HollEwood

It really is the silly season for football. Our Weekly News service today reported that the Manchester City deal is close to collapse, but that Rovers are close to a sale with an American buyer. I heard this story yesterday and have failed utterly to stand it up today, but Rovers have confirmed that talks are ongoing. I've heard the deal is done, the price was £30m.

The whole business of football defies the logic of any other kind of businesss. And the football media - the amiotic fluid of the whole football circus - plays an unwitting game in releasing nonsense. Take Manchester City (no-one else will, story here), a deal to sell the club to a foreign politician in exile is dead in the water. To keep that story off the back page of the Manchester Evening News, the club con supporters into thinking the board have a clue and hope they'll renew season tickets after they concoct the speculation that they want Mark Hughes as manager. I'm sure they do! I expect they'll be lucky to get Graeme Souness.

As for Rovers going west - I'd have preferred it if the Walker family had taken more interest, it's what Jack Walker wanted his settlement to do, or for other wealthy and professional Lancastrians to have taken the club on and run the club as a supporters trust. The key for any owner is a stable management that can keep us in the top half of the Preimership and qualifying for Europe.

I think one of the risks of football is that young fans are being priced out of attending matches and are getting out of the habit. Strangely at Rovers the 16,000 hard core and 10,000 soft core are younger and more rooted than the core support of other clubs. The pricing policy of the present regime is wise to this fact and seems to be taking a long term view.