Eighteen months after selling Chelsea, Ken Bates has kindly stepped back into the game to save Leeds – though strangely, as Duncan Young explains, not everyone at Elland Road is happy.

The outgoing board at Leeds United moaned about the complexities of doing a deal to safeguard the club, yet within days snatched at Ken Bates’ offer ahead of two other bewildered consortiums who were poised to make bids after painstaking analysis of the books. As the dust settles only one person has resigned, citing the complete irres­ponsibility of it all. John Boocock, chairman of the supporters’ trust, clattered Ken from behind and, sensing the exile that would follow, carried on straight down the tunnel as his senior colleagues lined up to disassociate the trust from his views.

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Lower-division clubs up against the big boys have their eyes firmly on the prize these days.  the prize being financial survival rather than a serious chance of glory. David Harrison reports

Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and… well, Watford actually. The last four of the Carling Cup surely comprised precisely the mix that the sponsors would have ordered up. Three of the self-styled Big Four, plus one of those lovable minnows – lauded and patronised by the media in roughly equal proportions.

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Has Peter Reid’s departure from Coventry spelt the end of his managerial career? The real puzzle, Andy Dawson argues, is how he has been allowed to work so long

Peter Reid is not a criminal. He has never boiled a child, nor has he masterminded an elaborate bog­us pyramid selling scheme. But if he had, it is unlikely that the resulting hurt would be comparable to the distress and anger his decisions and actions in the past decade or so have caused people. Well, maybe apart from if he was a child-boiler. His recent miserable reign at Coventry City, mercifully brought to an end by Monkey Heed himself, should ensure that he will never manage a football club again. Like the existence of a global al-Qaida network, the idea that Reid is a competent football manager is a myth.

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Gillingham chairman Paul Scally is up in arms at Charlton’s attempts to win fans on his patch, aided by the launch of a bus service. Haydn Parry reports from the Kent Badlands

“It goes against the grain of ethics, custom, practice and principles in the business in which we oper­ate. They will be sorry for this behaviour.” That was the reaction of Gillingham chairman Paul Scally to neighbouring Charlton’s ongoing plans to enlarge their fan base in Kent. The Addicks recently expanded their community scheme into the county as part of the club’s “Target 40,000” campaign, a bid to attract more supporters, including those in the Medway area in which Gillingham are based. Since January, supporters can travel to The Valley to watch Charlton’s home matches courtesy of a special coach service and Gillingham is now one of 30 pick-up points visited by the “Valley Express”.

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Half a century after moving into their rivals’ San Siro ground, Inter could be about to leave AC Milan’s terrible grass for pastures new. Matt Barker explains the thinking

The two Milanese clubs have shared the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, better known as the San Siro, since Inter moved in during the summer of 1948. The stadium, built in 1926, is frequently held up as a shining example of successful ground-sharing, yet both clubs regularly complain about the state of the pitch (replacement grass has to be flown in from Germany, though the proposed introduction of a syn­thetic pitch next year may solve the problem) and both are keenly aware of the potential long-term fin­ancial gains from having their own stadiums.

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