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Search: ' Sheikh Mansour'

Stories

Blackburn Rovers 2 Aston Villa 0

Simon Hart describes the scenes as Blackburn play their first match under the watchful eye of their new owners

There are three Robbie Savages grinning in front of me as I take my seat in the press box high in the Jack Walker Stand. The one-time Blackburn Rovers midfielder is appearing in a book-plugging interview on his former club’s in-house TV channel, playing on monitors suspended from the ceiling of the stand. The sight of Savage, very much a man of his time with blond highlights and perma-tan, is juxtaposed with the more traditional spectacle unfolding on the hill behind the Riverside Stand opposite. This Sunday lunchtime kick-off is still over half an hour away and supporters trail down the brown hillside before crossing a bridge over the River Darwen and filing into the ground. Today is very much about the old and the new.

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Surviving the flood

Big spending Premier League clubs could learn from the style and management of the newly promoted sides

The English Premier League is a festering mess of greed, sleaze and stupidity but, allowing for that, the 2010-11 season is shaping up quite well. It is at least less predictable than at any time in the century so far. It may be too much to hope for only three months in, but there is cause for thinking that, for only the second time in Premier League history, none of the three promoted clubs will go straight back down. For anyone other than local rivals of the clubs in question, this ought to be seen as a sign of progress.

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Buyer’s market

Sean Marihooks explains how large amounts of money has only thwarted the development of league football in the Gulf

Dubai is famous as a hideaway for Premier League footballers and for running up the odd multibillion dollar debt. The UAE’s football league has barely registered internationally, however, until this summer when the top club Al Ahli signed Fabio Cannavaro and then appointed David O’Leary as coach. But the fanfare off the pitch may not be
followed by anything special on it. 

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Fourth rate

As the press pick apart Liverpool's fall from grace, Tottenham and Manchester City's Champions League 'play-off' sparks a punfest in Fleet Street

Liverpool began the season hoping to win a 19th League championship. They ended it with 19 defeats. Rafa Benítez guaranteed supporters a top-four finish, but the club dropped to seventh place in the league, went out of the FA Cup in the third round and faced the ignominy of being knocked out of two European competitions. To put it mildly, the 20th anniversary of their last Championship-winning season has not been their most memorable. Putting it mildly, however, is not one of the charms of British newspapers. If the facts were difficult reading for Benítez, he will have wanted to avoid the back pages.

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Riverside revisited

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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