Search: ' Garry Cook'

This month’s 25-year retrospective takes on the thorny issue of ownership at three contrasting clubs. Mike Ticher begins with Chelsea, unrecognisable from 1986 but difficult to love for very different reasons

In about 1996 I interviewed a pleasant man in a suit from Deloitte & Touche about its work on the finances of football clubs. He patiently took me through one of their early annual surveys, explaining why the industry was unsustainable. If clubs could not rein in players’ wages, there would be a disastrous crash within years.

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Martin Warrillow warns West Ham fans of what to expect now that Birmingham City's former owners are in charge of their club

It was the jacket that did it. The spectacularly naff claret-coloured jacket David Sullivan was wearing when he swanned into Upton Park having, as he put it, “defied commercial and financial sense” by buying West Ham United despite their reported £110 million debts.

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It's taken a while, but football clubs are slowly getting an official presence on Facebook to match the fan-made pages. Mark Segal logs on to see who's ahead of the game and who's getting left behind

As Simon Cowell found out at the end of the year, you underestimate the power of Facebook at your peril. The campaign to make Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name the Christmas number one was a classic example of how social media, and Facebook in particular, is changing the way people connect with each other.

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The behaviour of footballers on the pitch hits the headlines

From rioting at Upton Park to Chelsea’s dubious youth recruitment tactics to Eduardo’s lack of balance, the first few weeks of 2009-10 have produced ample opportunity for moral outrage. Some gloomy observers have chosen to view this as an unprecedented and apocalyptic period for football. Meanwhile, a general sense of opprobrium has been building around a single club: Manchester City.

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Harry Pearson recalls when his club were at the centre of world star transfer sagas. City fans be warned. It all ended in tears

There have been moments during the last few weeks when I’ve had the unnerving feeling I’ve stepped through a tear in the time-space continuum on the way to the paper shop and ended up in 1997. A young, former Man Utd player, tipped by many to one day succeed Sir Alex Ferguson, in charge of the team; a Brazilian star who’s run off home without permission; simmering resentment among some elements of the foreign contingent and a scattergun transfer policy that leads to international superstars playing alongside provincial journeymen. Stir in a relegation battle, a blundering executive and a group of notoriously long-suffering fans and the whole thing has a weirdly familiar ring.

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