The Archive

Steve Menary reports on the increasing shortage of City investors in football's surviving plcs

Sheffield United’s board must be pretty sure of promotion to the Premiership having turned to the Stock Exchange to raise £10.7 million early last month. A large slice of the cash is earmarked for players’ wages, but the club will plough £2.7m into a redevelopment of the corner stand at Bramall Lane due for completion in May and £1m towards buying a £4m health club in Staines. Chief executive officer Jason Rockett said: “We’re trying to create a new model for a club and produce off-field revenue with the club at the centre. It’s got to be a more sustainable business.”

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Simon Melville reports on the free phenomenom that is live football on the internet

Want to watch live Premiership football but can’t afford Sky? No cable TV in your street? Local watering hole doesn’t show those Egyptian broadcasts of the Premiership you’ve heard pubs in the East End of London have?

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Chris Taylor is confused – he’s a Manchester United fan, or at least he was. Does he now support FC United as well as or instead of the Glazer-owned Old Trafford team?

It’s not easy being a Manchester United fan at the moment. Oh, stop laughing at the back. It really isn’t. I suppose the playing side of things isn’t too bad, you know, relative to everyone else who isn’t Chelsea. But off the pitch, where things are suddenly far more important, things are screwed up good and proper.

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The top two teams in the Deloitte Football Money League are Real Madrid and Manchester Utd. But as Roger Titford finds out, the income they rely on differs greatly

We live in an era when there are prizes for everything: player of the season, calendar of the year, the best pie, the most improved website and many more self-regarding baubles. Combine this with the obsession to put a value on anything in football – press red now for a cost-benefit analysis on that through ball – and we have (hopefully tongue in cheek but probably not) the Deloitte Football Money League (DFML).

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Is it offensive to taunt people with a word they use about themselves? Some believe neither Arsenal nor Spurs fans know what they’re saying, as Jon Spurling reports

In November 2005, Alan Sefton, the overseer of “Arsenal in the community”, announced that the club would be setting up five soccer schools across Israel. Arsenal are already involved in working with a number of primary schools in mixed Jewish/Muslim areas of London, and children are encouraged to co-present religious festivals before playing football together. Sefton later confirmed his and the club’s belief that “…football unites people of different classes, social groups, races and nationalities… We don’t want it to focus on divisions and tribalism.”

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