If both results go Wigan’s way, and assuming a profitable afternoon in his 456 JJB Sports shops, then Whelan will only need Poole’s Pies (proprietor: D Whelan) to sell more sausage rolls than usual for his day to be a happy one indeed.
We meet in his office at the headquarters of the JJB Sports empire It is, you will not be shocked to learn, in Wigan. While Wigan Warriors, the rugby league club he owns, contest the Super League Grand Final against Bradford Bulls, Wigan Athletic, his football club, play Gillingham at home needing a win or conceivably just a draw (depending on how Sheffield United fare at Millwall) to return to the top of the First Division. For Dave “Mr Wigan” Whelan, this could be the day of days. Mr Kelly’s publicist, Jenny Stanley-Clarke, said the club’s action was “unprecedented”. She said: “It is believed that the book will reveal that it is not only the players’ conduct which could, at times, be called into question.” Mr Kelly, a former SAS soldier, left the club 18 months ago after 12 years’ service.. Manchester United sought an injunction yesterday to prevent the publication of a “tell-all” book by the club’s former head of security Michael “Ned” Kelly. The News of the World newspaper confirmed it would not run serialised extracts from the book, as scheduled tomorrow, because of the legal action.
A High Court injunction hearing is scheduled for next week.

He has to borrow a few shards of ice from his potential usurper, Sven Goran Eriksson Beating Arsenal would also be a big help.. In the meantime, the Italian has an extremely pressing imperative He has to resist his crazier impulses. Such a record would leave Chelsea handily placed at the halfway stage of the Premiership race, and no doubt that is the appeal of Eriksson for Abramovich.But if Eriksson might be a safe hand at a hugely expensive tiller, as he proved when getting the then mega-rich Lazio past the finishing post in Italy a few years ago, is he a Wenger or an Alex Ferguson, with the zeal and the flair to make a team not of reliability to a certain level but one equipped to keep on winning the big prizes? The evidence in Japan last summer, when England were so bankrupt of initiative when Brazil were down to 10 men, was not so encouraging.This must be a caution on Abramovich when he comes to consider the future of Claudio Ranieri. It is the Eriksson way and it has brought England just one defeat in 19 competitive games. Trade on the weaknesses of the opposition, hope that Thierry Henry has one of his more distracted days and the Arsenal defence goes AWOL.

Still, it is just one lapse this season and a redeemable one at this stage.We know well enough how Eriksson would play it at Highbury today – 4-4-2, which would be right, no passion, no hunches or flights of fancy No Tinkerman routine Just grind away at the law of football averages, boys. If you see football as a passion as much as a business, if the game is your adventure rather than just another branch of the money empire, maybe you might at least be taken a little with the living drama of Ranieri’s style.Of course, men who turn themselves into billionaires in a society as rapaciously competitive as that of modern Russia tend to develop a low tolerance for expensive mistakes, and Ranieri’s reckless approach to the vast earnings of the Champions’ League surely comes into that category. You would be bound to observe the skill of his evasive tactics and compare them to Ranieri’s full-blooded embrace of disaster. But then perhaps you might have developed more than a sneaking regard for the crazy Italian.

Indeed, there he was with another big tournament qualification in his hand, reluctantly conceding that he was committed to England, at least for next summer’s European Championship finals.If you were Abramovich with that huge investment, you would probably be impressed by the sheer worldliness of the Swedish Ice Man. At times, Ranieri runs to danger with the self-destructive lunge of a child and his own survival demands that he stops it. Eriksson walks coolly in the opposite direction.Those who said that his position was spineless in the face of the threat of a players’ strike, who believed in their bones that any football man worth his salt would have hammered the ridiculously irresponsible, thoughtless posturing of the rebels, were soon enough obliged to recognise that a course of action which seemed nothing short of moral cowardice left him without the hint of a flesh wound. No, what Eriksson did was something else entirely – but it happened to be in complete contrast to the work of Ranieri. Not an achievement to warm the blood or create a particle of belief that he has the qualities of vision and character that mark down the truly inspirational football man capable of winning a World Cup or a European Championship. Eriksson tip-toed not only to survival but triumph.Triumph of a kind, that is. Abramovich, understandably, found it hard to conceal his pain and now there are two reasons why the rumours attached to Sven Goran Eriksson and a possible move to Stamford Bridge have hardened so markedly.One is the meltdown against Besiktas.