Drop pointless judicial review, Robertson urges Spurs

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By Andrew Warshaw at the Leaders in Football Conference in London

October 6 – Sport and Olympics Minister Hugh Robertson today urged Tottenham Hotspur one last time to drop their “pointless” bid for a judicial review  into their failed bid to move to the Olympic stadium after next year’s Games, warning that no further deal would be on the table to help redevelop their own ground.

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Mihir Bose: Sky may not be the limit with Murphy’s law

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Karen Murphy’s victory in the European Court over showing live matches in her pub without paying Sky’s charges should not be overestimated. It will have consequences, particularly in the lower reaches of the game, but it should not be seen as televised football’s equivalent of the Bosman ruling. It is not.

Bosman has proved such a far-reaching, even revolutionary, judgement, that its effects are still being felt more than a decade and a half later.

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“The week of football” to come into play in 2014

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By Andrew Warshaw at the Leaders in Football Conference in London

October 5 – International qualifiers, both for the European Championship and the World Cup, will be played across six days between Thursdays and Tuesdays from 2014 to maximise television coverage and broadcast income, as well as stopping other sports taking precedence, UEFA announced today.

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Grondona apologises for contemptuous attack on FA

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By Andrew Warshaw at the Leaders in Football Conference in London

October 5 – Argentina’s senior FIFA vice President Julio Grondona has officially apologised for his scathing attack on the way England are perceived the corridors of world football, English FA chairman David Bernstein revealed today.

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FIFA reform is “laughable”, sneers Anson

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By David Gold

October 5 – The chief executive of England’s failed bid to host the 2018 World Cup, Andy Anson, has mocked FIFA’s response to a string of corruption allegations this year and says that he does not have faith in their ability to reform themselves.

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David Owen: “There’s only one Karen Murphy”. Why it isn’t just English armchair football fans who should be chanting the pub landlady’s name this weekend

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The first thing to be said about this week’s European Court of Justice ruling – that promises, for a time, to open a path to cheaper live Premier League football for armchair fans in the UK – is that if this doesn’t make the European Union (EU) more popular in famously eurosceptic Britain, nothing will.

But the potential consequences for the future structure of the European game are just as fascinating.

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