Americans who follow baseball or American football or even the MSL are often baffled by the idea of promotion and relegation.   As far as they are concerned there are major league and minor league clubs and that's it, although admittedly the MSL has expanded through the admission of new clubs.  Of course, franchises can shift from one part of the country to another.

Unbeaten in the Premier League, have Newcastle United found a formula that combines frugality and success?   They would like to think so.   In the match programme for yesterday's game against Spurs, managing director Derek Llambias unveiled a 'Mission Statement' from owner Mike Ashley, detailing Newcastle's aim to become a self-financing business.

Barry Hearn has revealed that he risked Leyton Orient's future to block West Ham's proposed move to the Olympic Stadium and he has warned the Government that he'll do it again if they 'illegally' shoehorn the Hammers into the stadium.

Hearn told The Football League Paper, 'We risked going out of business to challenge this.  You worry because all these legal costs mount up but we had a board meeting and decided that if West Ham moved to the Olympic Stadium that would put us out of business anyway so we had to challenge it.'

Documents obtained by the Daily Telegraph relating to communications between Chelsea and Hammersmith Borough Council suggest that the club still has an interest in the nearby Earl's Court site.  It would have many pluses, including not being far from the Bridge and enjoying good t

P & A Partners, the administrators of Plymouth Argyle, have threatened to quit after what they claimed were threats against staff and property by fans.   Security guards were posted outside their offices in Sheffield on Monday because of a threatened protest.

A community campaign called Rally Round [Raith] Rovers has been established to provide additional backing for the financially stricken club.   It has attracted the support of former prime minister Gordon Brown who is the MP for Kirkcaldy.

In an extraordinary outburst Premier League chairman Sir Dave Richards has claimed that football has run itself 'perfectly well for more than 100 years' and that the Government should 'keep their nose out ' of its affairs'

Liverpool are the fourth most popular English team abroad behind Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal and the seventh most followed in Europe, according to a global fan survey published yesterday.

The Government has finally lost patience with the slowness of the Football Association in putting its house in order.  It has told football's governing body to sort itself out by the end of February or face legislation.   Successive governments have always been reluctantly to directly intervene in the governance of football and would prefer an effective system of self-regulation.

A fundamental feature of the Premier League up to now has been that television revenues are shared equally between clubs, unlike Spain where Barcelona and Real Madrid are able to negotiate their own deals.  Of course, in practice, some of the money is relation to position in the league so the top clubs do get more.