Ant, Dec and Lovejoy Cameron Carter

Charity is a wonderful thing, extremely versatile and nowadays used by the rich as a beautifully packaged experience gift to themselves. Last month’s Soccer Aid, raising funds for UNICEF, was a case in point. Where once upon a time charity meant an old man with skin the texture of pickled suede rattling an Oxfam tin at you, now it can be mani­cured primetime entertainment for all the family. A team of English celebrities and ex-players were raised to challenge their Rest of the World counterparts at Wembley and, through the week before the match, Ant and Dec loitered around the training ground of both squads to build the anticipation, chiefly through the art of synchronised sniggering. 

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With the media unhappy after another abject performance, Capello gave an honest assessment of what his team can do, but the press weren't so sure

After England had done the bare minimum in beating Andorra, the press were fearing the worst. Fabio Capello risked a joke following the 2‑0 grind in Barcelona: “I will be happy if Croatia play like Andorra. But I don’t think that is going to happen!” If anyone in his audience found that funny they kept it to themselves. The general mood wasn’t improved on the day before the match, with Capello suggesting that his players play better away from home: “At Wembley, the crowd whistle after the first mistake.” “It was not much of a vote of confidence in the England fans,” huffed the Independent, while Matt Law in the Daily Express was concerned that “it will also dismay the FA, who spent £757 million and seven years building Wembley”.

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Who stands to gain from the brouhaha at West Ham?

The summer sales at West Ham that triggered the departure of Alan Curbishley were explained in a splurge of back-page headlines in late September. Hammered! said the Daily Mail, who were a day ahead of the pack in reporting that the club had anticipated a huge fine for their illegal dealings with Kia Joorabchian of the MSI agency, suppliers of Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano. The tribunal that examined Sheffield United’s claim for damages for having been relegated while West Ham stayed up won’t decide on compensation for several months. But United’s claim for over £30 million, made up principally of the TV and merchandising income they lost after relegation, is likely to be met. Indeed, unless West Ham are relegated this season and Sheffield United come up, £30m seems like light punishment. Most of the coverage sympathised with the claimants, with Neil Warnock telling the Times that he’d still be at Bramall Lane if the club had stayed up. “It knocked us back no end. Relegation is on my CV, which it shouldn’t be.”

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Debt is a fact of life for football clubs, but how damaging will it become?

“We obviously can’t compete with the money Manchester City have so there’s no point trying. We’ve got to succeed some other way.” So said a Premier League chairman in late September. But this wasn’t a pragmatic view from someone at a club that would be happy with a mid-table finish. It was Arsenal’s Peter Hill-Wood, whose comments were reported on the day that his team went top after a win at Bolton. The Arsenal board are bucking the current trend by actively discouraging interest from outside investors, in their case Alisher Usmanov from Uzbekistan, who owns a 24 per cent stake in the club.

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