The Archive

With television rights having a growing effect on the Premier League, the broadcasting companies are battling it out for complete control

Setanta got a record audience figure for the Premier League match between Liverpool and Everton on Monday, January 19. This fact was reported in the following day’s press, although there was not a word about it in the Murdoch-owned papers. At one level this is understandable – commercial rivals can hardly be expected to acknowledge one another’s existence. But even though the match at Anfield had a direct bearing on the title race – Liverpool would have returned to the top if they’d won – there was scarcely a mention of it on Sky Sports News at any point on that Monday night.

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Fergie and Rafa entered into a war of words and unsurprisingly the Scot comes out on top

Given that the national press is chock full of inane pop psychology, it’s a surprise that none of the pseudo-scientists who get paid for stating the obvious has yet written a book about the “mind games” of football managers. Whenever one of Manchester United’s title rivals stumble, Sir Alex Ferguson is credited with crafty psychological manipulation of his managerial counterparts. For a few weeks in January, Rafa Benítez was decreed to have gone mad, firstly for holding a press conference in which he read out some prepared statements listing the ways in which the United manager escapes censure from the authorities – “the most vicious attack ever on Sir Alex”, said the Sun – then for making a series of supposedly unintelligible comments about Liverpool’s dip in form that saw them fall away from the top of the table.

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Setanta and ITV fail to impress during their, let's face it, poor coverage of the prestigious competition. Cameron Carter watches 

Setanta are enjoying their first crack at the FA Cup Sponsored By E.on and it looks like they have pulled out all the stops, bearing in mind they don’t have many stops available. To reflect on the events of the fourth round, Sports Saturday brought together a nice young chairman, two ex-pros and a “betting expert”. Now, I’m all for ­different angles on the game and a change from a couple of old players saying “Like you said…” and “Like Steve said…”, but a betting expert is probably not going to add much to the debate other than a flurry of predictable odds and the faint aroma of Golden Virginia. 

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Ryman League Division One North isn't normally awash with transfer scandal, however intrigue is rife after Ware FC lost manager, assistant, physio and the entire playing squad in less than a season. Si Hawkins reports

West Ham and Portsmouth fans may have spent the winter transfer window ­worrying about losing their finer players to ­better-off rivals, but at least those players left one by one, and for hefty fees. Far below the Premier League, in a leafy home counties commuter town, followers of the once upwardly-mobile Ware FC entered the new year bemoaning the loss of an entire squad, the manager, his assistant, and even the physio. Rarely can a promising club have unravelled so quickly.

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Plans to build a new stadium on the site of the Maze prison proved too controversial. Robbie Meredith explains why

 When the Labour MP and then Northern Ireland minister David Hanson announced plans for a new multi-purpose stadium on the former site of the Maze prison in early 2005, he couldn’t have envisaged that the project would make building Wembley look like putting together a Lego set by comparison.

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