
Spurs close in on Frank appointment as new boss
Tottenham are closing in on appointing Brentford manager Thomas Frank as their new head coach by the weekend.Talks between the clubs are ongoing, but have progressed positively amid a growing expectation Frank could even be confirmed in the next 48 hours as Ange Postecoglou's successor.Discussions are understood to be amicable and there is a will from all parties to conclude the agreement quickly.BBC Sport understands that recently appointed Spurs chief executive Vinai Venkatesham, who only started work last Monday, has been involved in the process of appointing Frank, alongside chairman Daniel Levy.Brentford are entitled to compensation for the 51-year-old Frank, who joined them from Brondby in 2018, with sources indicating it will cost Tottenham £10m to release him from his current contract.That amount could rise based upon how many members of staff the Dane decides to bring with him.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Sky Sports News' golden age at an end as rival platforms turn up the volume
A constant in pubs, gyms and hotel breakfast rooms, almost always with the sound down. Perhaps not since cinema's silent age have faces been so familiar without the general public knowing their voices. The vibe is more casual than in previous times, shirt sleeves rather than business suits, but the formula remains the same: a carousel of news, clips, quotes, quips, centred around highlights, all framed within a constant flow of results, fixtures and league tables. Sky Sports News hits 27 years of broadcasting in August, having been launched for the 1998-99 football season by BSkyB. As the domestic football season concluded, news came of changes within the Osterley-based newsroom. Seven members of the broadcast talent team would be leaving, including the long-serving Rob Wotton and the senior football reporter Melissa Reddy, within a process of voluntary redundancies. Sky sources – not those Sky sources – are keen to state the changes are not a cost-cutting exercise, instead a redress of SSN's place within a changing media environment. Ronan Kemp, the One Show presenter and Celebrity Goggleboxer, is understood to be in discussions to join Sky and despite Wotton's departure, Ref Watch will still be serving those who get their kicks from re-refereeing matches and VAR calls. Rolling news, which became common currency around the time of the initial Gulf war with Iraq is no longer the go-to information environment. Sky News, SSN's sister organisation, is going through similar changes, including the loss of the veteran anchor Kay Burley. The smartphone, where news alerts supplant even social media, takes the strain of keeping the world informed of Micky van de Ven's latest hamstring injury. Desperate to hear even more from Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville? There are podcasts and YouTube channels available at a swipe. In the US, ESPN's SportsCenter and its accompanying ESPNews channel were the progenitors of a medium copied globally and by Sky in launching SSN. SportsCenter is a flagship in marked decline from a golden 1990s era that made American household names of presenters such as Stuart Scott, Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick. ESPN, an organisation in the process of taking itself to digital platforms as cable TV gets mothballed, closed SportsCenter's Los Angeles studio in March. Linear TV's death will be slow, but it is dying nonetheless as streaming, all bundles and consumer choice, takes hold. Meanwhile, YouTube channels, with production values way below industry standard, amass huge audiences for fan-owned, independent media. The time of viewers tuning in for 10pm highlights voiced over by presenters' catchphrases – Scott's 'boo yah!' being the prime example – has long passed. Social media and YouTube have killed the demand. Though live sports remain the foundation of broadcasting contracts, highlights and analysis can be watched at the time of the viewers' choice. Digital is where the eyeballs go, and what the advertising dollar is attracted to, despite the ubiquity of Go Compare et al. Viewing figures remain healthy but the game is now about far more than ratings. SSN's imperial period was the early millennium days of Dave Clark and Kirsty Gallacher's toothsome double act, to a time when the yellow ticker of breaking news held great sway, though not always delivering on its promise of earthquake journalism (news of Nicky Shorey's Reading contract extension, anyone?). Millie Clode, Di Stewart, Charlotte Jackson, Kelly Cates: a nation turned its lonely eyes to them. Then there was transfer deadline day, more important than the football itself. Long, frantic hours spent hearing Jim White's Glaswegian whine declare anything could happen on this day of days. In the early years it often did, from Peter Odemwingie's mercy dash to Loftus Road to the brandishing of a sex toy in the earhole of reporter Alan Irwin outside Everton's training ground. Another reporter, Andy 'four phones' Burton, labelled the night the 2008 window closed: 'The best day of my life, apart from when my son was born.' Eventually, though, it became too knowing. Not even White's yellow tie, as garish as his hype, accompanied by Natalie Sawyer's yellow dress, could stop the event from becoming desperate hours chasing diminishing returns. Live television is a challenging environment, especially with nothing to feed off. Though many presenters have been lampooned – abused in the more carrion social media age – the difficulty of 'going live' with an earpiece full of instructions and timings should never be underestimated. How does Mike Wedderburn, the channel's first presenter, make it look so easy? When, in a broadcasting-carriage dispute between Virgin and Sky, Setanta Sports News was given brief life in 2007 – 22 months as the Dagmar to Sky's Queen Vic – it was made apparent how hard, and costly, the business can be. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion Over-exposure to SSN – as happens when someone works in a newspaper sports department, say – can lead to contempt. The joins can be seen, too. Haven't they done that same gag for the past six hours and each time pretended it was an ad lib? Just what is Gary Cotterill up to this time? Why did Bryan Swanson always use such portentous tones? From morning till night, it would be ever-present. On weekend evenings, when you caught the skilled veteran duo of Julian Waters and the late David Bobin running through the day's events, you knew it was time to leave the office, down that late drink, question your life choices, the pair's clipped tones taking on the effect of a lonely late-night cab ride. SSN is forced to move with the times. As is the case across the industry, journalists have often been supplanted by influencers, as the mythical, perhaps unreachable, 'younger audience' is chased. That is not to say the channel is short of decent reporting. In the aftermath of the 2022 Champions League final in Paris, chief reporter Kaveh Solhekol produced a superb account of the ensuing chaos and danger while others floundered for detail. SSN, like SportsCenter across the Atlantic, is now more a production factory for content being sent across the internet, published to multiple platforms, than it is a rolling news channel. Within press statements around the redundancies there was the word 'agile', a term repurposed – and overused – in the business world, but meaning doing more with less. Next season, as heavily trailed on SSN right now, Sky will have 215 Premier League live matches to show, including every game played on Sundays. That requires the company's shift in focus, for Sky Sports News in particular. Though look up wherever you are and it will still be on in the corner, almost certainly with the sound down.


Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
More than 130 years later, this pragmatic trust still offers something new
Questor is The Telegraph's stockpicking column, helping you decode the markets and offering insights on where to invest for the past six decades. The UK equity market has been a happy hunting ground for income-seeking investors, and it continues to offer a yield premium to other developed equity markets. However, more recent events, particularly across competing income-producing asset classes, have shifted the emphasis for equity income investors towards total returns, dividend growth and the benefits of a pragmatic approach to stock selection. In the context of an evolving landscape of UK equity income strategies, few names stand out as consistently as Law Debenture. This venerable institution, with almost 136 years of history, combines an actively managed UK equity investment portfolio with the robust growth of its wholly-owned independent professional services (IPS) business, which is comprised of three divisions – pensions, corporate trust and corporate services. This combination creates a unique structure that supports the trust's history of consistent outperformance. The investment portfolio is managed by the experienced Janus Henderson duo of James Henderson and Laura Foll, and benefits from a contrarian and value-focused style. The investment approach followed by Henderson and Foll is unconstrained by the equity income mandate, can invest across the market cap spectrum and targets companies trading at reasonable valuations with conservative balance sheets and experienced management teams. One of the standout features of Law Debenture is the IPS business, which accounts for around 19pc of its net asset value (Nav) and has funded approximately 30pc of its dividends over the past decade. IPS has delivered mid-to-high single-digit growth and around two thirds of IPS revenues are recurring.


Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE 'Sam Allardyce wanted to kick my door down': IAN LADYMAN tells Mark Clattenburg about extraordinary run-in with former Premier League manager on new Mail podcast
Podcast All episodes Mail Football Editor Ian Ladyman told ex-elite referee Mark Clattenburg about a particularly exceptional exchange he had with former Premier League manager Sam Allardyce on the latest episode of the Whistleblowers podcast. Ladyman revealed he had a tense phone call with 'Big' Sam Allardyce during the former Bolton, Newcastle and West Ham boss's early days at Notts County in the late nineties. Allardyce won the Third Division with Notts County in 1998, which led to him being offered the chance to manage relative giants Bolton in the Championship a year later. 'Sam is friend of mine. When I first met him, I was working for a local newspaper', Ladyman said. 'He was the manager of Notts County, and it was my job to cover the club. They had taken a player on trial who had just come back to football after failing a drugs test. Whistleblowers, brought to you by the Mail and Wickes TradePro - is football's most original new podcast - lifting the lid on the parts of the game no one else talks about 'Twenty years ago, that was very rare. So, I rang Sam and told him I was going to write a story. 'Sam said I could write the story - but told me not to mention the drugs ban. I am like, Sam, that is the only reason the story is interesting. 'The fact your signing Joe Bloggs doesn't matter – we have got to mention the drugs ban. He said, you do that – and I will kick your f***ing door down. 'I had only just arrived in Nottingham and was living in a hotel – so I replied, you're not going to be able to do that Sam. 'He said: I will come to that hotel and kick every door down until I find yours.' Whistleblowers is a brand-new football podcast, brought to you by The Mail in association with Wickes TradePro. From what really goes on in the referee's room, to how clubs spin crises and who's pulling the strings behind the scenes - Whistleblowers brings the inside stories only those at the heart of the game can tell. Co-host Mark Clattenburg shared his affection for Sam Allardyce and what it was like referring his 'big character' in the dugout. Listen here Co-host Mark Clattenburg shared his affection for Sam Allardyce and what it was like referring his 'big character' in the dugout. 'I used to love Big Sam as a coach', the official said. 'I miss his character. At Bolton, he used to abuse me and the fourth official all the time and I used to ask him why and he would say – just to get the crowd going. 'I remember one time – we had a big bar bill at St George's Park. West Ham had been playing Aston Villa. It was worth a large sum of money. 'I went to Big Sam and Neil McDonald and said, my God – that bar bill was huge last night. 'They said the club would be launching an investigation and somebody would be sacked. I asked why – they told me they wanted to find out who'd had the coffee.' For more anecdotes from inside the world of football, search for Whistleblowers now, wherever you get your podcasts.