Search: 'administration'

Four clubs fight to their keep heads above water. By Tom Davies

Who could possibly have imagined that the link-up between Sam Hammam and Peter Ridsdale at Cardiff City would have brought problems? The fallout from Hammam’s departure as chairman is casting a considerable shadow over City’s future, with the club facing a court action in March over ­£24 million of unsecured “loan notes” owed to investor Langston, for whom Hammam is now acting as “mediator”. Defeat in court is likely to land the club in administration.

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Ray Ranson's consortium ensured Coventry City avoided administration. Neville Hadsley reports

Coventry City have experienced last-gasp escapes plenty of times down the years so, by previous standards, surviving with just over half an hour to spare seemed rather comfortable. But that is how close the club came to extinction in December, when a takeover deal by the SISU consortium – headed by former Manchester City defender Ray Ranson – was finally sealed. Without the deal, administration would have been a certainty and a return to the old Third Division for the first time in more than half a century would have been more than a probability.

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The only way appears to be down for Luton Town as they await an FA ruling, writes Neil Rose

It says much about lower-league football that the benefit in kind supposedly offered by Luton to encourage one player to re-sign was laying his patio and landscaping his garden at a cost of £7,000. It is also perhaps the only faintly amusing aspect of the FA’s record 55 charges over Luton’s transfer and loan dealings and contract renegotiations between 2004 and 2007. A bad week then got a lot worse when the club were put into administration for the third time in eight years.

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The Autobiography
by Denis Smith
Know the Score, £17.99
Reviewed by Andy Thorley
From WSC 264 February 2009 

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When Stoke beat Arsenal recently, Arsène Wenger became really upset. Stoke’s players, he said, were dirty and tried to injure his side. Thank goodness he didn’t see Denis Smith play. Such is the frequency of the accounts of on-pitch violence that this autobiography of one of the Potters’ greatest ever players reads like a new Danny Dyer show, Naughty Tackles of the 70s.

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by Alex Gray
Sphere, £11.99
Reviewed by Graham McColl
From WSC 255 May 2008 

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England’s tilt at the 2006 World Cup is still a “live” memory for most football fans: the last hurrah of Sven, Beckham as prima donna, Theo Walcott as team mascot, Joe Cole’s goal against Sweden, Wags dancing on tables and, of course, of Nicko Faulkner, the midfield player, since found stabbed to death in his Glasgow home, and whose obituary in the Gazette states: “He will probably be best remembered for his performance for England in the 2006 World Cup that earned him an England cap.”

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