The Archive

Thaksin needs to learn that only stability will bring long-term success

With the news as we went to press that Sven-Göran Eriksson was set to be sacked after his new club’s best top-flight season since 1992, Thaksin Shinawatra appears to have confirmed his ambition of turning Manchester City into the English equivalent of Hearts. That story started quite well, too, back in 2005. The club’s new Lithuanian owner, Vladimir Romanov, loudly proclaimed his determination to challenge Rangers and Celtic, and the team led the SPL for just over three months. But even with the team topping the table, manager George Burley was manoeuvred out. Half a dozen less successful men, whose names even Hearts fans would struggle to keep track of, have followed.

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Birmingham chief executive Karren Brady has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons this month

Supporters have always made up songs about rival clubs but Birmingham City, owned by pornographers, give opposing fans more opportunities than most. Plenty of new material has been provided by the arrest on April 9 of the club’s chief executive, Karren Brady, and owner David Sullivan as part of a City of London police inquiry. Both were released on bail, as were the seven others (including Harry Redknapp and Milan Mandaric) arrested last November in an investigation that appears to centre on a few deals involving players represented by the agent Willie McKay.

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Amazingly, despite England's failure to qualify, UEFA have decided to press ahead with Euro 2008. Ian Plenderleith has a listen to the songs battling it out for European glory

There seem to be a lot of “official” Euro 2008 songs about. Either some songs are claiming to be official when they aren’t or, like the scope of the competition itself, the genre of official tournament song is expanding. Just as some have proposed fleshing the finals out to 24 teams, the continent’s pop stars are demanding there be at least three UEFA-sanctioned tunes. That’s one for each host nation, then another for the tournament overall. We think. Head to YouTube for all the latest attempts to convey the spirit of football into three minutes of mindless music.

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Ian Plenderleith checks out online suggestions on how to survive Euro 2008 – avoid ticket touts and don't talk to Tina Turner

If you’re looking for something special in your Euro 2008 coverage, there are precious few sites around that are going to go the extra distance, especially with no home nations to justify added expense for a one-off tournament. With projected site visits down, and revenue from ads for those fantastic England replica away kits correspondingly low, you’ll likely have to be happy with standard results, stats, match reports and fantasy leagues. All in all, dedicated Euro sections at your favoured newspaper’s site, or at the reliable but dull portals at places such as the BBC and Soccernet, will fulfil your basic needs. Not that those are a recommendation.

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Cameron Carter reviews the month's best and worst TV

There are many different levels of interview, ranging in difficulty from the longish ones carried out at Camp X-Ray to the up-tempo drivel exchanged between Fearne Cotton and cornered celebrities. From a programme billed on the BBC website as bringing us “fresh and incisive journalism that gets under the skin of sport”, we might reasonably expect something halfway between. Unfortunately, Inside Sport (BBC1) was invited into the home of Birmingham City’s multi-millionaire co-owner, David Sullivan, and immediately went Hello! magazine on our arse.

Tony Livesey, previously an employee of Sullivan at the Daily Sport and now really slumming it at The Daily Mail, may have left his house that morning as a fresh and incisive journalist, but by the time he reached Sullivan Mansion he was a cub scout being shown round the richest man in the village’s house. On the verandah, above an unobtrusive soundtrack of classical strings, Livesey incisively murmured that his host was a very private man. In the custom-made bowling-alley, he trenchantly heeded Sullivan’s highest ever bowling score (266 incidentally, with nine straight strikes). In the games room, he penetratingly remarked on Sullivan’s boxing prowess while the late middle-aged sex-shop magnate brawled with a flaccid punchbag.

Sullivan apparently underwent a much more difficult interview when police routinely questioned him about financial irregularities at his club. “You felt you’d been psychologically raped”, he told Livesey, the latter nodding sensitively in the hope he might be invited back sometime for a sleepover. The real horror of Sullivan’s situation became apparent when he showed us his cabaret lounge and named the most memorable singer to perform there: Rick Astley. Sullivan and his best mates of that evening eating braised haunch of venison while Astley shuffles about singing “Together Forever” is not an image that endears one to this life. Perhaps Livesey’s approach was the correct one, it is surely more humane to be gentle with people as frail as this.

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