Questions marks over the bid for Blackburn Rovers by Ahsan Ali Syed have been raised after his company Western Gulf Advisory was closed by the authorities in Bahrain for operating outside its remit.  The Blackburn takeover is being organised by another company and it is being insisted that the bid is not affected.  However, the Premier League is yet to receive any formal notification of a bid.

The match fixing scandal in cricket has spilled over into football with allegations made that Ryman league club Croydon Athletic has been used for money laundering purposes.   Originating from a merger of two clubs, and plagued by other financial scandals in its short history, it is reported that Mazhar Majeed has been arrested by Revenue and Customs.

A report from Deloitte confirms that transfer spending by Premiership clubs fell significantly in the transfer window that has just closed.   Total spending was down from £450m to £350m, a fall of 22 per cent.   It would have been even lower if it wasn't for Manchester City splashing the cash: they accounted for 36 per cent of all spending.

As we noted yesterday, it has been a subdued transfer window.  Final analysis figures but careful work by accountants Grant Thornton based on figures up to Friday show that transfers have been cut in half by value.  This basic picture is unlikely to change much in a flurry of last minute activity.

If one takes the net £120m splashed by Manchester City out of the picture, it's been a subdued transfer window.   This reflects a lack of cash in the Premiership and a scarcity of quality players available at affordable prices.

Today it's almost a M1/M6 Premiership.   Once you have left the five clubs in London behind, it's a short journey off the M6 to the four West Midlands clubs.   You then pass through Stoke and it's not too far off the motorway to the two Manchester clubs or those on Merseyside.   Bolton, Wigan, Blackpool and Blackburn are all easily accessible.   That leaves just two clubs outside London, the West and North Midlands and the North-West: Newcastle and Sunderland.   Forty per cent of the clubs are in the north-west.

UEFA has used its meeting to Monaco to launch its financial fair play rules and emphasise their importance for the future health of the European game.  They consider that before the rules 'anarchy' was prevalent in European football.

After Arsenal's largest shareholder, Stan Kroenke, took a controlling stake in the St. Louis Rams it looks increasingly like that the status quo in terms of ownership will continue at the Emirates.  Four large shareholders are likely to continue sitting on their positions, an outcome that would be acceptable to most Arsenal fans, avoiding off pitch distractions.

A poor bookmaker is a contradiction in terms and Paddy Power has reported a 54 per cent rise in half-year profits to £43m.  £70.5m of bets were placed on the World Cup and the bookmaker made a £15m profit from losing punters.   They did particularly well out of patriotic bets placed by England supporters.   Spain's faltering start also deterred punters from placing bets being placed on the eventual winners.

An investigation earlier this year found that of 68 shopping malls owned by the Glazer family's First Allied Corporation, four had gone bust and one more had defaulted on its mortgage.  An analysis of the most recent financial news about the malls has found that four more have since failed to pay their mortgages and became classified as 'delinquent', with two falling into default this month.