It didn't quite come off. The result was not the one their
many followers would have wanted.

But still, the performance given by Liverpool's team against
Chelsea during
Tuesday night's astonishing Champions League tie was the most fitting tribute
imaginable on the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster.

Never once did their players give up what appeared a forlorn
cause. Where there is time, there is hope was the message delivered by those on
the pitch. In short, it was the perfect eulogy.

If that sounds trite in the context of a horror in which 96
people died, over 700 were injured

Nobody understands what Manchester United is all about more than Alex Ferguson.

An enthusiast of history, he made it his business from the moment he arrived from Aberdeen 23 years ago to study and then absorb what the institution was all about.

He knows that, buried deep in the club's DNA, is the requirement to play attractive, fluent, persuasive football, an approach summed up by the Stretford End's insistent chant of "attack, attack, attack".

But Ferguson also knows that winning is the thing that really counts. A pragmatist at heart, he has long balanced his team's attacking instincts with

As the last day of the Premier League season hoves into view, there is only one direction in which eyes will be trained. And no, it's not on which team will manage to avoid the curse of qualifying for the Europa League. As with every year, as the season closes it is the desperate scramble for survival that quickens the pulse (and lengthens the queue for the toilet).

As the hapless plight of Southampton, Charlton and Norwich this season demonstrate, the Premier League is the only place to be. Ejection from its monied portals can lead to ignominy and ruin. With every year that passes this

Here's a story that escaped wider notice this week, but should be compulsory reading in places such as Blackburn, Bolton and Wigan. Indeed it should be pinned to the boardroom door at St James' Park, where it really ought to be committed to memory by every Newcastle United director. Or at least those Newcastle United directors capable of reading.

Bradford City announced this week that they had sold more than 10,000 season tickets for the third year on the bounce. This is a remarkable statistic given that City are now in the fourth tier of English football, have hardly suggested over the past

He's back. And judging by the photographed expression on the faces of his charges as they trotted behind him after his first training session, five months away walking his dogs hasn't made Roy Keane any less intimidating. This is a man who can freeze a room of hardened hacks with just a glance. Imagine what he does to a dressing room full of young footballers. No wonder the poor things looked terrified.

The return of the finest player of his generation to club management is great news for almost everyone. For the fans of Ipswich Town, his unexpected appointment has immediately transformed

Andy Murray hasn't yet sustained a grass stain down the side of his new, retro Fred Perry shorts at Wimbledon. No English batsman has yet returned to the pavilion, looking shame-faced and bamboozled following the first blistering Mitchell Johnson Yorker of the Ashes series. Tiger Woods has yet to leave the rest of the field in his wash on the Turnberry dunes in the Open.

The great summer of sport has hardly got underway. But already we all know what we will be doing come the beginning of August, already we have planned our autumns and already are working out who would most benefit from a

£1.8 million
for eight matches.

Or £225,000
a game.

Or £2,500 a
minute.

Now we know
the cost of a Messiah on Tyneside. No wonder Alan Shearer decided to forsake
his comfortable perch on the Match of the Day sofa. No wonder he decided Gary
Lineker was not necessarily the most convivial Saturday night company. Frankly
for that sort of money he would have been tempted to try and save Charlton
Athletic.

Mind, if he
does it, if Shearer proves that a total lack of managerial experience is no bar
to success, if he does significantly better than that other dugout rookie Diego
Maradona and manages

Before his team's Champions League tie with Chelsea, the Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez said something interesting. Responding to a journalist's question about Alex Ferguson's recent generous comments about his old sparring partner Arsene Wenger, Benitez suggested that the Manchester United boss was happy to be magnanimous because he no longer regarded his Arsenal counterpart as a threat.

In which case, if Benitez's psycho-analysis is correct, you wonder what Fergie will be saying over the next few weeks about the Frenchman. While it is undoubtedly true that Arsenal's chances of winning the