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Stories
Irving Scholar was just one of the strange heroes of The Men Who Changed Football. The BBC documentary gave only a partial account of the past two decades, says Nick Varley
I was one of the men who changed football. Well, actually, I was one of those in The Men Who Changed Football, BBC2’s three-part documentary on how the game was transformed from “national disgrace to big business”. Granted, it was a fleeting appearance, lurking behind Tony Banks and David Mellor, the Laurel and Hardy of west London, after they completed an ill-advised football-playing photocall before the launch of the Task Force. The press conference which followed the slapstick routine was, you won’t be surprised to hear, a lot less entertaining.
Thursday 1 After a week of indecision Martin O’Neill finally takes over at Celtic, saying: “You would be mad to think you could repeat what Jock Stein did, but I am mad.” Steve Walsh is to apply for the Leicester vacancy, with Tony Cottee as his assistant. Somehow you expect them to be turned down. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink joins Chelsea for, ulp, £15 million and declares: “I am going to give 100 per cent, but will that be enough?” Libya’s gold reserves may be under threat after it is announced that Terry Venables is the preferred choice to succeed Carlos Bilardo as national coach.
With the next Premier League deal in the offing, ITV’s Jim Rosenthal discusses changes in broadcasting since the arrival of Sky and casts doubt on Duncan Ferguson’s mystique
What has been the main impact of Sky since 1992 from the broadcasters’ point of view?
They’ve taken football coverage on to a new level and basically, for us, they have created a lot of work within the industry. Football saved Sky, but in return people in TV recognise what Sky have done for football. They have obviously created a vast amount of wealth for the game – wealth that football has spent as it always will, not necessarily wisely. If you give football club chairmen £1, they will always spend £1.10.
Man Utd fans vent their anger at the club's board for considering a potential takeover from Rupert Murdoch and BSkyB, writes Paul Richards
The Theatre of Dreams turned into a waking nightmare for the directors of Manchester United as they were left squirming in their seats at Old Trafford on November 17th after a two-hour grilling by hundreds of shareholders.