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League restructuring in Italy has been discussed for several years but it is now coming to fruition. Paul Virgo reports

After a long fight to save their marriage, Serie B finally accepted it had irreconcilably broken down in August and agreed to an amicable divorce from the Italian top flight. Serie A chairmen had been threatening to walk out for years, as they looked on at the Premier League’s success with envy, only to end up half-heartedly agreeing to give it another try. But they showed they meant business this time when they appointed Maurizio Beretta, an executive from outside football, to run the top flight as an independent entity from next year.

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With Ipswich hoping to rename a stand in tribute to Bobby Robson, Csaba Abrahall assesses the former manager's impact

Planning permission permitting, when Ipswich meet Newcastle at the end of September, Portman Road’s North Stand will be renamed in honour of Sir Bobby Robson, who died in July after a battle against cancer lasting almost two decades. It promises to be a day of celebration of the career of a man who managed both clubs with distinction.

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Cameron Carter assesses the latest flickerings on football's moral compass

Just over this short summer, several individual events or trends have been declared “good for the game” by journalists, managers, bloggers and FIFA presidents. Sepp Blatter used the phrase to describe Real Madrid’s surely booze-fuelled spending binge. In the British press, a series of journalists running on empty queued up to declare that John Terry’s transfer to Manchester City, if it actually happened, would be “good for the game”. Elsewhere it was ventured that a second powerful spending force in Manchester would benefit pretty much everyone in the living world. It is all very well bandying this phrase about when your editor requires a 500-word opinion piece by lunchtime but it doesn’t appear that anyone has done a scientifically applied cost-benefit analysis on the subjects. Here, three arguable propositions are measured in brutally clinical conditions in order to determine whether they are, empirically speaking, actually good for the game.

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Relegation, a much-loathed owner and an uncertain future. Dermot Corrigan examines troubled times at Real Betis

Since Real Betis’s relegation on goal difference on the last day of last season, the club’s fans have been directing waves of anger and frustration at the club’s majority shareholder Manuel Lopera.

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Thom Gibbs looks at the latest kit designs and finds only a few sartorial gems among the racks of polyester horrors and 'Climacool' fabrics

Pre-season is a time to nurse gently the bruises that football has inflicted on our souls in the past nine months. As the new campaign approaches we revert to a position of blind optimism and unreserved excitement. Nothing captures that dumbly hopeful glow better than the first glimpse of next season’s shirts. What unforgettable moments will we associate with our side’s new kit? Will it be remembered as a cocky disaster like England’s Admiral strips of the barren 1970s? Or surreal triumph, à la the radioactive bird poo kit inexorably linked to Norwich’s 1990s European adventures?

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