelandic bank is relied upon to support a Premier League side.

Guardian

Premiership Unchanged: Clubs Reject Old Firm Admission/Two Tiers

2009-11-13T06:28:00.000Z

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Independeny/Nick Harris
English top flight rejects the Old Firm

Gartside's plan to create two-tier Premier League is dismissed by club chairmen

The 'Big Four' - including Ryan Giggs' Manchester United - were among those most opposed to plans for Celtic, and neighbours Rangers, to play in England

England's 20 elite clubs yesterday killed off any hopes that Celtic and Rangers held of joining the Premier League in the foreseeable future by voting against proposals to invite them south. The idea of the Old Firm joining the League was described in an official League statement as "not desirable or viable". One source said: "In a vote, the clubs came up with an emphatic 'no' to the idea". The League's chief executive Richard Scudamore said yesterday that the Old Firm would "never" be welcome.

The Old Firm had hoped for lengthier consideration to plans put forward by Bolton's chairman, Phil Gartside, for a restructured, two-tier, 38-team Premier League, which would have seen Celtic and Rangers joining the lower of those two divisions from the start of the 2013-14 season.

But while Gartside's overall proposals for change will be given more thought – with the rationale that the League's riches could be more evenly shared – there was an unexpected vote on the Old Firm, because, as one source said: "It had become an issue that needed to be put to bed."

Some high-profile managers have backed a move to England for the Old Firm in the past week, including Everton's David Moyes, Tottenham's Harry Redknapp and Aston Villa's Martin O'Neill. And Gartside is not without support in some other Premier League boardrooms, notably at other unfashionable, unprofitable clubs, like his, that despite their top-flight riches, still lose money. Bolton's accounts for the year to June 2009, released last week, showed a loss of £13.2m.

But for now, it seems, a majority of the elite still think there would be more to lose than gain from embracing the Old Firm. The "big four" of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool see no benefit in encouraging competition from the Scottish giants, who, armed with League cash, might challenge them. The same philosophy is probably also in play at Manchester City, Everton, Tottenham and Villa, whatever the managers at the latter say. And if Celtic and Rangers did move to England, there would be two fewer places in the League, however many divisions it had, for two English clubs, possibly two of the current 20.

Yesterday's vote will not end the debate, far from it. Depending on the financial crises that are slowly but surely squeezing the life from Bolton, West Ham, Portsmouth, Hull, Blackburn, Fulham, Wigan and others, any plan that might offer more money will get an airing from time to time. Celtic and Rangers would certainly add value to Premier League TV deals. But unfortunate timing meant Gartside got shorter shrift than anyone expected.

Rangers' finances are woeful (£31m in debt and annual losses of £13m last year, according to figures released yesterday) and their latest episode of fan violence, in Romania last week, hardly make them this week's pin-up club. Uefa fined them £17,988 yesterday. Meanwhile, the group of Celtic fans who marred a Remembrance silence last weekend at Falkirk only highlighted that sectarianism remains Scotland's not-so-secret shame.

Gartside is concerned that the Premier League's top and bottom clubs have disparities in League income (winners Manchester United pocketed £52.3m of League TV money, while West Bromwich got £31.6m), although this ratio is much narrower than most European leagues. He is also concerned that the top clubs make £20m-£33m per year in Europe on top. "Addressing this polarisation of clubs and the increasing revenue differentials will, I believe, be the major strategic issue for the Premier League over coming years," he wrote in Bolton's annual report.

A League statement said: "The other relevant ideas contained within Bolton's paper will now be taken forward as part of the wider strategic review being undertaken by the Premier League since November 2008 with the aim of providing recommendations before December 2010." Independent

Open The Debate About Clubs' Financial Inequality

2009-11-13T06:22:00.000Z

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David Conn/The Guardian

Premier League rejection of Old Firm should open debate about inequality
English football's diverse financial disparity now needs to be discussed, as Bolton chairman's Phil Gartside's proposals reveal

So, Bolton Wanderers' chairman Phil Gartside's proposal for two Premier League divisions has been folded away for further discussion, but England's top 20 clubs went out of their way in their meeting today to knock the inclusion of Celtic and Rangers on the head. The news, sending Glasgow's want-away football giants back to their dilemma of being huge clubs in a small country, was released even while the Premier League meeting was still going on, with a sharp statement ending the debate which has chewed airtime up all week.

"The clubs," the statement said, "were of the opinion that bringing Celtic and Rangers into any form of Premier League set-up was not desirable or viable."

The statement did not expand, but the clubs are thought to have seen too many problems - contravening football tradition, practical difficulties over incorporating Celtic and Rangers, damage to the Scottish game, upsetting Uefa and Fifa, taking on the security burden of the Old Firm's legions of fans – for too little gain.

That explains their keenness to reject the idea quickly, outright, rather than allow the discussion to run, and the blunt wording, that the clubs see the Old Firm's inclusion as "not desirable or viable."

An accident of timing drilled home why the Glasgow clubs have long looked for an escape from the SPL; Rangers published awful financial figures today, even as the Premier League clubs were sitting down for their meeting. For the year to June 30 2009, in which they did not qualify for last season's European Champions League group stage, Rangers' income fell by almost £25m, they made a £12.7m loss and debts rose to £31.1m. The contrast with Spurs, who on Tuesday announced pre-tax profits of £33.4m from a season in which they did not play in the Champions League either but finished 8th in the Premier League, must be painful.

Gartside, though, will be pleased that the main thrust of his proposal, for a two-division Premier League with 18 clubs in each, survives to be discussed another day. He would acknowledge that the idea is self-serving; a second Premier League division is intended to give clubs relegated from the top one – as Bolton might be some season soon - a softer financial landing. He would accept that charge to an extent, by arguing that his job is indeed primarily to look after his own club.

Others might propose that the solution to the huge financial chasm between the world's richest league and the venerable Football League below it is, as it has been for 17 years, to re-unite them, and redistribute money more evenly throughout the system. The Premier League stands alone because in 1992 the then First Division clubs broke away from the Football League so that they would not have to share the millions which poured into football from the first TV deal of the satellite age.

Yet the big clubs now, feasting on the current £2.7bn three-year TV deal, and expecting around the same again from 2010-13, see no reason to change the format or share of money in a Premier League which serves them nicely indeed. They are unlikely to have any appetite for Gartside's restructuring proposals, let alone for the idea of re-unifying their TV deals with the Football League, whose chairman, Lord Mawhinney, has proposed that.

Gartside, however, said he wanted at least to spark a debate about English football's divisive and damaging financial inequality. Now that Celtic and Rangers are out of the way, perhaps we can have one." The Guardian

Clubs Oppose Two Tier Premiership Proposal

2009-11-12T23:31:00.001Z

Guardian/Owen Gibson

Big clubs prepare to block Phil Gartside's two-tier Premier League• Plans include involvement of Celtic and Rangers
• 'The minuses outweigh the pluses' says Stoke chairman

The Bolton chairman, Phil Gartside, will tomorrow outline his revised proposal for a two-tier Premier League that would include the Old Firm, sparking a vigorous debate about the way in which revenues are shared between clubs.

While the plan is expected to receive short shrift from the larger clubs, and is thought unlikely to result in a concrete proposal, Gartside could achieve his aim of triggering a wide-ranging debate about the way in which TV revenues are distributed among clubs at tomorrow's Premier League shareholders meeting.

In his preface to Bolton's annual report,Gartside recently wrote that addressing "the polarisation of clubs and the increasing revenue differentials will be the major strategic issue for the Premier League over coming years". He said a "fear factor" was "beginning to emerge among Premier League clubs outside the top few".

Last season, Manchester United were the biggest earners from the Premier League's broadcasting pot with £51.5m. Relegated Middlesbrough earned the least with £30.95m.

But the bigger clubs will argue that the Premier League already distributes TV revenues more fairly than any other major European league. Premier League executives will also point out that control of the major destabilising factor — the Champions League money earned by the top four— is not in its gift.

The big clubs will, then, oppose any major change to the status quo, insisting they have already levelled the playing field by agreeing to every club receiving an equal share of TV income, which last year totalled £13.9m. That is then topped up with facility fees of at least £5.9m [which is based on how many times each club appears on television] and a merit payment depending on league position. They will also argue that the next overseas TV deal — revenue from which is also split equally — will be close to £1bn, almost twice as much as the current £650m deal.

But the financial difficulties faced by Portsmouth, Hull City and West Ham indicate the increasing pressure on clubs who feel they must spend beyond their means to compete and yet are terrified about the impact of relegation. Last season, £74.4m was paid out in parachute payments, which last for a maximum of two season following relegation. Some clubs will argue that figure should be increased.

Under Gartside's original plan, the two-tier Premier League would have become an exclusive club with no relegation. The new proposal, for two divisions of 18 including Celtic and Rangers, is believed to include limited scope for relegation and promotion involving what would remain of the Football League on a two-up, two-down basis. The two Scottish clubs, under increasing financial pressure of their own, would welcome the opportunity to join the Premier League. But despite support for the idea from managers including Martin O'Neill, Harry Redknapp and David Moyes, it is expected that self-interest will prevail among chairmen worried that the inclusion of the Scottish clubs would hurt their own position.

Stoke's chairman, Peter Coates, said today he would not support the Old Firm proposal: "We have lots of fine clubs in England to play and we have a system that has worked very well in a competitive sense. If Celtic and Rangers were to come in, after a while that would become the norm. It would be no big thing. I think the minuses outweigh the pluses."

Any fundamental change to the Premier League's structure would require the approval of 14 of the 20 Premier League clubs, as well as the FA.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/nov/11/premier-league-two-tier-old-firm

Telegraph By Paul Kelso, Chief Sports Reporter

Two-tier Premier League plan featuring Celtic and Rangers faces rejection
Plans for a radical overhaul of the English football pyramid based on an expansion of the Premier League to cover two divisions and the inclusion of Celtic and Rangers are expected to get a lukewarm reception from Premier League chairmen on Thursday.

The plans, drawn up by Bolton chairman Phil Gartside, are intended to bridge the financial gap between the Premier League elite and the rest of the game, but they are thought to have little chance of being accepted by a majority of club chairmen.

Gartside has circulated a summary of his proposals running to just two pages to club chairmen in the Premier League and Championship.

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Sport on television The document, produced in response to Premier League chairman Richard Scudamore's call for contributions to a strategic review, outlines six key points, which Gartside says will increase the popularity and profitability of the game.

The document proposes increasing the total number of teams in the Premier League by extending it to two divisions, split into an upper and lower tier.

The upper tier would be 18 teams, while Celtic and Rangers would be invited to join the lower tier, which has an unspecified number of clubs.

Increased overseas TV revenues and the £36 million in parachute payments that presently go to relegated clubs would be used to "seed fund" the expansion.

Sources at the Premier League and Football League have indicated that the Gartside proposal, though well-meaning, has little chance of gaining momentum among clubs.

His motivation is to protect the ability of sides such as Bolton to compete, and to cushion the blow for those relegated, where broadcast revenues are less than 10 per cent of those in the Premier League.

While a number of club chairmen share his concerns, he is likely to fall short of the 14 that will be required to effect change. A more likely outcome is that his intervention will spark renewed debate about the distribution of television revenue within the league.

At the moment the club finishing bottom receive about 60 per cent of the sum paid to the champions. Last season that amounted to a gap of £20 million between the £51m paid to Manchester United and the £31m received by West Bromwich Albion.

This gap is exacerbated by the extra revenue earned by Champions League clubs, which has helped polarise the league between the 'Big Four' and the rest.

Bridging that gap increasingly looks beyond medium-sized clubs like Bolton, who have to run to standstill. In the club's holding company annual report, published last week, Gartside said that addressing this income gap was the league's greatest challenge: "Addressing this polarisation of clubs and the increasing revenue differentials will, I believe, be the major strategic issue for the Premier League over the coming years.

"The gap between Premier League revenues and those of the Championship continues to widen and I believe a 'fear factor' is beginning to emerge among Premier League clubs outside the top few."

Such are the financial realities of the league that last season Blackburn cautioned in their accounts that there was little or no chance of them making a profit in the medium-term, despite the unprecedented media revenues.

Three years ago the Premier League responded to concerns raised by Gartside and others by changing its distribution formula so that all clubs were guaranteed a minimum of 10 "facility fees", received for appearing in live games, which last season amounted to more than £5m. That debate is likely to be revived even if Gartside's revolutionary proposal is not pursued.

Celtic and Rangers' inclusion is also likely to meet with opposition, with Scudamore already having indicated that it is unlikely.

There are major security concerns about admitting the Old Firm clubs to English football, and there would be significant resistance from the Football Associations in England and Scotland.

The impact on Scottish football would be devastating, removing the primary source of income for all clubs.

Stoke chairman Peter Coates agreed with Gartside that the English game needed reviewing but said he would not support the Old Firm proposal: "We have lots of fine clubs in England to play and we have a system that has worked very well in a competitive sense.

"We have 20 teams in the Premier League and they are all tough games. If Celtic and Rangers were to come in, after a while that would become the norm. It would be no big thing. I think the minuses outweigh the pluses."

Gartside's formula:

1: Expand total number of teams in Premier League.

2: Extend league to two divisions split into upper and lower tier.

3: Reduce upper tier to 18 teams. Number in lower tier not specified.

4: Use extra overseas TV revenue and £36 million parachute payments to fund expansion.

5: Invite Celtic and Rangers to join lower tier.

6: Consider the regulatory challenges, mainly from English and Scottish FAs
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/6547311/Two-tier-Premier-League-plan-featuring-Celtic-and-Rangers-faces-rejection.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BBC

Premier League rejects Old Firm

Celtic and Rangers will have to stay in the SPL
The Premier League has rejected a plan to bring Celtic and Rangers into English football's top flight.

The Old Firm pair had hoped to be part of new plans put forward by Bolton chairman Phil Gartside for a two-tier league of between 36 and 40 teams.

It was thought that there would be a top tier of 18 clubs, with promotion and relegation to and from the league.

The SPL pair would have been invited to join the lower league but the proposal was overwhelmingly rejected.

The Premier League said in a statement: "Bolton Wanderers submitted a discussion paper detailing ideas concerning the restructuring of the Premier League into two tiers with the inclusion of Celtic and Rangers.

"The clubs welcomed the additional input into an ongoing process, however, they were of the opinion that bringing Celtic and Rangers into any form of Premier League set-up was not desirable or viable.

"The other relevant ideas contained within Bolton's paper will now be taken forward as part of the wider strategic review being undertaken by the Premier League since November 2008 with the aim of providing recommendations before December 2010."

Aston Villa manager Martin O'Neill and Spurs boss Harry Redknapp had backed the inclusion of the Scottish clubs in the Premier League.

The proposals were a revival of Gartside's ideas which received a hostile reception from the Premier League's 20 chairmen six months ago.

More to follow.

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_prem/8353937.stm

QPR Finances Recalled

2009-11-11T13:40:00.000Z

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Will have to return to this part!

2008 Letter to QPR Shareholders:
"The company is required to repay an existing loan of £10M to ABC on or before the 31/7/08. ABC currently has an option over the Loftus Road Stadium which becomes exercisable if the company fails to repay the loan in full by 31/7/08.

The company requires financing in order to repay the loan. The company has sought to secure this financing from various financial institutions, but has been unable to do so owing to conditions and requirements of those institutions. As a result Amulya has agreed to advance a loan of £10m to the company in order to allow the company to repay the loan by 31/7/08 and thereby avoid the possibility of ABC exercising their option and acquiring the title to the stadium.

However as a condition to advancing the loan, Amulya requires the company to enter into the option. The option is on substantially similar terms to the ABC option. It grants Amulya an option to buy the stadium for £10M which is exercisable in the event the company fails to repay Amulya when the loan is due.

[b]The term of the Amulya loan is two years. The rate is 8.50% compared with ABC's 10 %.[/b]Amulya Property Limited is a company that both Briatore and Amit Bhatia are connected with and also happens to share its name with a large Indian Property Company."

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

"New Loan Pushes ABC Out of the Picture"-
Ealing Gazette - New loan pushes ABC out of the picture

QPR have averted the prospect of ABC Corporation acquiring their Loftus Road ground, the club have confirmed.

ABC had the option to take ownership of the stadium if a £10m loan they made to the club’s holding company in 2002 was not repaid in full by the end of last month.

A recent letter to shareholders explained that the debt was paid by securing another £10m loan from a different company, Amulya Property Ltd, who now have a similar option to acquire the stadium in two years’ time if they are not repaid.

The interest rate on the new loan is 8.5% and Amulya has links with both Rangers’ co-owner Flavio Briatore and QPR holdings vice-chairman Amit Bhatia, whose father-in-law Lakshmi Mittal bought a 20% stake in the club last year.

The ABC loan has posed a threat to the club’s future for some time and the interest payments of nearly 11% were a major financial burden.

The loan was arranged so Rangers could come out of administration by making a payment to former owner Chris Wright, who was then a major creditor having made a series of directors’ loans during his tenure.

It also left the club with significant working capital which was used to fund the squad that won promotion from the Second Division two years later.

"The ABC loan has been of great concern to QPR fans, and has been a noose around the neck of this football club for far too long," Briatore told QPR’s website.

"I am delighted that we have now made arrangements to put this saga to an end." Ealing Gazette

August 5, 2008 - BBC - QPR complete payment of £10m loan

Queens Park Rangers have repaid the £10m they owed the ABC Corporation.

The loan was taken out in 2002 to assist the west London club in coming out of administration.

QPR Holdings Limited were required to repay £10m to the Panama-registered corporation on or before the 31 July 2008 deadline.

ABC had an option over the club's Loftus Road ground which could be exercised if the debt had not been met in full.

QPR Holdings Limited chairman Flavio Briatore said: "The ABC loan has been of great concern to QPR fans, and has been a noose around the neck of this club for far too long.

"I am delighted that we have now made arrangements to put this saga to an end.

"Building for the future is what is important to me, and the rest of the QPR board. However, with certain issues it is always necessary to deal with elements from the past, and today we have done this.

"This once again highlights our commitment to this football club, and now I am looking forward to working on the continued growth of Queens Park Rangers, both as a club and as a brand."

QPR Official Site - ABC LOAN REPAID IN FULL

Queens Park Rangers Football Club are delighted to announce the full repayment of our £10 million loan from ABC.
The loan was taken out into 2002 in order to assist the Club in coming out of administration.

QPR Holdings Limited was required to repay the existing loan of £10m to ABC Corporation on or before 31 July 2008.

ABC Corporation had an option over the Loftus Road Stadium, which would become exercisable if QPR Holdings Limited failed to repay the loan in full by 31 July 2008.

This loan was repaid in full today. Therefore, the option that ABC Corporation had over the Loftus Road Stadium no longer exists.
QPR Holdings Limited Chairman Flavio Briatore said: "The ABC loan has been of great concern to QPR fans, and has been a noose around the neck of this Football Club for far too long.
"I am delighted that we have now made arrangements to put this saga to an end.

"Building for the future is what is important to me, and the rest of the QPR Board. However, with certain issues it is always necessary to deal with elements from the past, and today we have done this.

"This once again highlights our commitment to this Football Club, and now I am looking forward to working on the continued growth of Queens Park Rangers, both as a Club and as a brand." QPR

July 28, 2008 "Remembering the ABC Loan"

Chairman's Report With Accounts - June 2009

"...Subsequent to the year-end, the ABC Corporation loan that attracted an interest rate of 11.76%was repaid and refinanced in July 2008 with a loan fromAmulya Property Limited, a company with which Amit Bhatia and I are connected. The interest rate under the Amulya Loan is 8.5%..."

http://qprreport.blogspot.com/2009/06/flavio-briatores-chairmans-report-in.html

Notts County Update

2009-11-11T09:03:00.001Z

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The Guardian/Matt Scott Wednesday 11 November 2009

Curious case of Notts County, former adviser and a North Korean bigwig
Notts County told the Football League they had severed all ties with Russell King. His trip to Pyongyang casts doubt on that

The controversy over Notts County's ownership has been reopened as it emerged that Russell King, whom Notts County assured the Football League had nothing to do with the club, travelled to Pyongyang last month to visit Kim Yong-nam, one of North Korea's most powerful officials. He was representing Swiss Commodity Holdings (SCH), the company which has such close links with County that its distinctive logo now sits in the badge of the historic club.

Sven-Goran Eriksson was offered a substantial shareholding in SCH as part of his agreement to become director of football at County. Sol Campbell also held an "ambassadorial contract" with the company before he quit Meadow Lane in September. King was one of the figures who negotiated with Eriksson to bring him to the club.

King was photographed in the Mansudae Assembly Hall in Pyongyang as part of a delegation representing Swiss Commodity Holdings, which says it has considerable mineral reserves, on 22 October. That was two days after the Football League announced that Notts County's new owners had passed the fit and proper persons test. In that announcement the League was careful to note the club's assurance that Russell King no longer had any role in its affairs. The Football League was troubled by the fact that his alleged involvement in a £1.9m fraud is under investigation by the authorities in Jersey.

Previously the club had said that King had a role in advising on communications and strategy. He was involved in a number of high-profile recruitments to the club.

When asked to explain King's trip to Korea with SCH, his lawyer said: "Notts County Football Club did not have any business in North Korea on 22 October and has no comment on Mr King's personal business travels." Also in the photograph is Nathan Willett, who along with his father, Peter – himself a Notts County board member – is one of only two directors listed in company filings in Switzerland as being involved with SCH. Willett Jr says he is also a director of Qadbak, which owns Notts County via a convoluted chain of companies in the UK and British Virgin Islands. He was a signatory to the purchase agreement that gave Qadbak control of the Meadow Lane club in June through its subsidiary, the BVI shell company Munto Finance.

The photograph, which was released to accompany a statement in the North Korean official media, shows Shanti Sen, SCH's chief executive, and King immediately flanking Kim Yong-nam, with Nathan Willett to King's left. Although in practice Kim Jong-il, the "Dear Leader", rules the country, Kim Yong-nam is perhaps the most powerful official in North Korea.

The official North Korean statement said: "Kim Yong-nam, president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly, met and had a conversation with the visiting delegation of the Swiss Commodity Holding AG led by chief executive Ms Shanti Sen at the Mansudae Assembly Hall on 22 October."

That was only 48 hours after the Football League approved Qadbak's takeover of Notts County. On doing so, the league said in a statement: "The league has also noted the club's announcement on Monday, 12 October, that its consultancy arrangement with Russell King has been terminated." Notts County had said in the 12 October statement that "the club is happy to make clear that it has severed all ongoing connections with Mr Russell King".

The decision to pass the Qadbak takeover was made on the basis of evidence provided by the club. The league stated on 20 October: "This decision is based on the extensive disclosure provided by the club with regard to its ownership structure. This structure is complicated, and features both offshore entities and discretionary trusts.

"Together with the initial hesitation of the club's ultimate owners to identify themselves, this made for a lengthy and at times difficult process. Following greater co-operation from the club more recently, the league is now in a position to confirm that it is in possession of the appropriate details for those individuals that exercise control over the club."

However, what documents were presented to the Football League cannot be verified independently. The Guardian can reveal that no filings have ever been made with the British Virgin Islands Companies Registry relating to shareholdings or directorships for Munto or Qadbak.

Football staff at Meadow Lane have also been informed that Eriksson has made trips to North Korea, with a separate report in the North Korean media also said to confirm that he has paid at least one visit.

Last month the Guardian revealed that the former England manager had held preliminary talks with intermediaries representing the North Korean Football Association with a view to him providing technical advice to its national team, who have qualified for next summer's World Cup. Guardian

Hull's Finances Considered

2009-11-11T09:01:00.000Z

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David Conn/The Guardian - November 11, 2009

Alarm bells leave Hull seeking another miracle
The Premier League was a 'ridiculous ambition' for the Tigers, who now face tricky decisions to secure survival

When this column reported in September that Hull City's financial accounts for the year to July 2008 were significantly overdue, the club, run by its then chairman, Paul Duffen, responded with a statement on its website claiming that the article "contained a number of inaccuracies". Neither Duffen nor anybody else at the club specified what these inaccuracies were supposed to have been and, since he resigned shortly after the accounts finally came out at the end of last month, Duffen has not returned calls to discuss them.

The financial reports came eventually wrapped in an apparently alarming warning about the state of the club, and the romantic tale of the Tigers, promoted to the top flight for the first time in their history in 2008, has been replaced with agonies over their future. Duffen himself maintained until he left that the club were not in financial difficulties, and said the delay in filing the accounts for all four Hull City-related companies – two responsible for the club, two for the KC Stadium – was due to caution being shown by the auditors, Deloitte. They had to consider whether the club have enough cash to "continue as a going concern", and like all clubs, if relegated from the golden Premier League to the earth of the Championship, City would rely on selling players to balance the books.

Duffen said he was discussing the wording of the accounts with Deloitte, who he said were wary about accepting that sufficient money could be made from selling players, and, as it turned out, the auditors did insert a grim warning. They noted that in July 2007, just after the former chairman Adam Pearson sold the club to the Essex property investor Russell Bartlett, City had no loans or overdraft from any bank. A year later, the club had borrowings of £22m, and City faced: "The requirement to make full repayment of the current bank loans by July 2010."

That produced the stark view that even if City survive in the Premier League, they need to make a £16m surplus through "player trading, match day and commercial income and/or through additional finance raising". If the club are relegated, they need to make a daunting £23m surplus.

The accounts did include the doom-laden assessment Duffen had been keen to avoid, that the unpredictability of how much can be made from selling players, and whether City would be able to raise extra finance: "Represent a material uncertainty that may cast significant doubt over the company's ability to continue as a going concern."

Duffen argued that it would paint an unduly severe picture of a club which will report a £2m profit for the year to 31 July 2009, and neither he nor Bartlett said Duffen's resignation had anything to do with the club's financial position. Pointing to his part in City having achieved the "ridiculous ambition" of promotion to the Premier League, Duffen acknowledged that the team, with the signings made this summer, were struggling on the pitch and so he had to: "Take ultimate responsibility for the disappointments of 2009."

Pearson returning last week to the club whose rise he oversaw from administration and the bottom division in 2001, to the KC Stadium and the Championship, immediately instructed accountants to itemise City's current financial situation. They found the club's bank borrowings had been reduced to £9m, which supported Duffen's case that the finances were not running out of control. Pearson, though, has expressed alarm at the weight of an annual wage bill, for 41 players, which he says has grown to £36m, with a further £2m payable in appearances and bonuses, and £5.3m committed to be paid in agents' fees.

Pearson has acknowledged emphatically that the club are not facing collapse, but said they are struggling to meet day-to-day commitments; Bartlett, he said, has put in additional money, the payments to agents and the club's cash–flow need to be rescheduled and players will inevitably be sold in January.

"It is solvable and manageable, but it is a challenge," Pearson said. "We need to get the wage bill down, and a large part of my job is also to attract additional investment to the club."

Pearson added that Bartlett, who has kept a low profile since taking over, "continues to privately fund the club".

Bartlett and Duffen met when both were looking to buy West Ham before Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, then a billionaire, now ruined, bought the London side – and they teamed up to acquire Hull City instead. The accounts show Bartlett provided £4m for the club to spend, in return for preference shares, after he took over, an investment which bore fruit when City won promotion.

A complicated series of loans then took place in the year to 31 July 2008 which suggests that, overall, some money went back to Bartlett. Personally, and via one of his companies, R3 Investment Group, he loaned £1.6m to Superstadium Holdings Limited, one of the KC Stadium management companies. That company in turn lent £2m to Tiger Holdings, the club's parent, which lent £2m back to Bartlett's company, R3. Those transactions make it appear that around £400,000 more was loaned out of the club than loaned in. Pearson said he could not confirm whether that is an accurate reading of the accounts, but he emphasised that Bartlett is "a very good owner", who has put his own money into the club and continues to do so.

The accounts for Bartlett's own main company, Fortis Property Investment, which he runs from his office in Shenfield, Essex, show that, as for all investors, these are not the best of economic times. The company's properties had been valued down slightly to £36.2m, and its bank borrowings were £28.6m, repayable by the end of next month. Bartlett has said his business is standing up well in the recession, although clearly he will not want to pour money in indefinitely to service Hull City's millionaire footballers' wage bills.

In January Bartlett and Pearson will have tricky decisions to make: how many of the club's 41 players need to be sold to ease the financial pressure, balanced against how many can be spared, from a struggling squad, to still leave City with the best chance of Premier League survival. An equally tight calculation hangs over Phil Brown – sacking a manager is football's ingrained too-easy option; there would be compensation to pay which would further burden these stretched finances, and no certainty that any replacement would fare better.

Hence Pearson's statement that he is working to support Brown in turning the team's fortunes round: "We genuinely want Phil to succeed and for him to be here for many years."

Negotiating the financial chasm between England's two separate professional leagues is a headache both ways. After promotion, clubs need to spend some of the television windfall on players who can compete in the top flight, but not so extravagantly that they risk collapse if they are relegated. Eighteen months after Hull City's finest hour, the club's late accounts for that 2007-08 season of glory have laid that dilemma bare. Guardian

Notts County Finances

2009-11-10T22:47:00.000Z

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Guardian/Matt Scott

Notts County on brink of winding-up proceedings• Club's parent company owes six-figure tax debt• High court bankruptcy division to hear case next week

Notts County's parent company will be wound up next week unless a six-figure tax debt is paid. The League Two club are the subject of an order scheduled to be heard at the bankruptcy division of the high court on 18 November. Despite the notice being served on 25 September on the club's UK parent company, Blenheim 1862, the debt has still not been settled.

There remain four days in which to make a settlement to prevent the case going before the courts. Notts County yesterday refused to comment.

"A Petition to wind up the above-named Company of Meadow Lane Stadium, Meadow Lane, Nottingham NG2 3HJ, presented on 25 September 2009 by the Commissioners for HM Revenue and Customs, claiming to be creditors of the Company, will be heard at the Royal Courts of Justice, 18 November 2009," read a statement published on 5 November 2009 in the insolvency-notices journal of record, the London Gazette.

The development is said to have come as a shock to those involved in the transaction to hand over the club in June to Qadbak, the British Virgin Islands-registered company. As part of that deal the supporters' trust wrote off almost £400,000 in shares and loans it held in Blenheim 1862. Qadbak owns County via another BVI vehicle, Munto Finance, which in turn holds the shares in Blenheim 1862.

It is understood that at the time of the transaction there was an assurance that the tax debts, believed to be approaching £400,000 and which threatened the existence of the club, would be quickly paid. A source close to the club claims sufficient funds are being held in an escrow account ready for release to HM Revenue and Customs once the matter has been heard by the courts.

The source added that the debts relate to PAYE and VAT submissions dating back more than two years. But it was the assurance of swift payment, along with claims of vast funds available to the club under Qadbak, that led to the trust handing over the shares to the BVI companies for free.

This is not the first evidence of Notts County being unable to deliver on expectations since the takeover by Qadbak. Sol Campbell, whom the director of football, Sven-Goran Eriksson, persuaded to join the club, quit only five weeks into a five-year contract at Meadow Lane. "Perhaps things are not happening as quickly as he thought they might," said the club's executive chairman, Peter Trembling, on Campbell's departure in September.

Blenheim 1862's sole directors are Glenn Rolley, who still serves as the supporters' trust's chairman, and Trembling. If County fail to settle and HMRC succeeds in winding up Blenheim 1862, Rolley or Trembling will be ordered to hand over the company's books and to explain why the business failed.

That will lead to an investigation by HMRC and, if there is any evidence that tax payments were deliberately withheld, a further inquiry, led by Lord Mandelson's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, might follow. Under HMRC's insolvency rules: "This could result in the directors being disqualified from running a company for a period of between two and 15 years." Guardian

BBC Update - Notts head off winding-up threat

Notts County's owners Munto Finance, have moved to head off a winding-up petition issued by the High Court, reports BBC Radio Nottingham.

The petition relates to a six-figure debt accrued before Munto Finance took control of the Meadow Lane club.

Notts have lodged the money with the Bankruptcy Division of the High Court, where a winding-up petition is due to be heard next week.

However Notts say they are confident the petition will be withdrawn

Considering Stadium Name Changes

2009-11-09T18:54:00.001Z

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The Times/ Patrick Barclay

November 09, 2009
Debate: Would you be happy to have your club’s stadium renamed?

Stadium naming rights are not something we should always froth about. If Arsenal want to move to a new and improved stadium, and, to help with costs, call it the Emirates Stadium rather than New Highbury, well and good. If, on the other hand, Mike Ashley uses naming rights as just another way of tormenting the supporters of Newcastle United, that’s not so good. It depends on the stadium and the people involved.

The announcement that St James’ Park will be renamed the "sportsdirect.com@St James’ Park Stadium” until the end of this season, when an auction will be held in the hope of raising £5 million a year from a company appending its name or slogan to the ground’s time-honoured title, is probably the worst of all the awful things that have befallen Newcastle since Kevin Keegan left in 1997 (the only really good thing was the Indian summer of Sir Bobby Robson). Worse, even, than Ashley’s takeover and the installation of Dennis Wise alongside an unwilling Keegan in his second spell as manager.

St James’ Park is St James’ Park and should be so until the fans say otherwise. Anything else is bad business, quite apart from the insult it delivers to the sensibilities of those who give not just the stadium but the city in which it is near-centrally situated a rare and wonderful form of footballing life. And for the Football League to stand by and say nothing — just as, to be fair, the Premier League would probably have done had Newcastle not been relegated last season — is yet another illustration of how loosely the game is regulated, for all the improvements to which both Leagues justifiably point.

The name of a ground really does matter, as Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur will discover when they tap this source of revenue with which to pay bloated salaries. Chelsea hope to raise at least £10 million a year, which would keep John Terry at the club but not leave enough over to satisfy Salomon Kalou, let alone Didier Drogba. It should, however, be the concern of Chelsea’s supporters, just as it would be a matter for Manchester United supporters if the Glazers decided to rename Old Trafford the AIG Arena or something even more dubious. In San Francisco there is a stadium called Candlestick Park. Nearly 20 years ago I went to the city for a holiday and, because the name was so evocative (“candlestick birds”, a kind of curlew, inhabit that part of the Bay), visited Candlestick Park, barely knowing whether the game would be of baseball or gridiron (it turned out to be the former).

Later the stadium was renamed “3Com Park”. Not only would this put off tourists such as me; the locals scorned it, too, and became even more irritated when it turned into “Monster Park” in honour of Monster Cables, a company that marketed the leads that protrude from electronic equipment. A bylaw was passed to the effect that it reverted to Candlestick Park when the deal expired last year.

If the popular will is good enough for the Americans, it is good enough for English football. The Leagues should react to the news from Newcastle and Chelsea by regulating that any change of a stadium’s name must be endorsed by its users, by means of a poll supervised by trusted experts.

I suspect that, were such a rule in force, Arsenal would have been able to persuade their season ticketholders, many of whom formed a waiting list at Highbury — but that Newcastle’s latest idea would be rejected out of hand.

As I keep saying, football should behave less like a business and more like a sport, because then it would do better business.

Debate: Would you be happy to have your club’s stadium renamed to bring in extra income? The Times

Football Hooliganism - Germany

2009-11-09T18:52:00.000Z

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AP - German hooligans attack train; no one injured

FRANKFURT (AP) — About 30 masked hooligans attacked a train carrying football fans when it stopped at a train station in Germany, police said Monday.
The hooligans carried baseball bats, iron bars and other weapons and hurled stones when the train stopped Saturday evening in Weddel, near Braunschweig. Police officers accompanying the traveling Hannover fans prevented the two groups from clashing and no one was injured.

One carriage and the train station suffered substantial damage. The assailants, believed to be rival Eintracht Braunschweig supporters, fled in the darkness.

The train was carrying Hannover fans who were returning from Potsdam where the reserve team had played a game.

Braunschweig, which plays in the third division, had a home game Saturday. Braunschweig and Hannover have a bitter rivalry." USA Today

Stadium Naming Rights - Now Turn of Spurs and Liverpool

2009-11-08T11:46:00.001Z

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Observer - Tottenham up the ante with Chelsea over ground naming rights• Tottenham claim new ground will offer more to sponsors
• Executive director says stadium will outstrip rivals

Tottenham have claimed that sponsors would derive more benefit from putting their name to the club's new stadium than to Chelsea's current one, as they responded to Roman Abramovich's plans to sell off the naming rights to Stamford Bridge.

Spurs plan to build a 56,000-capacity ground next to their present home, to be ready for the 2012-13 season, and are seeking sponsors for the venue.

Paul Barber, Tottenham's executive director, said a brand new stadium could be more attractive to commercial interests than one that is more than 100 years old. "I think Chelsea have got some challenges because it is what it is," he said. "It's a good, old-fashioned football stadium, with a great atmosphere in it, but it's not brand new and it's not got all those features we will have.

"Our stadium will be as technologically advanced as any in the world. It's going to be as environmentally advanced as any other. And there will be some brands that want those kind of associations, that want top-class football in a fantastic environment."

Barber's comments in the Telegraph follow Chelsea's announcement of plans to auction naming rights on their Stamford Bridge ground.

Barber also predicted Spurs' new home would outshine Arsenal's. "Our stadium, by the time it's built, is going to be a generation beyond Arsenal, so therefore it is going to be more advanced both technologically and environmentally," he said.
Guardian
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SUNDAY TIMES - Liverpool plan £250m field of dreams
The Reds are confident of persuading a leading global firm to buy the rights to name the club’s proposed new ground
Jonathan Northcroft

LIVERPOOL will brush off the controversy over England’s top clubs selling naming rights to their stadiums and chase the most expensive naming rights deal in the history of sport. Despite the recession, the Merseyside club’s hierarchy are convinced they can raise a mammoth £250m by persuading a leading global firm to buy the rights to name Liverpool’s proposed ground.

Liverpool’s owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, have been buoyed by their record £20m-per-season shirt sponsorship agreement signed recently with Standard Chartered, taking it as proof of the world-wide appeal of the club and the Premier League. These factors have persuaded Hicks and Gillett to revisit stadium-building plans, shelved due to Liverpool’s debts. The two Americans now believe they can underwrite more than 50% of the cost of building a new ground on a site earmarked on Stanley Park through a world-record naming rights sale.

The benchmark they have set Liverpool’s commercial team is the deal signed between the New York Mets baseball franchise and Citigroup. The American financial services giant paid $20m (£12m) a year over 20 years to have a new stadium, Citi Field, opened by the Mets early in 2009. Liverpool believe they can outstrip that. “Naming rights are a global market,” said Hicks. “We likely will partner with someone wanting global branding, unlike the US stadiums, which only worry about TV appeal in the States, similar to why Standard Chartered chose to partner with us on our shirts.”

Despite debts approaching £300m and Liverpool’s onfield worries, Hicks remains bullish about the outlook for his club. He said Rafael Benitez would not be forced to sell star players even if Liverpool fail to qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions League. Hicks and Gillett are seeking new investors, in the hope of raising money to reduce the club’s debt by diluting their shareholding, and spoke of “significant interest”. They are undeterred by protests by Newcastle fans in response to their club’s stadium being renamed sportsdirect.com@St James’ Park Stadium and criticism of Chelsea, who last week announced they were looking to sell off naming rights to Stamford Bridge in the hope of raising £150m.

Liverpool believe their situation is different, because they are building a new stadium rather than renaming an existing one. They regard as a precedent Arsenal, who signed a £100m 15-year deal with Emirates, which also included shirt sponsorship, when they moved from Highbury in 2006. Manchester United are the only Big Four club for whom a naming rights sale does not appear an option. A club source said a rights sale involving Old Trafford is “not on our agenda”. Sir Alex Ferguson said Chelsea’s plans were driven by money. “It is the only reason I can think of. But it does not really concern me. I wouldn’t have thought [it would happen at United].” Sunday Times

Additional Sites of Interest

2009-11-07T09:46:00.000Z

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In addition to Sites of Interest

- Supporters Direct

- Supporters Direct Links

- Football Supporters Federation

- Football Foundation

- Football LIcensing Authority

Perspectives re Stadium Name Changes

2009-11-07T09:23:00.000Z

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David Lacey/ The Guardian

Name and shame: Mike Ashley's latest folly is vulgar
Changing the name of St James' Park shows how little the Newcastle owner understands about football

So what's in a name ? Quite a lot when it comes to football grounds. For a supporter the name of a stadium or its location, which sometimes serves as a name, is etched as deep on the soul as the team that plays there. Memories of the Kop, the North Bank, the Shed, the Chicken Run or whatever are precious even though many of these gathering places have long since been bulldozed to oblivion.

If Mike Ashley, the power at Newcastle United, was not previously aware of this, the gap in his education has quickly been filled. Ashley and his associates have decreed that for the next six months Newcastle will no longer be playing at St James' Park but at something called sportsdirect.com@StJames'ParkStadium. Sports Direct is Ashley's company and it is hoped that this will attract new sponsors, possibly from the far east, in which case the ground could become the Sony Bravia Arena or some such.

Needless to say Tyneside fans are further up in arms about the running of the club since Ashley took control two years ago, accusing him of caring nothing about Newcastle's history. According to Steve Wraith, the editor of Players Inc fanzine: "It's not something you can come in and tweak." None of which is likely to make much of an impression on the man in charge. Ashley will tweak on regardless.

The successful modern businessman needs a thick skin and in Newcastle's case should be up there with a T rex. It is hard to think of a title more likely to offend supporters unless it had been decided to rechristen the ground the Dennis Wise Memorial Coliseum. Then again it is primarily a commercial move. The media are unlikely to swallow the new mouthful in reporting Newcastle's matches; St James' Park will still be St James' Park unless someone forgets and calls it St James's Park. And fans rarely mention the title of a stadium in conversation anyway. They just talk about going to a game (unless, of course, Newcastle are visiting Sunderland in which case their followers tell people they are going to the Stadium of Shite).

Nevertheless, the idea of tinkering with a football name which has been around a long time will usually rankle, as Chelsea may discover if they do decide that in future they will be playing at Samsung Stamford Bridge. On the other hand giving a sponsor's moniker to a newly built ground is different and for football followers such names have become more readily associated with the teams than the product. Think of the Emirates and you think of Arsenal rather than a Middle East airline. The Reebok is about Bolton Wanderers rather than tracksuits. For reporters, Hull City play at the KC Stadium rather than the Kingston Communications Stadium.

Originally the names of football grounds did not exercise the minds of clubs and supporters to the extent that they do now that the matter has become commercially significant. When Newcastle West End and Newcastle East End joined forces to become Newcastle United they agreed to play at the former's Town Moor ground, which from then on was known as St James' Park. When West Ham moved to their present venue early in the last century they decided to call it the Boleyn Ground because there was a property known as Boleyn Castle next door. But for the football world in general West Ham play at Upton Park. Tottenham play at White Hart Lane and in the minds of many will continue to do so even when the new stadium, which may well carry a sponsor's logo, is built nearby. Yet in its early days Spurs' home was known as the High Road Ground, which would be particularly apt now given the regularity with which the High Road traffic grinds to a halt on match days.

Derby County used to play at the Baseball Ground because that was the sport played there originally. The name of its successor, Pride Park, is relevant only as a reminder of what goeth before a fall. Even so this Park is more comfortable than the parks of Burnden, Roker, Ayresome and others used to be. Standing on a rain-soaked terrace in January being pushed and pummelled by a howling mob was about the least park-like experience that anyone could imagine. Yet none of these places suffered the indignity of being relabelled as an email address. Vulgarising St James' Park, even for six months, is a bit like insisting that Buckingham Palace should henceforth be known as liztwo@buckhouse.com Guardian

Dara O Briain/The Guardian

Jockstrap Park needs a proper name, not an email addressA child excreting Scrabble tiles could not have come up with a worse name for Newcastle United's historic stadium

Of all the legendary stadiums I've wanted to visit all my life – San Siro, the Maracanã, Fenway Park – the one that always stirred the imagination most was sportsdirect.com@St James' Park Stadium. Why do I love it so? Maybe it's the history. Maybe it's the famous passion of the local support. Or maybe it's because when I type it, it automatically gets underlined and highlighted by the word processor.

Even my laptop recognises that this is no mundane stadium. This is no ordinary place. No, this is an email address. One could debate for minutes the philosophical ramifications of having your home ground floating, untethered, somewhere in cyberspace. At the very least it'll change forever one of the hoariest cliches in sports punditry. Pundit one: "I see Newcastle are playing Barcelona in the next round." Pundit two: "Well, on paper, you'd have to favour Barcelona." Pundit one: "But Newcastle don't play on paper, do they? They play somewhere on the internet. Just left of Twitter, in fact, just before you get to Facebook."

It is a terrible, terrible name. It's difficult to think of how it could have been worse, short of getting a passing toddler to crawl across the keyboard towards a rusk; unless you filled the rusk with Scrabble tiles and then nervously waited for the child to excrete them out in some sort of order. No amount of monkeys with typewriters, working for any amount of time, could come up with something clumsier.

Maybe it's all the internal punctuation. I'm trying to think of any other place name that manages to ram in a full-stop and apostrophe and that @ thing into such a small space, but the only ones that come to mind are the offices of multimedia design companies called things like bRAIN-sPL@!, as in "bRAIN-sPL@! will make your vision of a connected e-retail future work for you!" Nobody should have to play football in a punctuation nightmare like that. Apart from MK Dons, who play at stadium:MK, but then they'll do a bit of website design for you on the side. And yes, I know Arsenal play at the Emirates, and that's not a proper stadium name either, but for some reason that's never really bothered me. Mainly because it's never been called anything else; and while Highbury might now be a block of flats, it's still called Highbury Square and looks as brilliantly unchanged as it possibly could.

Mainly, though, "Emirates" isn't a word I use very often and rarely think about the meaning of. I'm sure there must be an actual Emir somewhere, now that you mention it, but he rarely turns up, trying to get his ceremonial sword past security. There are many supporters who insist on calling the ground "Ashburton Grove" and, while I admire their integrity, I've lived on the Holloway Road and, frankly, can think of few places that less fit my image of a grove. A great place to pick up some fried chicken, though. I'd be less ambivalent if I was trudging over to the Singapore Airlines Stadium every couple of weeks, or God fear, the Ryanair SportsDome. You can insert your own Ryanair joke there, about paying extra for access to scoreboards, or the toilets, or to see both teams.

This is the rule then. The more commercial the branding, the more crass and unpleasant it sounds. Coventry can get away with the Ricoh Arena because few of us are in the market for a photocopier. Conversely, it doesn't matter if Rowntree-Mackintosh were a great local company, York City shouldn't be playing at KitKat Crescent. And Newcastle play at one the great stadiums. The third-biggest league ground in the country, the largest cantilevered roof in Europe and, in the farthest corner of the Jackie Milburn Stand, the highest point above the pitch of any stadium in England. This is what a stadium should inspire. Vertigo.

It should strike fear into the hearts of opposing supporters. They should be going: "I don't care if Ant and Dec are over there, this place scares the bejaysus out of me. We'll be lucky to get out of here alive." You shouldn't approach a stadium saying to yourself: "Ah, sportsdirect.com! That reminds me. I must go online and buy a jockstrap."

Guardian

Telegraph

Chelsea join rivals by cashing in on stadium naming rights
Chelsea plan to sell off naming rights to Stamford Bridge in an attempt to compete financially with their rivals. While Newcastle will be known as sportsdirect.com@StJames'Park for the remainder of the season, what other clubs have cashed in?
By Telegraph staff

Emirates - Arsenal
Arsenal struck a £390 million stadium rights deal with the airline in October 2004. Their decision to sell off naming rights was made easier given the club were moving into a brand new home devoid of Highbury's history.

The KitKat Crescent - York City
Changed from Bootham Crescent in 2005 after Nestle Rowntree saved the club from going out of business.

The Home Depot Center - LA Galaxy
America's equivalent of B&Q is more than just a stadium. The site also boasts a David Beckham Academy, tennis stadium, athletics track and indoor velodrome.

Pizza Hut Park - FC Dallas
The MLS side sold it's stadium naming right to the fast food giant last year. The ground is also sometimes known as PHP, the Hut and The Oven, the latter referring to the summer climate in Texas.

Putz's Sporting Goods Park - Colorado Rapids
The MLS side moved to their new stadium, often just known as 'Putz's' in 2007 as part of the club's initiatives to reinvent themselves. A partnership with Arsenal was also formed.

Bargain Booze Stadium - Witton Albion
The Northern Premier League First Division South famously changed their Wincham Park ground for a couple of seasons. Telegraph

A Two-Division Premiership?...Bolton Debts...Premiership Payment to Agents to Be Revealed

2009-11-06T18:15:00.000Z

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Guardian/David Conn

Plan for two-tier Premier League with Celtic and Rangers back on agenda• Clubs meet next week to discuss splitting division
• Scottish giants invited under Bolton's proposal

David Conn guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 November 2009

The proposal by Bolton Wanderers' chairman, Phil Gartside, for an expanded two-division Premier League which would include Celtic and Rangers has been revived and is on the agenda for next Thursday's Premier League clubs' meeting. His idea is prompted by what Gartside has described as a "fear factor" among the smaller clubs, who are desperately worried about the financial cost of relegation to the Championship and are overspending to avoid it.

Gartside's plans did not gain sufficient support when he first unveiled them last year, but he has persisted because he wants a debate about English football's structure and the financial inequalities now embedded in it. His proposals are understood to be similar to those produced previously, in which he suggested the Premier League could be expanded into two divisions, possibly of 18 teams each, with Celtic and Rangers included because their size would create more money for the league.

The idea was dismissed by many last time because Gartside appeared to be proposing a self-interested "closed circle", with no relegation out of the Premier League's second division. This time, Gartside is understood to be more flexible, arguing that relegation could be retained but that clubs should meet standards of size and finance, similar to Uefa's licensing system, if they are to be promoted into the Premier League.

Bolton published their accounts this week for the year to 30 June 2009, which showed that even though the club finished 13th last season, they lost £13.2m and their net debts rose to £64m.

The Premier League has sold its TV rights separately from the Football League since the top division clubs broke away in 1992, and its teams now receive on average £40m more from TV money alone than those in the Championship. That makes relegation a dire prospect.

Gartside wrote in Bolton's accounts of the need to address this gap: "The same few clubs continue to benefit from the huge additional revenues from the Champions League, and the remaining clubs find it enormously difficult to challenge," he said. "At the same time, the gap between Premier League revenues and those of the Championship continues to widen and I believe a fear factor is beginning to emerge amongst Premier League clubs outside the top few. Addressing this polarisation of clubs will be the major strategic issue for the Premier League over coming years."

In the summer, the Football League proposed uniting with the Premier League, to sell their TV rights jointly, a plan which could involve a more even distribution of money throughout English football, but the Premier League has so far not entered into discussions.

Few clubs were prepared to comment about Gartside's proposals in advance of next Thursday's meeting, but the politics are predictable. The top clubs, those either in the top four Champions League places or who see themselves as competing for them, earn very well from the current system and are believed to have little interest in changing the structure. Support for reform, and a more equal distribution of TV money, will come from smaller clubs who, like Hull City and Portsmouth, have overreached themselves trying to stay in the Premier League and for whom relegation is a real fear.

The Wigan Athletic chairman, Dave Whelan, said he did not agree with inviting Celtic and Rangers to cross the football border, but gave qualified support for the plan to expand the Premier League.

"I think it would be fairer to unite the Premier and Football Leagues," he said, "but the Premier League clubs would not agree to that because they make most of the money as things stand. The idea is worth debating, because the gulf is huge, with eight to 10 of us clubs just fighting for survival."

Both Celtic and Rangers, who have long looked to escape from the Scottish Premier League in which they are by far the biggest clubs, would welcome an invitation from the elite English league. However, any Premier League rule change requires 14 clubs to vote in favour. Gartside has a great deal of lobbying to do before his plan has any chance of succeeding.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/nov/06/premier-league-two-division-gartside

Guardian/Matt Scott
Premier League clubs to reveal payments to agents under new FA rule• Fans to find out how much clubs pay agents next month
• Football League have released details since 2004-05

Friday 6 November 2009

Fans of Premier League teams will next month discover for the first time how much their clubs have been paying agents. Under new Football Association rules, records will be made publicly available detailing all fees received by agents from clubs throughout the leagues.

An FA spokesman said: "The main driver is transparency. For the FA, as for other governing bodies, transparency is one of the key pillars of a sensible regulatory regime. We updated our regulations in the summer and they now provide for the publication of agents' fees paid both by clubs and players. This will, for the first time, provide an overall picture of the scale of the football agency business."

A similar system already in place in the Football League has been running for five years but a wider requirement is being introduced for all clubs. The rules state: "Clubs, players, authorised agents and exempt solicitors agree to the publication by the FA after 30 November each year of the total amount paid by players to authorised agents and exempt solicitors during the period 1 October of the previous year to 30 September of that year."

The FA has been collating figures relating to agents' payments since its reform of the regulations governing their activities in 2007. It is understood the Premier League was fully supportive of the new measures, although clubs had previously resisted the move when challenged about the success of the Football League scheme.

Since its introduction in 2004, the Football League's initiative has coincided with a continued reduction on the amounts agents have received. Brian Mawhinney, the chairman of the Football League, welcomed the FA's development.

"Our figures show a downward trend in the amounts going to agents and an upward trend in the number of clubs not paying agents at all," he said. "I think it is wrong to look at a particular set of figures; the strength of the process is that it gives a sense of what is happening over a period of time. It allows fans to question their own clubs. We've never been running an anti-agent campaign, we are opening up how our clubs operate for the benefit of fans."

Lord Mawhinney did concede that his league's figures are based on data provided voluntarily by clubs but considers them to be "broadly right". The FA's system will benefit from the traceability of payments passing through its transfer-finance clearing house.

Agents fees have long been a thorny issue between club owners and their staff. In 2004 the then Manchester United shareholders, John Magnier and JP McManus, directed 99 questions at the club's board "which [related] to particular transactions with which we are concerned". The letter prompted Manchester United plc to publish a breakdown of player agent payments. However, when the Glazers bought the club and took if private in 2005 the practice was ceased.

At that time MPs called on all agents' fees to be investigated by HM Revenue and Customs. Coincidentally, on Wednesday the Portsmouth chief executive, Peter Storrie, was charged with cheating the public revenue and arranging for a signing-on fee to be paid to a player via an agent with "intent to defraud", in the 2003 transfer of Amdy Faye. Storrie has said he will "defend the allegations in the strongest possible terms and is entirely confident that he will be exonerated".

In a separate development, the financially troubled Premier League club Hull City have launched an internal investigation into the payment of £5.5m to agents in the past two years.

There are hopes that with the FA ensuring more transparency over the money being diverted out of the game there will be a tendency for clubs to negotiate down the amounts demanded by agents. However the FA privately insists it is not seeking to micromanage fees, leaving payments as a matter for clubs as commercial organisations.

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Pay up, Pompey

After Portsmouth staff received their September pay cheques late, they took care to ensure the October payroll came in on time. But the eagle-eyed among them spotted that not all were being paid by Portsmouth Football Club as before, but instead by "Fuglers Client Account", an account belonging to the law firm that represented Ali al-Faraj in the Saudi Arabian's takeover. The taxman is known to frown upon payments by off-balance-sheet entities, so Digger asked Mark Jacob of Fuglers why this was. "My clients requested that it be done this way," he said. Why, he would not say. "The staff have been paid. Everything will be accounted for through the club." Pay up Pompey!

Europe's only hope

When Sepp Blatter, below, announced last month his decision to run for a new term as Fifa president it met with little fanfare. "I hope that in 2011 the Fifa congress once more has faith in me, otherwise I'll go back to my village," said an ever-so-'umble Blatter. But top‑level tongues in football are wagging as to his motives for declaring so early for the hustings. Who could be the stalking horse the incumbent fears?

Is it Issa Hayatou, the Cameroonian who tried and failed before? Or Ricardo Teixeira, the boy from Brazil, the land that can seemingly do no wrong in sports campaigns? Or Mohamed Bin Hammam, the Asian confederation president, who at 60 years old is the sprightliest of executive-committee members? The speculation leads to one conclusion: unless Blatter clings on, the power in world football will soon shift away from Europe.

1-0 down, 2-1 up

Peter Hill-Wood has no doubt long overcome the disappointment at his own lack of foresight in selling 16.6% of Arsenal for £290,250 of what he famously termed David Dein's "dead money" in 1983. It would be unwise for the Arsenal chairman to dwell on the thought that a stake of that size would be worth £87.8m today. But Hill-Wood has at least been able to console himself in the extraction of value from what few hundred shares he was left with. At £850,000 his sale to Stan Kroenke on Wednesday of only a fraction of a percent of the club – 0.16% in fact – was worth almost three times as much to him in cash terms as that rather more sizeable slug 26 years ago.

x-head

With no events at the national stadium until next Saturday's England Under-21 international, the landlords have put the car park on Wembley Way to good use. The space is currently being occupied by the big top from Zippo's Circus. "So the FA are recruiting again," an onlooker said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/nov/06/premier-league-agents-payments-players

David Conn/The Guardian

Bolton Wanderers' losses count the cost of Premier League survivalWanderers' debts have climbed to £64m and £2m was paid in interest to the club's owner

The financial figures published by Bolton Wanderers yesterday for the year to 30 June 2009 itemise the bewildering contradiction at the heart of the Premier League's boom years. Vast amounts of money are pouring in – fortunes more than can ever have been imagined when struggling Bolton allowed the Normid supermarket to be built into one end of Burnden Park as a desperate 1980s economy measure – yet most clubs are losing millions and falling further into debt.

Bolton finished 13th last season, and the fact that this is their ninth on the trot in the Premier League is described justifiably by the chairman, Phil Gartside as "a fantastic achievement for Bolton Wanderers". Yet the accounts lay bare the cost of doing so: Wanderers' parent company, Burnden Leisure, made £59m last year, a huge turnover at the Reebok Stadium for a provincial town football club, yet paid wages of £40.9m and lost £13.2m.

This, according to Gartside, is the price of Premier League survival for the smaller clubs, the massive wages paid to players at the top clubs trickle down, becoming unpayable for those paddling to stay up. With a wage bill on that scale, and net debts of £64m, relegation down across the financial chasm to the Championship terrifies Bolton and others in a similar position who, like Portsmouth and Hull City, are perennially tempted to overspend. Gartside acknowledged in the accounts a "fear factor beginning to emerge amongst Premier League clubs outside the top few".

Bolton's ability to operate with thumping losses and meaty borrowings is due to the backing of the club's owner, one of the lowest profile among the roster of rich men who have over recent years folded Premier League football clubs into their portfolios. Edwin Davies, who made his fortune manufacturing thermostatic controls for kettles, lives in the Isle of Man, one of the less sun-kissed of the British protectorate tax havens.

Davies is described by Bolton as a "benefactor" and he did put solid money into the club when he bought up his 94.5% stake in 2004. These accounts show that he has made his latest contribution in huge loans which charge a rate of interest handy for him in current economic conditions. Davies's company, Moonshift Investments, loaned Wanderers £23m last year, at 10% annual interest, so the football club paid Moonshift £2m "in respect of arrangement and guarantee fees and interest".

Gartside, in the accounts, said: "I would like to acknowledge the special contribution of our owner Eddie Davies, for his ongoing support in [overhauling Wanderers' playing squad] and other investments in the club."

That tribute is heartfelt, because Gartside knows Bolton would most likely be nowhere near the Premier League, and possibly in serious financial difficulty, without Davies. Yet the owner's support, like membership of the World's Greatest League, comes at a cost for the Trotters

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2009/nov/05/boltonwanderers-premierleague

Daily Mail

The two-tier Premier League would welcome Rangers and Celtic - but not Crystal Palace, Reading, QPR, Preston, most of League One and all of League Two

By Sportsmail Reporter
Last updated at 9:43 AM on 06th November 2009

Plans to discuss a two-tier Premier League will take place next week - and although it would welcome Scottish giants Celtic and Rangers half the Championship, 90 per cent of League One and all of League Two would almost certainly be excluded from gaining entry.

Bolton chairman Phil Gartside's plans for two 18-team divisions are back on the agenda for the next Premier League clubs meeting having been rejected initially because they did not include relegation to the Football League.
But the Trotters chief has now revised the structure, allowing for relegation, but only allowing in teams that meet standards of size and finance.
Look, there's the future and we're in it: Gary Caldwell of Celtic points the way
If a basic requirement was an average crowd of 20,000, Wigan and Portsmouth would be in real trouble as they already fall below that.
So any team hoping to emulate the likes of Wimbledon, Swindon, Bradford and Barnsley and go through the divisions will find their path blocked by the fact they are unfashionable.
If your name's not on the list, you're not coming in: Phil Gartside lets another club know they've not made the two-tier Premier League
Over half the Championship would not make the cut either, with mega-rich QPR well below the 20,000 mark, along with Reading, Bristol City and Crystal Palace.
In League One, only Leeds and Norwich attract crowds of 20,000-plus but none of League Two does - not even Sven-Goran Eriksson's Notts County who only put just over 8,000 bums on seats.
Gartside is determined to eradicate the 'fear factor' the smaller top-flight clubs have regarding the financial cost of relegation and now wants the matter debated and resolved.

Bolton published their accounts this week which showed that even though the club finished 13th last season, they lost £13.2m and their net debts rose to £64m.
The Premier League sold its TV rights separately from the Football League since the top division clubs broke away in 1992 - teams now receive £40m more from TV money alone than those in the Championship.

That makes relegation a dire prospect while the likes of Hull and Portsmouth overstretch to stay in the Premier League.
Good enough for the Football League, but not the Premier League: Crystal Palace's Darren Ambrose scores against QPR
Gartside said in the Guardian: 'The same few clubs continue to benefit from the huge additional revenues from the Champions League and remaining clubs find it enormously difficult to challenge.

Heading south for the winter? Rangers' boss Walter Smith and John Fleck would be part of the new English set-up
'At the same time, the gap between Premier League revenues and those of the Championship continues to widen and I believe a fear factor is beginning to emerge amongst Premier League clubs outside the top few. Addressing this polarisation of clubs will be the major strategic issue for the Premier League over coming years.'
Gartside wants the Old Firm included because of the money will generate - not a move favoured by Wigan chairman Dave Whelan.
He said: 'It would be fairer to unite the Premier and Football Leagues but the Premier League clubs would not agree to that because they make most of the money as things stand.

'The idea is worth debating, because the gulf is huge, with eight to 10 of us clubs just fighting for survival.'

Premier League rule changes require 14 clubs to vote in favour so Gartside has a huge amount of work to do - especially as Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal are likely to oppose any move that will reduce their income. Mail

Chelsea May Sell Ground Naming Rights

2009-11-06T18:12:00.000Z

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Chelsea intend to sell naming rights for Bridge
By Soccernet staff

November 5, 2009

Chelsea are preparing to follow Newcastle's lead by selling the naming rights for Stamford Bridge, new chief executive Ron Gourlay revealed on Thursday. Although insisting that Chelsea need the millions such a lucrative sponsorship deal would secure, Gourlay promised that the words 'Stamford' and 'Bridge' will remain.

"We understand that this is a sensitive issue for our fans and that is why we would keep the name Stamford Bridge in any deal".

Although some may disagree, Gouray feels that the financial advantage of selling the rights is essential.

"What we are not prepared to happen, and I am sure our fans will appreciate this, is allow our rival clubs in England and Europe to gain a competitive advantage over us in terms of the revenue they can generate through either expanding the capacity of their existing stadia or moving to a new stadium and then invest that upside in their team or the club. Those possibilities are not open to Chelsea for the foreseeable future because of the restrictions in expanding our stadium and the issues around finding a new site, so that means we have to be creative and look at our sponsorship architecture and see if we can create new value and new opportunities that keeps us competitive".

In 2004, Emirates paid Arsenal £50million to acquire naming rights on their new Ashburton Grove stadium for 15 years, and Allianz is charged £4m every twelve months for Bayern Munich's ground to bear its name. In the USA, Citigroup pay £10m so for the new New York Mets baseball arena, now called Citi Field.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=694495&sec=england&cc=5901

INDEPENDENT/Mark Fleming
Chelsea target £150m deal for Stamford Bridge naming rights
New chief executive arrives with plan to raise funds and shake off club's 'brash' image
Friday, 6 November 2009

Chelsea's new chief executive, Ron Gourlay, has admitted the club are ready to sell off the naming rights to Stamford Bridge and hope to raise up to £150m.

Gourlay has only been in the job since Monday, after his predecessor, Peter Kenyon, stood down, but he is already in danger of causing uproar among the club's supporters by inviting companies to bid for the chance to rename their stadium. Chelsea hope to tie a sponsor to a 10- to 15-year deal, worth in the region of £10m a year.

The potential rebranding of Stamford Bridge recognises Chelsea cannot rely on the deep pockets of their billionaire owner, Roman Abramovich. Last year the club recorded a loss of £66m and Gourlay admitted yesterday the prospects of breaking even in the near future are slim.

Related articles
Mark Fleming: Gourlay gambles with fans feelings
Search the news archive for more stories
Samsung, Chelsea's shirt sponsors in a £13m-a-year deal that runs until 2013, are one possible stadium partner. Another option is Etihad Airways, also Manchester City's shirt sponsors. The company currently has a three-year deal with Chelsea as the club's airline partner which runs out in May.

The ground's location on the flight path to Heathrow Airport could be a selling point if Chelsea are happy to put advertising on the roofs of their stands. Sponsors, however, may be wary of attaching their name to the ground, as it could prove immensely unpopular with fans. Newcastle supporters are to demonstrate before tomorrow's match with Peterborough in protest at owner Mike Ashley's plans to rename St James' Park.

Gourlay, 46, insisted any rebranding deal would be conditional on the 132-year-old ground retaining the name Stamford Bridge. He claimed the initiative was part of a "realistic" approach because the club have ruled out both moving to a new ground and raising the capacity above its current level of 42,055.

"We understand this is a sensitive issue for our fans and that is why we would keep Stamford Bridge in any deal," Gourlay said. "We cannot sell any more tickets as we sell out virtually every match. We need to move the business forward to support the football side This is a potentially realistic way of doing that. Retaining the heritage of the stadium is paramount but we think that is achievable."

The first ground in the UK to be named after its sponsor was the McCain Stadium in Scarborough, which was dubbed by fans the "Theatre of Chips" until it closed in 2007. In 2004 Emirates Airlines paid Arsenal £100m in a combined deal over stadium rights and shirt sponsorship that runs until 2021.

The rebranding idea is part of Gourlay's drive to increase income, as he admitted the club would not be breaking even in the near future. He said: "Is it going to happen this year? No. It won't happen soon. It's still the goal to get there. Certain things have happened along the way. I'm not going to make any claim on that front because, realistically, it ain't going to happen this year but we're not that far away."

Chelsea's new chief executive, who worked under his predecessor Kenyon at Chelsea, Manchester United and Umbro, wants to end the club's image of being brash and arrogant. He promised to be less abrasive than Kenyon, whose co**y predictions and outlandish statements made him a hate figure for fans of every club, including Chelsea.

"Everybody has a different style," Gourlay said in his first interview since taking over. "People always say to me, 'You worked with Peter Kenyon for a long time,' but we are two completely different personalities and I do things different.

"Hopefully, if there was brashness there, then maybe you won't see as much brashness going forward. You'll still see as much energy; you'll probably see more will to win with realistic goals. We've learnt a lot in the last five years."

One thing Chelsea have failed to do in the last five years is to win the Champions League, although they came very close in 2008, losing to Manchester United on penalties. Despite stating a desire not to appear brash, Gourlay believes Chelsea can win the trophy twice in the next five seasons, to make the club meet its target of two before 2015.

"In the 10-year plan, there were two Champions Leagues in there and we've been very unlucky," Gourlay said. "Over the next five years we've still got to shoot for the stars. I'd still like to think we can win the Champions League twice in the next five years. That might sound aggressive but I do think we can still do it."

Gourlay, who is a Dundee fan and grew up in the Scottish market town of Coupar Angus, admitted there was little chance of Chelsea reducing their £160m wage bill but promised it would only increase if there was a proportionate rise in income.

He also said he did not see Manchester City as a potential threat to Chelsea in the hunt for more business worldwide, accusing them of being "Manchester-centric".

"With the players they have, they're certainly going to try and push their way into the top five," Gourlay said. "Commercially, it's not that easy. They're very much a Manchester- centric club. To break into the 'big world' and start developing your business in Asia and in the US, you need to really start winning some trophies, and not just one Premier League."

Gourlay said Abramovich was delighted with Chelsea's progress this season under new coach Carlo Ancelotti, with the club leading the Premier League by two points.

"He wants to win games by playing exciting football," Gourlay said. "That's the model you're seeing today. We've changed the way we play. Carlo will be given time. His background is slightly different to where we've been in the past. You've got to look at how we've started this season and we do lead very well from the front."

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/chelsea-target-163150m-deal-for-stamford-bridge-naming-rights-1815585.html

Cardiff's Five Year Season Ticket Offer: Freeze on Prices

2009-11-04T09:22:00.000Z

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Cardiff Official Site - 5 YEAR FREEZE ON TICKET PRICES
Fri 30 Oct 2009

Cardiff City fans are being offered the chance to freeze their season ticket prices for an incredible FIVE YEARS.

Chairman Peter Ridsdale announced the inflation-busting scheme on Thursday, adding that prices will stay frozen even if the Bluebirds soar into the Premier League.

The first 10,000 supporters to buy a 2010-11 Ambassador season ticket before December 31, 2009 will have their prices guaranteed for five years until the end of the 2014-2015 season.

Peter said: "Our fans have got behind us again and again. Now it's time to give them something back with a ground-breaking offer. You'd have to go a very long way to find a similar offer at another club.

"They'll save straight away because a VAT increase is due to come into force on January 1 next year. There'll be no need to worry about inflation, and if we get into the Premier League, there will be no increase."

The tickets will be available from Friday, October 30, and this is how the scheme will work:

*The first 10,000 fans who buy a 2010-11 season ticket before December 31, 2009 will become Platinum Ambassadors and will be guaranteed no price increases for five years.

*Prices start from as little as £14 per game for an adult and just over £2 per game for under 16s. Yes! £2 a game.

*We will still be offering our highly successful under-9s go free policy in the Braces Bread Family Stand.

*The offer is open to the first 10,000 fans buying their season tickets, or up until December 31, 2009, whichever is the earlier.

*You still buy tickets season by season and you do NOT have to guarantee to buy for all five years

*You can still buy tickets after 31/12/09 but you don't get the five-year deal

*If we change owner the offer still stands.

*Juniors who reach adult status during the five-year term will become liable for the full adult price in the season AFTER they reach the age of 16. Adults who reach the age of 60 during the five-year term will pay the concession price for the season AFTER their 60th birthday.

HOW TO BUY

Here's how to buy your Platinum Ambassador season ticket:

Phone 0845 345 1400

Online at cardiffcityfc.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk

Or in person at Cardiff City Stadium ticket office.

FINANCE OPTION

For fans who prefer an instalment option, we have teamed up with Zebra Finance to offer a 10-month equal instalment plan (APR 19.9% - terms and conditions available on request)

APR 19.9% TYPICAL EXAMPLE: If a season ticket purchased at £399.00 were repaid in 10 monthly equal instalments of £43.32 and paid in full 10 months after the advance was debited to the account, the interest payable would be £34.20, with a total repayable amount of £433.20 (19.9% variable).

cardiffcityfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10335~1841054,00.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10335~1841054,00.html

Accrington Saved....Southend Still in Trouble

2009-11-03T19:55:00.000Z

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Accrington Stanley Official Site - HMR&C
- ASFC is delighted to announce that the full obligation to HMRC has been paid. Accrington Stanley Football Club announces a positive change in governance and management at the club, and the successful payment of its obligations to HMRC of £308,000.

ASFC is also pleased to announce a new board of directors comprising of Ilyas Khan as Non-Executive Chairman, Peter Marsden as President, and David O Neill as Managing Director and Head of Operations. Both Rob Heys (Chief Executive Officer) and John Coleman (Team Manager) will continue to report to David O’Neill.

Commenting on the changes, David O’Neill said “I am very pleased that the new board has come together, and that the future of Accrington Stanley Football Club is assured. The past few months have been challenging, but the positive changes effected on the field, and in the day to day management of the club can now be supported by a stronger financial backing and a board with the requisite experience and strength to move forward. I would like to thank the club’s many well wishers, and also HMRC and the PFA and the Football League for their support during these critical times. Accrington Stanley deserves to be a full part of the football world in Great Britain, and that is now assured”

Ilyas Khan and Peter Marsden issued a joint statement. They said “We believe that the town, the community and the supporters should now link arms with the team and the management to forge a stronger and vibrant partnership that will be a credit to this wonderful wonderful Football Club. Whilst there have been clear differences of opinion between David and ourselves, these are not only resolved, but put behind us. The three new directors will concentrate on their areas of expertise, and jointly, bring their collective endeavours to actions that are exclusively in the best interests of the club. This includes David O’Neill who will continue in working as he has done for the past year or so in so many areas that often remain un-noticed.”

ASFC is also delighted to invite all directors who have stepped down, to become Vice Presidents. Their contribution to the club is gratefully acknowledged.

Accrington Stanley Football Club looks forward to inviting all supporters and family members to the club this Saturday where John Coleman and his team will continue to build on their wonderful efforts this season” - Accrington Stanley

Southend Official Site - BOARD STATEMENT
Posted on: Tue 03 Nov 2009
- The board of Southend United Football Club has released the following statement this evening:
On Monday morning the Board received an offer through a local solicitor on behalf of a number of unnamed investors.
The Board is always prepared to consider proposals that are in the best interests of the Club.
After an exchange of correspondence it became clear that such a transaction could not be structured in the time available. In any event our information is that the proposed structure would still result in a 10 point deduction. The Board's advice to its major shareholder was that the resources of the Club continue to be focused 100 per cent on the other alternatives already being pursued. Southend

Hull Finances

2009-11-03T08:42:00.000Z

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BBC - League to investigate Turner deal

The Premier League is to investigate the sale of Hull defender Michael Turner to Sunderland in August.
Two of Turner's former clubs Brentford and Charlton have allegedly lost big amounts in sell-on fees.
BBC Sport understands bot
h clubs have lodged letters with the Football League while the Premier League has asked Hull and Sunderland for their comments.
At the time of the transfer the fee was undisclosed but Hull had previously reportedly valued Turner at £12m.
Turner was one of only two players to play every minute of all his side's Premier League games last season.
He joined Hull from Brentford for £350,000 in the summer of 2006, having signed for the Bees permanently from Charlton following a loan spell in December 2004.
BBC

Guardian/Jeremy Cross
- Adam Pearson aims for Hull clear-out to help tackle debts• Adam Pearson returns to Hull and seeks £18m in savings• 'We need to get back in shape'
Monday 2 November 2009

Hull City's new executive chairman, Adam Pearson, will conduct a major cull in the new year in an attempt to ease the financial problems at the troubled Premier League club.

Pearson took up his position in an official capacity on Monday after succeeding Paul Duffen, who resigned as the chairman and chief executive last week when it emerged Hull had debts of £27m. Pearson needs to find around £18m before the end of the season to make sure Hull remain solvent and his first task will be to reduce a wage bill of £40m – with the manager Phil Brown's future also still up in the air.

Although Brown has won a stay of execution, he may not be around to see the overhaul of the squad that Pearson intends to implement. Players expected to leave include George Boateng, Bernard Mendy, Richard Garcia, Peter Halmosi, Caleb Folan, Daniel Cousin, Tony Warner and Ibrahima Sonko.

Pearson, who oversaw an annual wage bill of only £3.5m before he left Hull, then in the Championship, in 2007 having appointed Brown the previous year, has vowed to get the club back on track and is confident of solving the problems he has inherited. He has launched an internal investigation into every transfer the club have completed during the past two years amid reports that £5.5m has been spent on agents' fees, including £500,000 in the purchase of Jimmy Bullard from Fulham.
Pearson said: "We need to get back in shape to make sure the long-term future of the club is secure. It's nothing that's not retrievable but we need to reduce the size of the playing squad, which in the Premier League is the key point. We're certainly not in a situation where we need to sell players we want to keep. We just want to make sure that the club is being run efficiently and prudently. The position of the club is manageable going forward but, if it had been left much longer, there was a danger of it becoming more serious. At this stage of the season, it's achievable that we can turn this around."

Pearson insists Brown will remain as manager until at least Stoke's visit on Sunday but refused to offer any long-term security. "Phil will be manager on Sunday but there's no point me saying he's got a job for life, that's not the case," Pearson said. "How secure is the manager? That's a tricky one, I think if we don't get results then that security goes down. Phil knows that, it's the business we're in. It's been a difficult year and we need to achieve results quickly. We're all in this together but we'll have to see what happens over the next couple of weeks."

Pearson has opened talks with potential backers and is hopeful of securing investment before Christmas. He added: "It's part of my remit to get extra money into the club. Every Premier League club is in a position where it is looking for external investment. It's a big responsibility financially for myself and Russell [Bartlett, the club's owner] to manage alone and we are looking to ease that burden and provide a secure foundation for the club. I'll be running the club from top to bottom, get it back on track and work strictly within the financial budgets that have been set." Guardian

Mail - EXCLUSIVE: Cash-crisis Premier league strugglers Hull blew £5.5m on agents By Matt Lawton
03rd November 2009

Hull City are believed to have spent a staggering £5.5million in agents’ fees in the two years Paul Duffen was the club’s chairman and chief executive.
New executive chairman Adam Pearson launched an investigation into Hull’s transfer dealings - such as Jimmy Bullard’s capture from Fulham - on Monday when he officially took over from Duffen, who left the KC Stadium last week after the full scale of the club’s financial crisis was revealed.

The majority of the bigger deals were done through leading London-based agency The Stellar Group, who received a fee of around £500,000 when Hull paid a club record fee of £5million to Fulham for Bullard in January.

Pearson, sources say, cannot fathom why such a high fee needed to be paid when the terms on offer - a £10m, five-year deal - meant luring Bullard to Humberside was never going to be difficult.

The figure of £5.5m would amount to approximately 20 per cent of the total transfer fees paid in the period Duffen was in charge. This is an alarming amount, especially for a club now in such deep financial trouble.
The internal investigation being led by Pearson will try to establish why, under Duffen, so many of the deals, in particular the bigger ones, involved one agency.
When Pearson, who saved Hull from administration in 2001, handed over the reins to Duffen the club had £1m in the bank and a relatively modest wage bill of £3.5m a year.
Little more than two years later Hull are said to have debts of £27m and an astonishing wage bill of £40m a year, among the highest in the Premier League.
Duffen has admitted his tenure at the KC Stadium ended because of his failings in the transfer market.
New chairman: Adam Pearson
‘I come from an industrial background where if things aren’t going very well the buck stops with the guy at the top,’ he said last week.
‘Whatever the financial constraints, we have been active in the transfer market.
‘We have been running the club in a certain way, which is the way I believed it would be successful. While Phil Brown is ultimately the man on the pitch, I believe it is my responsibility to oversee the transfer market.’
Pearson promised yesterday that Brown will be in charge for Hull’s home game against Stoke on Sunday, adding: ‘Phil is the manager of Hull City and he still will be next Sunday.
'It’s a results business but he retains my full support. I’ll be there to provide as much support as is possible for the manager.
‘I’ll bring a fresh pair of eyes to it and hopefully, in conjunction with the manager, we can turn things around on the pitch.’ Daily Mail

Managerial Changes in 2009/10

2009-11-02T09:29:00.000Z

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2009/2010 Managerial Changes (As of November 1, 2009)

From Wikpedia
Name Club Date of departure Replacement Date of appointment

Bryan Gunn Norwich City 14 August 2009[3] Paul Lambert 18 August 2009[4]
Paul Lambert Colchester United 18 August 2009[4] Aidy Boothroyd 2 September 2009[5]
Simon Davey Barnsley 29 August 2009[6] Mark Robins 9 September 2009[7]
Peter Jackson Lincoln City 2 September 2009[8] Chris Sutton 28 September 2009[9]
Stuart Gray Northampton Town 8 September 2009[10] Ian Sampson1 5 October 2009[11]
Mark Robins Rotherham United 9 September 2009[7] Ronnie Moore 24 September 2009[12]
Colin Todd Darlington 26 September 2009[13] Steve Staunton 5 October 2009[14]
Gudjon Thordarson Crewe Alexandra 2 October 2009[15]
John Barnes Tranmere Rovers 9 October 2009[16]
Peter Taylor Wycombe Wanderers 9 October 2009[17] Gary Waddock 13 October 2009[18]
Ian McParland Notts County 12 October 2009[19] Hans Backe 27 October 2009[20]
Gary Waddock Aldershot Town 13 October 2009[18]
Mike Newell Grimsby Town 18 October 2009[21]
Gareth Southgate Middlesbrough 21 October 2009[22] Gordon Strachan 26 October 2009[23]
Russell Slade Brighton & Hove Albion 1 November 2009[24]

Football Observer Sunday: Some Views on Club Ownership

2009-11-01T14:00:00.000Z

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The Sunday Observer/Paul Wilson

Lost tribe of supporters could cost 2018 bid dear
The crowd trouble at Barnsley and West Ham shows that for all the talk of inclusivity, some fans feel they have been priced out of the game

Typical, isn't it? Just when you are bidding to bring the 2018 World Cup to your green and pleasant shores, outbreaks of 70s‑style hooliganism keep getting in the way, cropping up noxiously to remind the world that football in England is nowhere near as safe and sanitised as the image the Premier League portrays.

It was tempting to dismiss the West Ham-Millwall ugliness in August as a one-off, an unfortunate blot on an otherwise presentable copybook caused by over-lagered louts with a history of hating each other. What happened at Barnsley the other night was less easy to overlook, particularly as the trashing of Oakwell's north stand concourse and intimidation of staff and police were caused by Manchester United supporters. That is to say, followers of the most prominent club in the country, the one with the biggest ground and facilities that are bound to form part of any English World Cup.

If United supporters cannot behave themselves then English football is in trouble, never mind the 2018 bid. Yet before rushing to conclusions, such as the fashionable one that the recent wave of film and book nostalgia for the hooligan era is actually breathing new life into the old ultra-violence, let's try to keep a sense of perspective. What do United fans have against Barnsley, for a start? Why didn't they vandalise Anfield on Sunday when they had the chance? How come Old Trafford has a reputation for being a quiet place to watch a game – "It's just like being in church" – and why are United fans not wreaking havoc on their Premier League travels?

A clue may lie in the competition. West Ham and Barnsley were staging Carling Cup games, not regular league matches. The suspicion is that different sets of supporters become involved when tickets are both cheaper and more easily available than for regular fixtures. In all probability West Ham v Millwall on a late summer evening was always a recipe for a ruck and, while some have called for future cup pairings to be redrawn or played behind closed doors, it is likely a greater awareness and massively increased police presence will serve just as well. Barnsley, too, will think twice before giving a whole end to visiting fans in future, especially if the tickets are going to be snapped up by fans disenfranchised by the Old Trafford pricing policy from watching their team on a regular basis.

While it cannot be said with total certainty that was the situation at Oakwell, it seems quite a likely scenario. The away fans at Barnsley sang with a gusto not normally heard at Old Trafford and went through their whole repertoire, not just including the Eric Cantona songs but even the one about Diego Forlán making the Scousers cry, which was hardly relevant or pertinent. It was as if they had not had a chance to sing for a while. That does not entitle them to vent their additional frustration on the burger bar, but before Old Trafford seats were snapped up by corporate clients and Japanese tourists some of them belonged to people who tended to show their allegiance to United by working over the opposition.

This sort of aggression has not disappeared, it has simply been moved along by modern stadiums. Moved outside, mostly. A Manchester City fan recently explained how pointless it was to be kept inside Old Trafford for up to half an hour after the end of a game. "The police do it for our safety, so the United fans can get off home and there is no danger from the two sets of supporters mixing," he said. "What they don't seem to understand is that United fans who have watched the game are not the problem. The people waiting for us outside, lurking in the shadows with bottles and stones, didn't go to the match in the first place."

As Lord Triesman is planning "a World Cup that embraces and celebrates our diverse communities and considers their various needs", perhaps he should co-opt a representative of the lost tribe of working-class football supporters and juvenile delinquents to his "inclusivity advisory group". You think I am joking? The 2018 bid has just set up such a body to make sure absolutely no constituency is overlooked in England's efforts to host a World Cup, and it includes experts on racial equality, disabled supporters, women's football, social legacy and gay awareness. Sadly, it does not appear to have anyone speaking up for people who can no longer afford to watch football. If you find you can get to see your favourite team only once or twice a year in Carling Cup matches, you might have to smash up a few more Championship grounds before you get noticed.

There's something I don't understand about the 2018 bid. Something big. The word bid appears to have changed its meaning to grovel. England is famous for football. The Premier League is supposedly the best in the world. You may sneer, but it is certainly in the top three and our stadiums and infrastructure are not lacking. And it's England's turn. By 2018 England will not have had a World Cup for more than half a century. So why do we have to bend over backwards, spending untold millions on box‑ticking exercises and pointlessly inviting English football journalists to watch U2 live at Wembley? (It's not that U2 are pointless, although opinion is divided on the subject, it's that English journalists have no sway with Fifa and are predisposed toward the bid anyway.)

Instead of pandering to bid vulture Jack Warner and boring everyone to death about inclusivity, we ought simply to ask Sepp Blatter what good reasons exist for not giving England the next European tournament. We deserve a World Cup in this country because the world seems to like the way we do football. If inclusivity counts for more than that, include me out.

BLACK AND WHITE AND READY TO SELL OUT?

"Why don't they go the whole hog and change the name of the club itself?" saintly and wholly blameless former Newcastle United chairman Freddy Shepherd has just asked, apropos of the new lot's plan to sell the naming rights to St James' Park.

Be careful what you wish for, Fred. If advertisers are willing to spend millions on shirt sponsorship, partnership deals and stadium titles, just think how much money they would give to have the actual team named in their honour. Mike Ashley is probably thinking it already.

The only snag, if teams are to sell their souls as well as their shirts and stadiums, is that the highest bidder may not always be the most desirable one. The Toon Army, for instance, possibly quite fancy a subtle re-branding, say dropping the United in favour of the suffix Brown Ale, but how might an unsubtle one go down? Think of what the Magpies are really most famous for. Stand by for Kleenex United.
Guardian

The Herald Sunday/Ian Bell - Failed capitalists shouldn’t be entrusted to run football clubs
1 Nov 2009

It is a brave politician who lectures a bank on its moral responsibilities these days.

People tend to laugh. Credit, then, to Jim Murphy for reminding Lloyds Banking Group last week that there is more to a football club than a pound of fiscal flesh.

To be fair, the Scottish Secretary was not alone. The plight of Glasgow Rangers FC roused much of the political class. In addition to any monies due, they said, there is that intangible thing,  community, or what academics term “social and emotional capital”.

Rangers fans were listening hard, I have no doubt, and were probably alert to a couple of ironies. Lloyds might claim rights over their club. But the Ibrox supporters – those who have not lost their jobs thanks to the banks – have a stake of their own. As taxpayers, they share 43% of lovely Lloyds.

A funny thing, ownership, nevertheless. Fans feel it, but can rarely put a negotiable price on it. They own the club in any sense that matters, but not in any sense that means much in a crisis. Can that law ever be rewritten? At Ibrox, as you will read elsewhere, we may be about to find out.

Fans own the club in any sense that matters, but not in any sense that means much in a crisis Ian Bell
First, though, ask a dumb question: what is a club, anyhow? Why do we still attach that hospitable word to sporting franchises tossed about among groups of rich men like poker chips?

Join a fishing club, say, and you have rights. You get to vote for office-bearers. You get a say over club policy. You are a member, not a minnow in the revenue stream. In football, most of the time, these notions are laughable.

Yet in some cities things are different. At Barcelona, Real Madrid and Athletic Bilbao, famously, members rule. The same is true elsewhere: Hamburg and Schalke do as well as any while  remaining in the fans’ ownership. And this is not because they have  discovered something new, but because they have stuck with an old idea: a club is an association of like-minded people, a community.

The modern corporate monsters arose when early clubs embraced limited liability laws. The idea, as every history of football explains, was to raise cash and protect office-bearers should financial catastrophe strike. The result, though, was shareholders. First the small businessmen replaced the working men, then the big businessmen swallowed the small. Now sheikhs and oligarchs swallow all.

But not Barcelona, or Hamburg. It stands to reason, or at least to what passes for reason among economists, that football isn’t really about money. No modern football club, least of all a Scottish club, makes a profit in the recognised sense. That shouldn’t be the point, in any case. So why should ownership be confined to a few?

Allowing the Rangers support to take possession of 49% of the club –  reviving the club as a club – would reaffirm that football belongs to those who care most. That, in part, is what community means. And in the wider world, where the game remains a mark of identity and belonging, despite all its parasites, this matters.

Try one line of thought, tentatively. Begin with the fact that “the Gers” are not beloved among bystanders. Might a democratised club begin to change the atmosphere? Might the rest of us ease up on those jokes involving cartoon castles? And might the old diseases respond to the will of massed shareholders who have risked their own cash?

I know: a bit romantic, isn’t it? How many Barca fans have a real say? Who wants to be Clyde, or even Notts County? How do you raise investment once the fans’ cash has gone and a bank – a nice bank, call it Lloyds – tires of funding “amateurs”? Isn’t it the case, in fact, that so-called democratic ownership only becomes popular when a club is in trouble?

True enough, in each particular. The fact remains that the familiar model of ownership – call it the baronial model – is scarcely reeking of prudence. In fact, it’s a disaster. Leeds? Portsmouth? Gretna? Hearts? The list of British clubs that have flirted with disaster in the last decade is longer than I can calculate. Some players and their agents prosper, for now, but no one else.

We are supposed to accept that the crisis of Scottish football is due to a loss of TV revenue. That isn’t even half the story. We are then supposed to believe that “Europe”, elite football, offers  salvation. How many can you cram into the elite bus? There isn’t much room.

Study one of the messageboards for fans of the mighty Man U. Watch them sweat over the Glazers and debt. The calculation is simple: one bad Champions League and the game is up. Liverpool fans, already sensing the worst, have a democratising thing called ShareLiverpoolFC for much the same reason.

You cannot call this the People’s Game and leave it in the hands of failed capitalists. You cannot talk about “social responsibility” and deny the demands of community. Clubs, real clubs, were not formed because the scufflers from the yards or the pits were in it for the money. Smart men, those. The Herald

Herald Sun - Fan-ownership: Time to put up or shut-up
Michael Grant Published on 1 Nov 2009

GIVEN that no queue of oligarchs has assembled at the main entrance to Ibrox, the notion of Rangers becoming a members-owned club, transparent and answerable to thousands of rank-and-file supporters, has to be taken seriously.

There was a time when Rangers was one of the most insular and covert clubs of all, dictating policies about the non-selection of Catholics which were too controversial to be openly acknowledged or confirmed. Those were the epitome of decisions taken in smoke-filled back rooms. Mercifully those days are long gone, but this – the idea of throwing Rangers open to members and a democratic electorate – really would amount to daylight flooding in on the running of a Scottish institution.

Who would have thought that Rangers, the most conservative of Scottish clubs, might one day fall into what amounts to a socialist model of collective ownership? We are a long way from it coming to pass, and the smart money should be on South Africa-based ex-pat Dave King eventually completing a conventional takeover. But as revealed elsewhere in these pages today, the idea of raising money from thousands of fee-paying members is being discussed by some of those businessmen interested in taking Rangers away from the ownership of Sir David Murray and the boardroom influence of Lloyds Banking Group.

Imagine it: thousands of members trooping along to Ibrox every so often to elect a board and a president, to vote on who should represent the fans on that board, even to decide what the annual transfer budget should be. There can’t be any doubt that this would make Rangers look imaginative, modern and progressive, not to mention reflective of the moods and wishes of their supporters. It would be fine public relations for a club far too often dragged down by the vocal minority still consumed by bigotry.

Supporters aren’t daft. They would have to be reassured, reassured and reassured of the credentials and intentions of the men who seek to use their money to beef up a buy-out Michael Grant
It is worth stressing that the businessmen who are currently considering a membership scheme aren’t doing so for wholly idealistic reasons. They are contemplating raising money from members because they don’t have enough to see through a revolutionary takeover on their own. There’s no point Rangers falling into the hands of someone who can afford only the asking price and is then penniless just when everyone is expecting signings, new contracts and investment.

So that’s when the plea might go out for fans to become fee-paying “members”. Supporters would be asked to pay, say, £200 a year for membership status and voting rights, etc. Perhaps this sum would be on top of their season-ticket prices, or perhaps deals and schemes could be introduced to lessen the overall price. It won’t necessarily be an easy sell to supporters. Many might be unable or unwilling to fork out more dough. Many will be suspicious of the motivations of the businessmen – any businessmen – who essentially want them to prop up their own takeover.

Supporters aren’t daft. They would have to be reassured, reassured and reassured again of the credentials and intentions of the men who seek to use their money to beef up a buy-out. The reason hardly anyone bought into a share issue in 2004 when Rangers were up to their back teeth in debt (nearly £74m compared to the current £30m) was a widespread wariness of, and exasperation towards, Sir David Murray’s stewardship of the club. Anyone who goes cap in hand to supporters now will have to be damned sure that the public relations battle has been won and he is seen as “a good thing for Rangers”.

David Edgar of the Rangers Supporters Trust hasn’t canvassed a large section of the fanbase, but he is convinced that the faithful would rally the call and find money to fund a takeover, so long as they were sure Murray would not benefit and the club itself would. His instincts will have to be right if any membership scheme is to have a chance. If the response is half-hearted, Rangers will be stranded, probably debt-free, but in the hands of a consortium of well-meaning businessmen without the resources to take the club forward.

Problems are easy to detect. The model of collective ownership is perceived as being successful at Barcelona and Real Madrid, but how much of their vast transfer budgets come from broadcasting income and merchandising rather than the fees of their members (which, along with their season ticket prices, are comparatively low)? Is it realistic to expect supporters to cough up, say, £200 every year on top of their season ticket prices? What if the novelty wears off for many after their initial buy-in, and membership – and therefore income – dwindles? Can this complex management structure be implemented in order to defuse one of the great criticisms of collective ownership, namely that you have to consult 40,000 people before you can buy a new lightbulb?

Notwithstanding the understandable and legitimate desire of the likes of Edgar for supporters to have a voice on the board, the best scenario for the club surely remains a straightforward takeover by a single, extremely wealthy businessman with Rangers DNA. Only Dave King currently fits the bill and it remains to be seen whether he will get his hands on the club.

That’s why the member-ownership model is a genuine alternative.  Rangers fans aren’t the easiest to please and they let Murray and others know about it when they have a grievance. This would require them to put their money where there mouths are.  Without King or any other white knight, they may have no option except  reaching into their pockets and  becoming even more than the lifeblood of their club. The Herald

And Johnny Giles/Herald Ireland - Hull City chose to fly too close to the sun
Friday October 30 2009

IT'S a risky business, this Premier League. Run a finger down the divisions in England and it quickly becomes apparent that rock bottom for over-ambitious clubs is nearer the Conference now than it has ever been before.

At the moment, Hull City seem to be teetering on the brink. It is never good to see a club begin a slide which could be steep and fast. A year ago they were dining out on a place in the top four but from the moment Phil Brown delivered that very public and very foolish half-time harangue, the possibility of such a collapse became a probability.

The story of boom-or-bust clubs is an old one in football but these are perilous times indeed for the game we all cherish and Hull City is just another example of a club that rose too far, too fast and drunk on the success of it all, entered into commitments that their own accountants reckon they will not be able to meet if relegation happens.

STAKES

The reality is that the same script could be written for many, many clubs in all divisions, the League of Ireland, Serie A or anywhere you care to mention. Football ownership has always been about a big punt and nothing else.

But the stakes are higher than ever and the punishment for failure too severe for even big clubs to sustain. A big club with a big fan base such as Leeds United will always have the capacity to recover from major setbacks but the fact that they are having to do it from League One should be a salutary lesson for everyone. The fall is deeper than it was before and the real threat of extinction is now hovering over a wide swathe of clubs.

The Hull success story was the perfect fairytale for a town which understood high-quality sport through rugby league and took to the Premier League with a will when Phil Brown performed his miracle.

The money involved in the Premier League is truly enormous and whatever structures Hull had in place to cope were clearly inadequate. The pressure of living with a desperate brawl for survival takes the shine off life in the big time and cracks will inevitably appear. Just look at the list of clubs now in serious trouble because they tried to survive at the highest level and in Leeds’s case, in the elite Top Four. Newcastle, Norwich, Southampton, Ipswich, Leicester, Charlton, Coventry, Notts Forest – all clubs damaged in different ways by a shared hunger to play in the Premier League and now struggling to survive the consequences.

The major side-effect is that football is becoming ever more the plaything of rich individuals or business men looking for a quick way to make money. Wealthy men from all over the world are drawn to ownership in the Premier League and while that interest used to be confined to the very biggest clubs, the watermark has been moving down the table for some time now and it won't be long before domestic ownership of clubs in England will be the exception.

Nobody really knows what this will mean for the game over the long haul but even in the teeth of recession, there are still plenty of groups eyeing up a bargain in the UK, whether for entertainment or profit. Birmingham and Sunderland found new backers and there are daily headlines about Newcastle, Portsmouth and Liverpool among many others.

There's been speculation about share dealing at the Emirates and the Glazers keep their heads down and do business in their own inscrutable way while Alex Ferguson drives the brand forward. Every club appears to be up for sale and, in many cases, at a knock-down price if you are prepared to take on serious debt. There really is no such thing as a bargain in football ownership and anyone who thinks otherwise is not living in the real world. Very few clubs win often enough to generate a profit.

DELUSIONS

Some clubs manage to walk the thin line between coping and ruin by careful management of their finances. West Brom is a good example. In recent seasons, they've bounced up and down from the Championship to the Premier League but finances are regulated with relegation built in and wage payments never get so out of hand that a demotion would threaten the viability of the operation.

Premier League mid-table is the goal for a club like West Brom and that would be a serious achievement. Others have delusions of grandeur and I'm thinking specifically about Mike Ashley who thought he had found a way to indulge his own sporting fantasies and pocket a fortune along the way at St James’ Park. According to estimates, he has burned well over £100m and counting. Lemmings are driven to head for the nearest cliff by instinct but men like Ashley only recognise that the end is nigh when they look down and realise that they are running on thin air.

- John Giles - Herald (Ireland)

"Kick It Out" Panel on Racism and Anti-Semitism

2009-11-01T13:52:00.001Z

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Sky Sports

One Game, one panel
The Kick It Out panel answer your questions
Last updated: 26th October 2009

To mark its One Game One Community week, the Kick It Out campaign put together an expert panel to answer YOUR questions.

Premier League midfielder Geovanni, Kick It Out ambassador and former Chelsea, Celtic and Pisa star Paul Elliott, comedian and writer David Baddiel and leading football journalist Henry Winter, were all waiting for your queries.

They came in thick and fast on all manner of aspects of racism in football: from grassroots problems, to punishments to the lack of black manager's in our game today.

The panel did not hold back either, with Baddiel expressing some strong views on anti-Semitism, Winter revealing some shocking scenes on his visits to Second World War concentration camps and Elliott concerned at that lack of black managers in England.

As a relative newcomer to English football, Brazilian Geovanni did offer some hope by highlighting the profile of Kick It Out in our game.

But as you will see from the answers below, the panel all agree there is still plenty of work left to do...

The Kick It Out campaign is highly-visible in the professional leagues, do you think it is visible enough and active enough at grassroots level? And do you think it's more important to invest time in professional leagues or grassroots?Adam Sibley, Plymouth fan

GEOVANNI: I have been really impressed with the Kick It Out campaign since arriving in England, and it has clearly had an impact on the sport in this country. I know that at lower levels, it is harder to get the message across, but it's always important to make sure everyone is on the right track.

ELLIOTT: I definitely feel that Kick It Out has a very clear presence at grassroots level. The campaign awards grants to a number of grassroots clubs and community groups every year, and offers support to those individuals who have been victims of discrimination. It's hard to prioritise one area over another - and I don't see that we should necessarily have to.

There are many cultural reasons why racism still exists in football, but as long as the game attracts a minority of small-minded individuals bent on using football for their own racist agendas - we'll never fully eradicate it from football. We have made massive strides in the UK in recent years especially when comparing us to Spain for example. Racism is still prevalent in our society, in order to get rid of racism in sport I think we should start with confronting it in our society first? Only then can you lay a solid foundation for confronting it in sport, and especially football. What does the panel think? Andrew Harding, Leicester City fan

ELLIOTT: Whilst you make some very important points Andrew, we cannot afford to have a defeatist attitude towards the issues, and the progress that has been made should encourage us and give us hope. The UK certainly leads the way on the issue within Europe, but recent punishments dished out to European sides will make people sit up and take notice.

WINTER: Football provides a high-profile platform for showing that racism is unacceptable. I will never forget walking out of Mestalla, after Arsenal had played Valencia, and bumping into Patrick Vieira, who was furious with the racist abuse he had endured. Mestalla has a nasty pocket of racists in one corner. All the reporters wrote up Vieira's complaint and called on Uefa to act. Valencia got a tiny fine. Fortunately, Uefa, under Michel Platini, now take a stronger line. But the real battleground should be in schools. Only by educating people can racism be eradicated.

My own club Lincoln City became embroiled in a race row with Kettering Town last season, a case that went to court and ended in a mans acquittal. However Kettering felt that they deserved an apology as they became labelled as the 'race row' club. How can we deal with a club reputation being tarnished by one individual? Gary Hutchinson, Lincoln fan

WINTER: Ban the individual for life. From all grounds. However much embarrassment the individual has caused, a clubs reaction at least highlights its stance.

I've been watching lower league Football in this country for nearly 20 years and I've not experienced much in terms of racism. That's not to say it still doesn't go on but I think compared to clubs on the continent it's not really a major issue. I would like to ask do you think FIFA or Uefa should ban the clubs or countries that are found guilty of racist chanting? Or even dock them points? I can't see how handing out a fine like Croatia were given is a punishment - nor is playing a game behind closed doors. Also, a question for mainly Paul Elliott and Geovanni who has obviously played in various countries: How does the racism issue in this country compare with abroad? And do foreign players plying their trade in Britain see it as a big problem here? Many Thanks, Jon Green, Gillingham fan

WINTER: Points deduction are the only punishment clubs take seriously. Spain have a problem but what do you do about their national team? I was in Madrid when Shaun Wright-Phillips was racially abused during an international. The Spanish FA were fined a tiny amount and showed little contrition. For national teams, stadium closure is the only way. For clubs, points deduction.

ELLIOTT: The recent actions of UEFA are a start, and we hope that FIFA will look to follow suit in the future. As you say, the punishments meted out to the likes of Croatia are not a deterrent, and it's important that a precedent is set should such incidents continue to occur. Having played in three different countries during my career, I can say that, first of all, the differences in culture and attitude towards minorities in Italy differs hugely when compared to England and Scotland. I encountered issues in all three countries, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that the problem has improved over here. I'm sure it also has in Italy, but the problems Mario Balotelli currently faces suggest they still have some way to go.

GEOVANNI: England is far ahead of some of the other countries I have played in, and the main difference is how seriously they take the issue. Spain in particular has had problems with racism. I hope we can help set an example in England to help them take steps to kicking it out.

What do you feel is a fitting punishment for any club/country whose fans are found guilty of racial abuse? Jon Jerome

BADDIEL: Well, I think the first thing is that clubs, or individual country's associations, have to be very strongly encouraged to deal with the problem themselves, rather than imposing the punishment from outside. If the club fails to do so, they should be fined. But it seems to me it's easy enough for clubs, most of whom have a lot of CCTV around the grounds now, to isolate the worst offenders and ban them. And if they aren't doing that, why not? The issue of countries is a bit harder as I don't know if you can fine a country... but certainly I think FIFA should think about withdrawing places in major competitions to any country who's fans are repeatedly heard chanting racist abuse.

ELLIOTT: There's no one answer to this question I'm afraid, and each circumstance is different, but the main constant has to be that the punishments are significant and a legitimate deterrent to further incidents.

As a member of the Jewish community, I have been particularly affected by anti-Semitism in football. Sadly, chants which refer to the Holocaust and the Nazi gas chambers have become increasingly frequent particularly at games involving Tottenham Hotspur (owing to their large Jewish support). Isn't it time that our football stadiums gave stewards the capacity to identify and penalise those who target others for racial abuse? Shouldn't we have a zero tolerance approach which would ban any such offender from every football stadium in the UK (or even in Europe). We need more effective monitoring and harsher punishments. Mark Frazer

BADDIEL: Well, yes I believe this too. With my brother I have written a short film, called The Y-word, for Kick Racism Out of Football, which tries to address this subject. Anti-Semitism is the forgotten racism in football - partly because of the Tottenham thing, where Tottenham fans claim they are chanting the Y-word affectionately - but that fails to address the fact that opposing fans shout it back aggressively, that it often shades into straightforward anti-Semitism that's nothing to do with Tottenham. But most importantly, in a zero tolerance culture, race-hate words can't be used affectionately: consider if a club was chanting the N-word... it's time for it to stop.

HENRY: I have been to Birkenau-Auschwitz three times with England fans (during internationals v Poland in nearby Katowice) and the first time, three fans were drinking beer in the ovens, a truly shocking sight. Since then, there's been a definite improvement in behaviour during visits, which is encouraging, but there is clearly a problem in English football. It doesn't just affect Spurs. Roman Abramovich gets it. Again, there should be a life ban from all grounds for any one found guilty of such chanting.

I hate to bring the subject up, but now John Barnes has gone, there are a severe lack of black coaches in the game. Is this something that should be addressed or is it a question of time for the up-and-coming generation to drift through? Do the panel think this is a huge problem - and do they think black coaches, as has been said in the past, are discriminated against when it comes to getting jobs? Bob Smith

ELLIOTT: Recently, I've read articles suggesting that football follows the path of the NFL in the US, where the 'Rooney Rule' dictates that a minority candidate must be interviewed for every coaching role. There are a number of obstacles standing in the way of this idea being implemented over here, but I definitely feel that something needs to be done. Two permanent black managers from 92 clubs is unacceptable

WINTER: Black managers have to be there on ability alone. Anything else is tokenism. Paul Ince will rise up again as a manager because he has the hunger and ability. The glass ceiling will be broken through, particularly as some of the old-school chairman are leaving the game.

BADDIEL: I think, since there are a lot more black players now then when John Barnes was playing, we should see in the future a lot more black managers, which would be a good thing. I'm sure there is some discrimination - some of it unconscious - but I also think that we shouldn't forgot how quickly managers get sacked, anyway.

GEOVANNI: I know that when I retire I would hope that I would get offered opportunities based on my ability rather than the colour of my skin. It is strange that there are so few black coaches, especially when England has such a diverse culture. Perhaps in the next few years that situation will change, but if not, then a solution should be found. Skysports