David Sheepshanks’s beloved club used to be run by those colourful bon viveurs John and Patrick Cobbold, the brothers who said their idea of a crisis was running out of white wine in the boardroom. Sheepshanks has shared his memories with The Times as he publishes his autobiography. He has survived bowel cancer. When Sheepshanks took over as chairman in 1995 he ended decades of the Cobbolds’ benign dynasty. He tells a story of a game against Arsenal when the Portman Road boardroom was stocked with six bottles of gin, six bottles of whisky, six bottles of white wine, six bottles of red wine, and six sausage rolls. By the end of the day most of the booze was long gone but there were still five untouched sausage rolls. “And Patrick Cobbold held an inquest as to who the hell had eaten the one sausage roll.” “Ipswich was a beautifully run club. But if I draw an analogy in the nicest possible way, it was sort of like a golf club. It was all quite staid and traditional. I...
The value of English football’s biggest clubs is spiralling. The new investment attaches a valuation of around £5.5bn to Liverpool, eclipsing the 2024 arrival of Sir Jim Ratcliffe into Manchester United, where a 25 per cent stake had valued the club at £4.3bn. The figures are stretching beyond what most industry experts — such as Forbes and Sportico — consider to be the value of these clubs. International advisory firm Football Benchmark, another to compile annual assessments of Europe’s biggest clubs, valued Liverpool at between £3.9bn and £4.2bn in its 2026 rankings, with Chelsea listed at between £2.5bn and £2.7bn. More than £3.1bn was distributed centrally among the Premier League’s 20 clubs last season, almost double the £1.63bn handed out in the 2015-16 campaign. It means the biggest clubs, including Liverpool, can now expect to generate annual revenues north of £700m, with aspirations to eventually follow Real Madrid beyond the £1bn mark in the years to come. Matchday r...