South gate faces ITV balancing act
GARETH SOUTHGATE has been offered a new contract as one of ITV’S lead football pundits despite the possible conflict with his other role as the FA’S head of elite football development.
The supposed one- year deal will keep Southgate in the high-profile position of commentating honestly on England’s performances without giving away the state secrets of his main employers for another season, including the European Championship, where he will be based at ITV’S studio in Warsaw.
Southgate’s balancing act between giving ITV value for money but not saying anything that would upset the FA is apparent in all current questions about the England captaincy or the choice of next manager.
The FA, who see Southgate as having a longterm future on the technical development side, have no problems with him mixing his TV work with his part-time FA duties. They trust him not to be too controversial and value an FA official having such a TV platform. And Niall Sloane, ITV’S controller of sport, is known to have a high opinion of Southgate as a football analyst even with his FA restrictions. LSECURITY
around the Olympics is such that even the few MCC members allowed entry into their own club — to play tennis and squash or use the library and museum — during the whole month Lord’s is in lockdown in July for the Olympic archery competition have been warned they will be escorted to and from the gates by London Organising Committee (LOCOG) staff. HUMAN error in loading the software was the explanation for the Boxnation subscription service crashing at the worst possible time for the fledgling fight channel on the night of Dereck Chisora’s unlikely world heavyweight challenge against Vitali Klitschko (right). The blunder is estimated to have cost Boxnation over 30,000 subscriptions, worth around £1m to the network. Compensation talks are continuing with the Scottish-based MGT Paywizard service providers. LTHE
ongoing Lord’s conflict over the abandoned £400million Vision rebuilding programme will come to a head at the AGM on May 2 when MCC members will vote on whether to revive the project. And members of the MCC committee — from which Sir John Major resigned in protest over the manner of the Vision decision-making — want Lord’s to include a resume of the ditched Almacantar property developer proposals in their AGM literature so that the Lord’s electorate are properly informed before the critical vote.