"If you want some accessible but informative insight into football then I suggest you couldn't do better than the Political Economy of Football website, which is not only intelligible but comes with the added bonus of being written by Addicks fan Wyn Grant." Ben Hayes - Charlton Athletic programme
Balram Chainrai has brushed aside concerns expressed by the Football League about whether he is a suitable person to run a football club, but the future of Portsmouth FC is once again uncertain.
His Portpin group was thought to be favoured by the administrators to take Portsmouth out of administration. However, the reservations expressed by the football authorities put the Portsmouth Supporters’ Trust in pole position.
The following statement has been issued by Newcastle United Supporters Trust:
In between sorting out his other problems, former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been looking for foreign investment for AC Milan who need a shot in the arm to revive their fortunes. It looks as if his boat may have come in.
Truro City now seem to have been given more reprieves than the average prisoner on an American death row. The latest stay of execution is for one week.
To be fair to the Conference, who held an emergency board meeting to discuss the issue, it’s a case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. The Conference have been criticised for giving clubs too much rope, but also for doing not enough to help them.
It looks increasingly likely that Liverpool will stay at Anfield and not move to a new stadium to be built at Stanley Park. Liverpool ‘s principalowner John W Henry has always been sceptical about the Stanley Park solution, preferring to re-develop Anfield to provide extra capacity and corporate facilities. He has also questioned how far more stadium capacity is the key to re-building the club.
Some might argue that a degree in economics doesn’t help you to do anything with the ‘dismal science’ coming under some criticism since the global financial crisis. Arsene Wenger has a degree in economics which perhaps helps to explain his somewhat professorial manner. I remember going to Highbury some years ago and watching a pre-match talk by him on the big screen which seemed to have shot against the background of a fake library.
Flotation of football clubs in which fans are encouraged to take a stake have gone out of fashion. The recent offer of a stake in Manchester United was a debt reduction measure aimed at (supposedly) sophisticated institutional investors.
Patience is a virtue argues the Yorkshire Post as Leeds fans wait for the outcome of the long-running Leeds saga. Not surprisingly, they are inclined to blame Ken Bates who is not as popular a figure as he thinks he deserves to be and perhaps it is a case of ‘they all hate me, I don’t care’.
Tonights game between England and San Marino at Wembley is a sell out. This in spite of the fact that the microstate surrounded by Italy is the joint worst team in the world (they rank 207th alongside the Turks & Caicos islands). No doubt England fans will be hoping to see some goals, although it should be remembered that San Marino also have eleven men on the pitch and getting through a crowded goalmouth is not easy.
Truro City Football Club has been suspended from the Football Conference and is now likely to be liquidated. The football authorities bent over backwards to help the club, extending the final deadline by half an hour. But although the club was able to produce a £10,000 bond from Cornwall County Council to fund its next run of games, this was well short of the £50,000 the Conference required.