The Speccie leads with sport

I wonder how often the Spectator magazine has led with a football story but this week it does and a cracking piece from former BBC man Mahir Bose who writes that the game is England may be beautiful but it is also broke

Last week’s Financial Times carried an advert seeking a buyer for the bankrupt Crystal Palace. Portsmouth FC, winner of the FA Cup just two years ago, is unable to meet players’ wages or pay for a website. Dozens of clubs are wrestling with their creditors, and the game is effectively divided into two financial leagues: those with, and without, a foreign sugar daddy to write the cheques.

and he adds

Worse still, the global success of the English game has done nothing to nurture English, or even British, talent. It has never been harder for an English player to make it in the English Premier League.

Man City take on the world of online media

Manchester City have been getting most of the football transfer headlines this summer and now it seems that their riches will result in an assault on the world of online media.

Paid Content reports that

its Endemol-produced flashy new website has completely free video content while search marketing and creative agency deals are designed to win over fans worldwide

Some of the features include free video on demand,search marketing and perhaps not surprsingly given the nature of its backers,an Arabic version

Hillsborough-a tragedy that changed football

As Andy Burnham found out at Anfield this afternoon,there is still much hurt and grief over the events that took place at Hillsborough twenty years ago today.

I remember it well,listening to the events unfolding on what must have been Radio 2 whilst in the car.

I can't remember where I was going and what I was doing but the tragedy of the afternoon was to change football for ever.

I had fallen out of love with the game prior to those events.Attending football games had become akin to entering a war zone,the fun had simply gone.Society was changing and football hadn't kept up.

The Taylor report which followed the tragedy brought in the all seater stadium,the end of fences and barriers.It made the game or at least attending it more enjoyable.

Success on the field in Italia 90,the creation of the premier league and increased money coming into the game saw its rejuvenation.It has never looked back.

Yet those deaths of 96 people on that sunny afternoon were a high price to pay for change.

It has been a travesty that even today nobody has yet been brought to account.The action of chief Inspector Duckenfield who froze and gave the order to open the gates.

Supporters being pushed back in the stand by police who misunderstood what was happening.

Missing video tape and evidence that some of the dying were still alive 45 minutes after the incident.

The fact that South Yorkshire police still defend their actions to this day

Trinity Mirror looks at football blogs

A case of shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted.

Trinity Mirror's attempts to set up standalone club specific football blogs is surely missing the boat and trying to replicate something that has already been successful in the citizen joirnalism sector.

Journalism.co.uk reports that

The publisher quietly launched two blogs - about Everton and Liverpool football clubs - last month.
Neil Benson, director of editorial development for the group’s regional newspapers, told the World Editors Forum earlier this week that the publisher was looking at launching further football club blogs alongside other of its city newspapers

.

'fake sheikh' strikes again and Express reveals plot ot kill the Queen

Two good stories in the Sunday's to get tongues wagging

This mornings News of the World carries an exclusve by Mazher Mahmood that the father of Liverpool footballer,

is the evil muscle-bound boss of a seedy crack den.The man credited with guiding the £6.7million Liverpool star to success runs the secret drugs empire at his sleazy council flat.
We filmed Gary Pennant there selling cheap rocks of killer cocaine and deadly heroin as a constant stream of addicts and prostitutes shambled in.

The Express meanwhile claims

AL Qaeda terrorists posing as TV crews planned to blow up the Queen by smuggling explosives into last year’s Commonwealth summit.
Two huge outside broadcast vans belonging to the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation were seized after a tip-off from intelligence agents.
As a result, UBC was unable to transmit live pictures of key summit events, including the Queen’s historic address to the Ugandan parliament on November 22.

A national catastrophy

Perhaps Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling may be pleased that the country has something else to worry about this morning.Yes,England's overpai footballers have let the country down and the press have gone to town.

None more so that the Sun's front page which depicts a deflated football lying in a wet gutter with the score in the top right hand corner.A good example of the fact that sometimes you need headlines.

Norwich bans the cit.journalist

The increasing use of citizen journalism has forced Norwich City to close the gates of their training ground to the public.

This from the Norwich City blog

The Canaries tonight brought the shutters down on training sessions at Colney - barring the general public from watching Peter Grant's men go through their pre-match paces.
Announcing the potentially controversial move on the club's own website this evening, the club insisted that it had ended its traditional open door policy with reluctance but the advance of both new media technology and the advent of 'citizen journalism' had forced this move upon them.

The club cited the sensativity of the information falling into the hands of potential opponents as the main reason and the Norwich manager cites an incident last season where the clubs striker was injured on the training ground it was on the website before the manager got back to his desk.