Directors of football are a little-loved breed. Adam Powley looks at how the role is plainly failing at Spurs
The various billionaires now carving up the Premier League are not used to deferring power to their employees. Both Roman Abramovich and the new Abu Dhabi-based owners of Manchester City, coming from cultures that tend towards autocratic rule in commerce and politics, view an omnipotent manager of the British variety as a potential obstruction to the way they do business.
Owning a football club is now officially beyond the wildest dreams. Even Harry Pearson's
When they reach their forties, men experience a change. You begin to suspect that the manufacturers of jeans have started skimping on material, you meet young people (yes, you have started to use the phrase “young people”) that you assume are sixth-formers and when you ask politely what A-levels they are doing discover that in fact they are GPs, barristers or your new boss, and you feel strangely compelled to tell your children not to keep saying like, like all the, like, time, for goodness sake because “you’re hardly going to impress a prospective employer speaking like that”.
Manchester City’s windfall is adding to the pressure on Bill Kenwright over Everton’s proposed move to Kirkby, as Mark O'Brien explains
On the closing day of the transfer window, Everton smashed their record by spending £15 million on the relatively unknown Belgian midfielder Marouane Fellaini. After a trying summer, one that Bill Kenwright described as “the worst I have ever known in the transfer market”, it should have been big news, but like just about every other move that day it was overshadowed by the events up the road.
Bruce Wilkinson assesses Blackburn's attempt to gain Asian supporters
Blackburn Rovers are based in a town with a large Muslim population who traditionally have not followed the team. Over the last couple of years, the club has worked hard to attract more Asian supporters. The roll call of contributors to the club’s equality document (then Minister for Sport Richard Caborn, chair of Kick It Out Lord Herman Ouseley and former president of the Lancashire Council of Mosques Lord Adam Patel) shows the level of importance afforded to the issue.
Olympiakos’s Champions League qualifier against Anorthosis did not go to plan for the Greeks. Paul Pomonis reports on Cypriot joy
The elimination of Olympiakos in the third qualifying round of the Champions League at the hands of Cypriot champions Anorthosis Famagusta was greeted in Greece with the traditional mixture of disbelief and outrage reserved for national sporting disasters: “Grief and unending sorrow”, “Crime and punishment” screamed two Olympiakos-friendly Athens sport papers. Although Anorthosis were grudgingly recognised as worthy winners, they were offered scant credit for their qualification, which was instead blamed on Olympiakos’s “bad luck” and “fatal mistakes”. As Anorthosis veteran Stefanos Lyssandrou noted: “It is as if Olympiakos were alone on the pitch.” Even at the hour of Cypriot football’s biggest triumph, the Greeks chose to completely ignore their “brethren”.