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BBC News
24 minutes ago
- BBC News
Power Maxed owner vows to rebuild racing car firm destroyed by fire
The boss of a motorsport team has vowed to "fight and rebuild" after its base was destroyed by a wildfire that swept through fields in rural and other equipment belonging to Power Maxed Racing and parent company Automotive Brands were wiped out in the blaze near Bretforton on Adam Weaver described how he watched 20 years of his working life "pretty much burn to nothing within 20 minutes".He said the race team base was destroyed, alongside the manufacturing and stock warehouse, adding that the heat was so intense it melted gearbox casings and reduced engines to molten metal. Mr Weaver said he got calls on Saturday to say there was a wildfire close to the warehouse, but when he got there he saw that the building itself was on fire. Power Maxed Racing competes in the British Touring Car Championship and Mr Weaver said the fire came days before a race at told BBC Hereford & Worcester that he had since been offered the loan of two cars and they had been prepared in just three days, adding that the weekend's race offered the team "something positive to focus on"."Anybody that's struggling with anything in their life right now whether it's personal, whether it's work, it just shows that you get the right people around you and look what can happen," he said."It's going to be an emotional moment seeing those cars go out." Mr Weaver, who posted a video on social media on the day of the fire, said the site now had burnt-out containers where doors had popped open, twisted and contorted from the said concrete slabs had been reduced to gravel, adding: "There's just a tremendous amount of destruction - warehouses completely melted and twisted and fallen down, no sign of the products that were actually inside."You'd almost think the shelves were empty. The racking's all twisted and bent with nothing on it. It's horrible to see."He said the fire damaged a "massive amount of touring car history" and Power Maxed Racing touring cars had gone as well as trophies. The businessman who has appealed for support said: "Our factory may be gone, but our spirit is very much alive." Follow BBC Hereford & Worcester on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Eddie Howe's friends run Liverpool and that is why Alexander Isak saga is personal
As unlikely as it may seem, the relationships at the heart of the transfer saga that has dominated the summer can be traced all the way back to Portsmouth in the early 2000s, when Alexander Isak was just a toddler. The friendship forged between Newcastle United manager Eddie Howe, Fenway Sports Group's chief executive of football Michael Edwards, who effectively runs Liverpool, and the club's sporting director Richard Hughes, may go back two decades, but it appears to have been put under severe strain over Isak's future. More on that later, but let us first rewind to December 2008. A friendship forms There is a photograph taken at Portsmouth's training ground in which shows a smiling Sean Davis driving a Reliant Robin that has been modified in the livery of the popular 1980s TV show The A-Team. In the background are a bunch of his laughing team-mates at the then Premier League club including Peter Crouch, Nwankwo Kanu and Hermann Hreidarsson. The latter once drove the same vehicle around the car park with the horn changed to a chicken sound. To the left of the photo, also grinning is then Portsmouth midfielder Hughes. At the time it was reported that the stunt – which included having to modify and drive the car, hence the Mr T-inspired theme – was the forfeit for being the worst in training. That was not an unusual jape at a football club and upped the ante from having to wear the 'yellow jersey of shame' for a week. But at Portsmouth it had nothing to do with training. What was unusual is that it was the booby prize for who finished bottom of a predictor league for Champions League matches in a contest organised by 'Prozone Eddie', as he was known at the club. That was Edwards, who is still known by the nickname 'Eddie', although the 'Prozone' bit has long been dropped. Edwards is now one of the most powerful executives in football as the person who effectively runs the Premier League champions. He has clearly moved on to bigger and better things than being regarded merely as the stats geek, a young guy in the background, who initially became popular because of the game. Also involved at Portsmouth was David Woodfine, who would succeed Edwards as the club's head of performance analysis, when he left to join Tottenham Hotspur, and who eventually organised for the Reliant Robin to be sold off to charity when the predictor game came to an end. The careers of Edwards, Hughes and Woodfine have been intertwined ever since, with all three now extremely important at Liverpool. Edwards returned in March last year having previously been the club's sporting director and immediately recruited Hughes from Bournemouth into that role. A year after he left, Woodfine was also persuaded by Edwards to go back to Liverpool, within weeks of he himself returning, as assistant sporting director and No 2 to Hughes, who was serving his notice at Bournemouth. During his time in between leaving Liverpool in 2022 and going back, and after a year off, Edwards worked as a consultant at Ludonautics – a sports advisory business set up by Liverpool's former director of research Ian Graham – and recommended Hughes to several leading clubs. They did not act but he did on his return, declaring he 'trusted him completely'. To add to the extraordinary Portsmouth link, Hughes also hired Mark Burchill, who was Bournemouth's chief scout. He was also a former team-mate and friend going back to the Portsmouth days – and, like Hughes, a Scot. But there is also another, significant character in this story: Howe. The Newcastle manager and former defender is not in the photograph because he had long left Portsmouth by then with his two years at the club – from 2002-04 – plagued by injury after he was one of Harry Redknapp's first signings along with Hughes and the Bulgarian striker Svetoslav Todorov. Edwards joined Portsmouth the year after, sent there by Prozone, then a pioneering data analysis company, as the stats business started to take off. Partly because he was out injured and had time, Howe was one of the first to take interest in Edwards's work – which included analysing performances and looking at the opposition – and would spend hours in the analysts' first-floor office at the Wellington Sports Ground where Portsmouth trained. Hughes was also drawn there. Some of the younger players at Portsmouth had that thirst for knowledge and Edwards was at the vanguard of a new approach and players would often go and see what he was doing on a Monday, after the weekend's match. Soon they were also going the day before games. It helped that Edwards was young, too – the trio are all roughly the same age, now in their mid-forties– and had played football to a good level, although he was released by Peterborough United without making a first-team appearance. It meant Edwards, who has a sharp tongue and good sense of humour, could speak their language, knew the game from a player's point of view and also did not hold back on his opinions when it came to the 'banter'. He was confident, even if he was regarded with suspicion by some of the older staff – although not assistant manager Jim Smith and first-team coach Joe Jordan – at Portsmouth and by Redknapp himself before he became a convert. It is a long-lasting friendship, between Howe and Hughes in particular, with the pair having even lived together with another former player Warren Cummings (and another Scot), who was on loan from Chelsea, when they were all teenagers making their way at Bournemouth. Howe and Hughes ended up playing 102 times together for the club. Howe joined Portsmouth in March 2002 for a club-record £400,000, with Hughes following that summer for a more modest £72,000. Indeed there was a point when it looked like Hughes and Howe would also be following each other to another club and both be sold together, as a package, to Wigan Athletic, who were then on the up and managed by Paul Jewell. No room for sentiment as Isak tug-of-war unfolds But it is a friendship now under strain thanks to the Isak transfer saga. When news first broke it was assumed that the friendship would mean that it would all be conducted cordially and that those in charge of Liverpool – Edwards and Hughes – would try to work with Newcastle. It was even claimed that they would try to keep the deal confidential until Newcastle had signed the two replacement forwards they needed – and still need – if Isak goes. But that never happened and was indeed blown out of the water when Liverpool gazumped Newcastle's move for Eintracht Frankfurt forward Hugo Ekitike in a deal worth up to £79m. Suddenly everything was being played out in public. Hughes also knows how it feels to be on the other end. When he was at Bournemouth he identified Andy Robertson, Harvey Elliott and Joe Gomez as potential signings and lost out to Liverpool each time. He even tried for Virgil van Dijk before he signed for Southampton. But it was still suggested the Howe-Hughes relationship might help smooth the Isak deal over. They worked so long and successfully as manager and sporting director for eight years at Bournemouth, partly on the back of Howe's recommendation after he persuaded Hughes not to concentrate on becoming a TV pundit and running a restaurant he co-owned with his brother. Instead it has become increasingly fraught and acrimonious and as much as sources want to blame Isak and, in particular, his agent Vlado Lemic with how messy it has become, he has hardly acted alone to try to force the move. Liverpool maintain they have acted appropriately and there was even a briefing that their only bid so far – the £110m that was rejected by Newcastle, who value Isak at £150m – would not be followed up. But no one believes that and while an exasperated Howe has remained diplomatic, he has said that Newcastle 'try and do things the right way'. That felt pointed. It is understood that Howe is disappointed with Liverpool's behaviour, and not least because of his relationship with Hughes, and to a lesser extent Edwards, and those relationships have inevitably become tense. All three could be at Liverpool If true then it is a shame and not least because, had things fallen differently, and such is their admiration for each other, then the trio could all be working at the same club together again – 22 years after Portsmouth. Howe was on the three-strong shortlist with Jürgen Klopp and Carlo Ancelotti to replace Brendan Rodgers when Liverpool considered making a change in the summer of 2015, before sacking him in October. That was despite the fact that Howe, at that time, had not yet managed in the Premier League, having only just gained promotion with Bournemouth, who he took through the divisions. But that is how highly regarded he was by Edwards, who was instrumental in the search which ended with Klopp agreeing to join. It was not the only time Howe was on the radar with Edwards, aided by Hughes, leading the managerial search again last summer when Klopp left and Arne Slot was hired. Once more, Howe was on the shortlist, scoring highly in Liverpool's analysis. He has an undoubted ability to improve players and Isak, perhaps, is the finest example. Conversely it is believed Howe was keen to take Hughes with him to Celtic in 2021, before he pulled out of that move because the club would not give him the staff that he wanted. Howe is indisputably the most highly rated British manager at present and, as their interest over such a long period of time shows, is much admired by Edwards and Hughes, who have a strong track record of being good judges. To this point it has been mutual. But this is football at the highest level and competition trumps everything, it seems. Even so Hughes, in particular, is regarded as the kind of character who, while extremely professional and good at his job, would not enjoy the cut-throat element of it. Indeed Hughes, who was so amenable as a player that he had a column in the local newspaper, the Portsmouth News, called 'Look Hughes Talking', even lost the tip of the third finger on his right hand when he was a player after the door he was courteously trying not to slam shut swung back in a gust of wind at the training ground and sliced it off. Traumatised Hughes walked back into the treatment room, ignoring Burchill who greeted him, and told the physio Gary Sadler what had happened. Despite going to hospital, they could not sew the finger back on. In saying that Hughes can be ruthless. A cultured midfielder he reinvented himself under Redknapp as being far more combative so that he could get into the team. It was a sign of Hughes's intelligence that he realised that. He even boasted that one of his career highlights was provoking Cristiano Ronaldo into butting him in a league game against Manchester United in 2007 – therefore evening the teams up a 10 men each after Sulley Muntari had been sent off two minutes earlier – which ended in a 1-1 draw.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Decision due on Oxford United new stadium plans
Council planners are due to make a decision on Oxford United's proposed new District Council's planning committee is set to meet at 16:00 BST to discuss plans for a new purpose-built 16,000-seater ground on land known as the Triangle, near football club has warned that if the proposals are not approved by the local authority then it would have no home stadium after June five-hectare (12-acre) site is located south of Kidlington roundabout, west of Banbury Road, east of Frieze Way and near Oxford Parkway Station. The club currently play at the Kassam Stadium and its owner, Firoka Group, has agreed the U's can play there for two more seasons. There will be an option to extend the deal for another year, which will be conditional on planning permission for the club's proposed new stadium being parties have said that no further extensions or new lease agreements for the Kassam will be possible. The council received about 4,900 responses from the public about the application and its planning report contained details of objections from local U's new complex could include a 180-bed hotel, restaurant, conference centre and community were concerns that the proposed stadium would be built near ancient woodland but Natural England concluded that would not be the the council backs the application then it will be referred to the Secretary of State, which is a standard procedure for such large-scale applications. You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X, or Instagram.
