Analysis of John W Henry’s controversial ownership takeover at Liverpool
As the Guardian headline Enter Americans Exit Americans suggests, it is difficult to tell what has changed at Liverpool and what remains the same. After a long and complex legal battle, John W Henry finally took ownership of the club from the outgoing Tom Hicks and George Gillett this month. The takeover seemed to dominate the news for days on end.
John Toshack’s reorganisation of Wales’ youth teams under Brian Flynn has paid dividends, as Paul Ashley-Jones explains
It’s typical that when Wales finally escape a qualifying group it leads to a play-off rather than the tournament itself. It’s also typical that, despite finishing top of our group, we draw a side as strong as England in the play-offs. Nonetheless, being so close to the 2009 European Under-21 Championship finals is a huge moment, for players and fans. Participation in such a tournament would help towards changing a losing mentality that Welsh players, at all levels, have had for a very long time.
Brighton escape from the bottom division as Barnet drop out of the league. Peter Evans reports
The long-term significance
Fresh from an £11.5 million takeover by Sam Hammam, Cardiff City spent £1.9m – an unparalleled amount for the fourth tier. However, this season, when each Division Three club were guaranteed a healthy £150,000 in TV revenue, was the beginning of the end for such heavy investment in wages and transfers. The following year ITV Digital went under, leaving many clubs facing the prospect of financial meltdown. Carlton and Granada, the channel’s owners, had paid £315m for the Nationwide League TV rights in June 2000, but, when the company was declared bankrupt in March 2002, Third Division clubs lost roughly £400,000 in earnings.
Simon Tyers watches entertainment presenters fawn over Mourinho, and the Masters at work
While I haven’t quite lost all faith in the ability of the wider broadcasting world to discuss modern football in a rational, unaffected way, the events of Wednesday September 20 on BBC1’s The One Show brought me close. It involved a discussion between football presenter and writer Adrian Chiles and football journalist Alyson Rudd about professional football manager José Mourinho interrupted by co‑presenter Christine Bleakley exclaiming “I know you two will talk about football, but…”
Cameron Carter on an attempt to get the UK watching MLS
There used to be a time when a chap’s name in the programme title meant he was central to the project. Ellery Queen, Dempsey & Makepeace, The Sooty Show – they all featured the eponymous protagonists plum in the middle of the fray. Nowadays we live in more complex times, as illustrated by Macca’s Monday Night (Setanta) and David Beckham’s Soccer USA (Five). The former was in fact presented by Angus Scott, with Steve “Macca” McManaman and Tim Sherwood invited along as pundits to mull over the weekend’s games. Now, if my name were Macca and someone told me I was going to be on a programme called Macca’s Monday Night, I’d turn up in my best jacket and trousers expecting to be introducing the thing from the master chair. While it did appear that Scott’s questions were mainly directed to McManaman and then by trickle-down effect on to Tim Sherwood to add a supplementary point, it didn’t seem that Monday Night was owned by Macca as the title suggests. At best you could say he co-owned Monday Night as a sleeping partner.