Thursday 1 The Football League lose their court case against ITV Digital on the basis that the TV companies were not contractually bound to pay the full amount owed, £178.5 million of which is outstanding. The League may sue the legal advisers who drew up the contract with Carlton and Granada. Bradford City come out of administration after agreeing a repayment schedule with their creditors. Chairman Geoffrey Richmond is remorseful about the club’s over-spending: “I wish I had played it a different way. It looked right at the time though.” Dave Watson is sacked by Tranmere. Debt-ridden Fiorentina go bust, but may be allowed to restart in Italy’s fourth division.
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Stories
Cambridge United's terrible season might have been even worse, but for the LDV Vans Trophy. Andrew Bennett gives thanks for a much maligned competition
As far as the family of cup competitions goes, it would be fair to say that the LDV Vans Trophy is the runt of the litter. But for the supporters and staff of Cambridge United, it has been nothing short of a lifeline in a season spent tossing on the choppy seas of relegation. And not even a decisive and bubble-bursting 4-1 defeat at the hands of Blackpool in the final could spoil the occasion as a welcome, if all too temporary, relief from all the ills of a season that has lurched from the merely dismal to the disastrous.
With Sepp Blatter on the ropes, Alan Tomlinson looks at how FIFA might reform itself
FIFA’s motto is: “For the good of the game.” The slogan is often parroted by the insiders in the FIFA elite, as they gloat from their luxury rooms in the world’s top hotels, or welcome you to their bunker-like FIFA House in the exclusive hillside suburb overlooking Lake Zurich, the Alpine summits across the water and the self-satisfied gloss of Zurich’s Banhofstrasse, with its top designer stores and morally dodgy banks. The FIFA elite is comfortable here. The wives of FIFA’s top brass like the lobbies and the stores. The FIFA men themselves like the loot and the secrecy.
Joyce Woolridge wades through yet another book allegedly written by George Best and finds it more honest than the previous ones, but no less depressing
Blessed is George Best’s fourth autobiography. He has also been the subject of at least two other major biographies and a film. Aside from Billy Wright, he is probably the most prolific producer of various versions of his life story. Potential readers of what might be Best’s last book, given his increasingly fragile health, might ask if there is anything else to be said about his brilliant football career and spectacular fall from grace. Blessed, though full of much familiar material, is sufficiently different from what has gone before to be of interest.
Tuesday 2 Nine Austrian players refuse to fly to Israel for Saturday’s World Cup qualifier. “It is far too dangerous there,” says one of them, Walter Kogler. Joe Royle says he is suing Man City for a £500,000 pay-off, on the basis that they were still a Premiership club when he was sacked in May, even though they had finished in a relegation spot.