New owners and a new ground loom for Liverpool. Robert Fordham reports

“In a strange way, it was also oddly reassuring. The whole soap opera signalled that, even as European Champions, Liverpool Football Club could still act like an unsophisticated local diners’ club or a parochial village-hall committee. We were still more of a flawed community than a slick corporation.” This (along with the player staying) is the bright side author John Williams finds in the surreal saga that saw Steven Gerrard come so close to leaving Anfield six weeks after lifting the European Cup. But the club Williams has followed all his life are on the brink of the biggest overnight change in their history. Slick corporation here we come.

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The Icelanders have only been in charge at Upton Park for a few weeks, but it’s already getting frosty. Darron Kirkby examines the small print on a deal that promised rather more than it has delivered

When the directors of West Ham United accepted WH Holding’s offer to buy the club for £85 million on November 21, Hammers fans breathed a sigh of relief that the focus could return to the relegation battle. On paper, the deal sounded good. Not only was the Icelandic consortium taking on the club’s £23m debt, but it was pledging a £40m war chest for Alan Pardew to spend in the January transfer window.

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More and more fans are having to deal with club owners with odd accents. David Spark examines what attracts overseas billionaires and what the deals mean for supporters

The theme of the season in the Premiership is the gold rush towards foreign ownership of clubs. Unlike the scramble towards stock-market flotation a decade ago, this gold rush is strictly limited. Only serious global ­capitalists need apply.

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Will Everton be on the move soon – leaving the city of Liverpool? Gavin Willacy examines the history of clubs looking for new homes and concludes that the Blues have little choice but to head for Kirkby

If national media coverage is any barometer, there was surprisingly little uproar when Everton announced that they are considering a move out of Liverpool into neighbouring Kirkby. A few shareholder-fans objected at the AGM, concerned that the city would turn red in their absence, but otherwise the supporters seemed resigned to the inevitable. Once the King’s Dock project fell through in 2002, Everton had to come up with an alternative. With ground-sharing Liverpool’s Dubai-funded ground in Stanley Park seemingly out of the question and the chances of two new stadiums being built in the city unlikely, someone would have to move out.

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Tom Davies rounds up the news on clubs in crisis

Rancour is in the air at Swindon Town, where supporters are rallying around a “fans consortium” seeking to wrest control of their club, which is around £3 million in debt and perilously in arrears on Company Voluntary Arrangement payments. Fans have been staging “orange protests” – turning up in orange garb, in part because it’s manager Paul Sturrock’s favourite colour and was the symbol of Ukraine’s revolution – at games. But the old guard are proving tough to shift.

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