Connolly Might Miss Rest of Season...Mittal #1, Ecclestone #8 and Briatore #42 on Richest in UK Football List

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- Bernie Ecclestone Q&A including re Briatore

- Football League Chairman Mawhinney Address re Football

- Tabb to QPR?
"Coventry Telegraph: "...[Jay] Tabb, who is seeking a loan move away from Reading, could be joining QPR."


- Lakshmi Mittal #1 Rich Man in British Football (Bernie Ecclestone #8)

The Four Four Two "Richest in UK Football" List
1 Lakshmi Mittal £18.4bn
QPR Age 59 (Last year £12.5bn, 2nd)
With former F1 racing tycoon Flavio Briatore in disgrace, Lakshmi Mittal could buy out the Italian's 54% stake in QPR. He's already an investor in the club, having spent £200,000 on a 20% stake in December 2007, and his son-in-law Amit Bhatia sits on the Loftus Road board as vice chairman.
Born in India but resident in London, Mittal is the world's biggest steel maker through his family company Arcelor-Mittal. As with many moguls he was hit hard by the stock market turmoil in late 2008 but shares have recovered in recent weeks and the family stake is now worth £15.4 billion. You can add another £3 billion for past dividends and property: in 2004 alone, Arcelor-Mittal paid out £1.38 billion to the Mittals.
A separate investment portfolio is now worth around £570m. Mittal has a £9m pile in London's exclusive Bishop's Avenue, and set a world record for a private home when he paid a reputed £70m to Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone for a house in Kensington Palace Gardens. In June 2004 he also splashed out £30m for his daughter's wedding. In all we reckon that the Mittal family is now worth perhaps £18.44 billion, plenty enough to help QPR to glory.

#8 Bernie Ecclestone £1.466bn
QPR Age 78, last year £2.4bn (5th)
Newly single Bernie Ecclestone will now have more time for football. In March, the part-owner of QPR concluded an amicable divorce from his Croatian-born wife Slavica. Amicable, but expensive.
Bernie's big problem will be trying to preserve his wealth as much of the £2.4 billion fortune he built up as the supremo in the hugely profitable F1 motorsports operation was held in offshore trusts in Slavica's name. But the actual divorce went through without any fuss and it is reckoned the settlement will proceed smoothly. Though Slavica could in effect force Bernie to beg for his money, it is likely that he will keep perhaps two-thirds of the wealth that he built up and settle a third on her.
He has some choice assets to enjoy including a new £75m 85-metre yacht being built in Turkey, a £12m Falcon jet and his own hotel and chalet in Gstaad. In all before the divorce, the Ecclestones were worth around £2.2 billion; ascribing two-thirds to Bernie makes him worth £1.466 billion.

42. Flavio Briatore £110m
QPR Age 59, last year £120m (39th)
Flavio Briatore may not own QPR for much longer. The Italian tycoon is under siege: as Renault F1 team boss, he ordered former driver Nelson Piquet junior to deliberately crash in order to let team-mate Fernando Alonso to win. With Briatore handed a lifetime ban from F1, questions are being asked in football if he is a fit and proper person to sit on the QPR board.
Away from sport he has developed Billionaire into a strong fashion and leisure brand with a Tuscan holiday resort, a shop in Knightsbridge, Mayfair’s Cipriani restaurant and a resort in Kenya. He has an £8m yacht and a £20m flat in Chelsea. He took over QPR with Lakshmi Mittal and Bernie Ecclestone, making it the ‘richest’ football club in the world. Whether he stays there remains to be seen. Four Four Two

- Richest Ten Managers in England
- Richest Twenty Players in England
- Complete Richest 100 in English Football


Mirror - He's the richest man in British football, but just who is Lakshmi Mittal?
- "...10) He bought into QPR in December 2007, buying a 20 per cent stake in the west London club. His £200,000 investment clearly didn't make a dent in his personal fortune and, to date, he has taken a back seat at Loftus Road. His son-in-law, Amit Bhatia, has a place on the board and acts as his eye and ears inside the club." Miror


- QPR Managing Director, Alejandro Agag Update


Paul Warburton/London Informer - It's fever hitch as QPR's Connolly could miss rest of season
- QPR fear glandular fever may rule Matthew Connolly out for the rest of the season.
- The club is unwilling to give a return date for the 21-year-old defender, who has a virus that can strike down anyone who catches it for up to a year.
- The major problem is the fever may have affected the former England U21 player's spleen - and that would certainly rule out any miraculous return after he carved himself a starting berth in the starting XI at the beginning of the season.
- Jim Magilton refused to be drawn on the plight of his player - but privately the Rs boss is worried he's got no choice but to let nature take its course for an illness without a cure.
- He said: "We're monitoring the situation closely - but that's all I'm willing to say on the subject."
- Medical advice is that anyone contracting glandular fever and involved in sport - especially contact sport - shouldn't return to playing for another month on top even after the all-clear's been given.
- In the worse case scenario for Connolly, that would be the end of April. By that time, the player with more than 50 appearances under his belt since his £500,000 switch from
- Arsenal in January last year, would still be woefully short of match fitness. London Informer


- Martin Rowlands on Playing for Eire

- Marking Six Months Since the supposed Sousa comments to a fan appeared on QPR Messageboard"
- The reported comments (and messageboard responses) came a couple of days after Sousa commented re Blackstock loan after the Crystal Palace game. A couple of days after the messageboard discussion came the QPR Statement "Queens Park Rangers Football Club has today (Thursday) had to terminate Paulo De Sousa's employment with the Club with immediate effect. - It came to the Club's attention that Mr De Sousa had, without authority, divulged highly confidential and sensitive information. The Club, with legal advice, responded in this way to protect its position..." (This in turn was followed by several other QPR statements]

- [The Various QPR Announcements and News Reports on Sousa's "Termination" can be found in the QPR Report "Archives" and Sousa's recent comments re his QPR departure can be found here.]

- Meanwhile: The Man QPR Reportedly Considered as Manager Before Deciding on the Sousa Appointment, has been Axed by Napoli.

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FOOTBALL LEAGUE CONSIDERING BRIATORE/QPR TOMORROW (THURSDAY)

Paul Kelso/Telegraph - Names behind Notts County takeover start to emerge from fog
- Notts County have bowed to Football League pressure and handed over information about their mystery backers in an attempt to answer questions about the source of the funds that brought Sven-Goran Eriksson and Sol Campbell to Meadow Lane. ...
- A decision may come as soon as Wednesday, when the Football League board meets to discuss the matter, although the final sign-off may be delayed as the League seeks clarification of certain questions.
- In a meeting that represents a major test of the League's authority, the board will also apply its fit-and-proper persons test to Flavio Briatore, the owner of QPR banned from F1 for life for his role in 'Crashgate', and examine Leeds United's ultimate ownership, which was revealed in a Jersey Court last week not to rest with Ken Bates....Telegraph


David Conn/The Guardian - October 7, 2009
- If Football League is to pass its test, Flavio Briatore must fail hisThe 'fit and proper persons' meeting over QPR, Leeds and Notts County could be a benchmark for the game

- The Football League and its chairman Lord Mawhinney have earned deserved praise over the years for their efforts to introduce regulation and decency to a landscape which, particularly after ITV Digital's 2002 collapse, became a swamp prey to mismanagement and insolvency, even fraud. Mawhinney and his board, supported by the overwhelming majority of league clubs, have stood up strongly when imposing severe points penalties on clubs that have plunged into administration owing millions, then sought to emerge without the necessary 75% agreement of creditors.

- Yet tomorrow, the league faces probably the sternest examination of its regulatory backbone since it became the first football body, in 2004, to introduce a "fit and proper person test" for club directors and owners. That test, banning convicted fraudsters, bankrupts and directors of two football club insolvencies from being 30% owners or directors of clubs, set an upright standard, but has never really been tested. In a meeting that Mawhinney will chair tomorrow, the league's board will have on its agenda the application of the fit and proper person test to three clubs: Notts County, Leeds United and Queens Park Rangers.

- The Notts County issue is whether the league is satisfied that the new owners of the club, the investors in the Qadbak investment fund, which is registered in the tax-haven of the British Virgin Islands, of which little has been publicly revealed, have been identified sufficiently to the league to be passed as "fit and proper people."

- The Leeds United case poses particularly serious questions. As revealed in this column last week, the club's chairman, Ken Bates, has sworn a statement in a Jersey court saying he made an "error" when he previously said that he jointly owned the club's holding company, the Forward Sports Fund. In fact, his statement disclosed, Forward, registered in the tax-haven of then Cayman Islands, is owned by the holders of 10,000 shares, whom the fund's Swiss administrators have refused to identify.
- The league has in its files the names Leeds advanced as the club's owners after Forward took over the club, appointing Bates as the chairman, in January 2005, then again in 2007 when the fund bought Leeds out of a £35m administration. If Bates put himself forward to the league as a 50% owner, which he now says was an "error," Mawhinney and his board must consider whether Bates, and Leeds, breached the league's rules by failing to disclose the true owners. The league must also now ask the club to reveal who its true owners are, and they must be passed as "fit and proper."
- The league's rules state that every club must provide a list of all its directors, and holders of 30% or more of a club's shares, within 14 days of a takeover. Any club that fails to comply with that rule "shall be guilty of misconduct," the rules say, with penalties of "fixed fines". Any club that "intentionally or negligently" provides to the league a "false" declaration as to who its directors and owners are, is deemed "guilty of misconduct". The league has the power to bring disciplinary proceedings against a club and an individual director where that has happened.
- Leeds United and Bates, and his solicitor Mark Taylor, also a Leeds director, have refused to comment so far on how the "error" was made when Bates said he co-owned "management shares" in Forward, or to say who they submitted as the club's owners to the league.

- Of the three cases, the most clear cut appears to be the car crash that is Flavio Briatore. In November 2007, he became a QPR director and majority shareholder via his company, Sarita Capital Investments Inc, which is also registered in the British Virgin Islands. The minority stakes taken by Lakshmi Mittal and Bernie Ecclestone accorded QPR the unlikely status of world's richest club, which has not quite been merited by the limited investment that has followed.

- A fortnight ago, Briatore was hit with that swingeing ban by the World Motor Sport Council, which found that, as the principal of the Renault F1 team, he conspired with Pat Symonds, Renault's executive director of engineering, and the driver Nelson Piquet Jr, that Piquet would deliberately crash his car in the 2008 Singapore grand prix to seek advantage for Renault's other driver, Fernando Alonso. Briatore, according to the WMSC's written decision, "repeatedly insisted he had no knowledge of the affair," which it found was "a deliberate falsehood."

- In its verdict, the WMSC seemed to struggle adequately to express how beyond the pale this scandal was. As the team principal, it said, Briatore was in "the position of highest responsibility," and also Piquet's manager. "Mr Briatore manifestly did not guide Mr Piquet Jr appropriately," the judgment said, "and indeed allowed and seemingly encouraged him to engage in potentially ruinous and life-threatening activities."

- The Football League's "fit and proper persons test" bars people, besides fraudsters, bankrupts and serial insolvents, if they are: "Subject to a ban from involvement in the administration of a sport by a sports governing body or such other similar forms of disqualification as may operate from time to time."

- The ban on Briatore, declared by the WMSC, runs to a fat paragraph that seeks to be comprehensive and all-encompassing enough to reflect the enormity of what Briatore did. "For an unlimited period," it ruled, "the FIA does not intend to sanction any international event, championship, cup, trophy, challenge or series involving Mr Briatore in any capacity whatsoever, or grant any license to any team or other entity engaging Mr Briatore in any capacity whatsoever. It also hereby instructs all officials present at FIA-sanctioned events not to permit Mr Briatore access to any areas under the FIA's jurisdiction. Furthermore, it does not intend to grant or renew any superlicence granted to any driver who is associated (through a management contract or otherwise) with Mr Briatore, or any entity or individual associated with Mr Briatore."

- QPR's spokesman, Ian Taylor, said that neither Briatore nor any member of the club's board is making any public comment before the league meeting on Thursday. Since the WMSC decision was handed down, though, there have been suggestions that somehow this complete exclusion of Briatore from any FIA event, to the point of not physically allowing him in, still leaves him wriggle room to remain in football. The argument appears to be that Briatore has not been banned personally by the WMSC, just that other people have been banned from working with him, and that does not translate into him falling foul of the Football League's fit and proper person test.
- This reasoning appears to contradict both the total nature of the WMSC ban, and the catch-all wording of the Football League's own rule. It is difficult to see how the exclusion of Briatore by the FIA can amount to anything other than "a ban from involvement in the administration of a sport."

- The Football League board must tomorrow make its decision in the public glare on these three clubs, whose circumstances ask different searching questions of the fit and proper person test. The time for congratulating itself just for having such a test has passed. Now the league must prove to the sporting world that it is serious, about upholding its rules to the letter, and being seen to do so. The Guardian


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