ON THIS DAY

Chelsea's Frank Lampard made his 100th appearance for England in a World Cup qualifier in the Ukraine. At the time he was the eighth England player to win a century of caps - the others being David Beckham, Bobby Charlton, Ashley Cole, Steven Gerrard, Bobby Moore, Peter Shilton and Billy Wright. England drew 0-0 in Ukraine and were to qualify for the finals in Brazil. Frank Lampard went on to make 106 England appearances, the last of those being the only match he played in those Brazil finals. That was against Costa Rica which ended in another 0-0 draw - Costa Rica topped the group and England finished bottom and were on their way home!

An impressive display by England who won 4-1 in Croatia in a World Cup qualifier. Theo Walcott became the youngest England player to score a hat-trick with Wayne Rooney scoring the other goal. The future was bright for England - surely?

Those far off days when the income of football clubs was based on fans paying at the turnstiles moved even further into history on September 10th 1998. On that day Manchester United brought to us MUTV - the world’s first TV channel dedicated to a single football club. Launched with the slogan ‘ Get MUTV, get closer to Manchester United ’ for a monthly £4.99 subscription it promised to bring everything Manchester United to the millions of armchair Reds fans throughout the world. Originally jointly owned by Manchester United, ITV and BSkyB as the channel established itself it became wholly owned by the club and another important income stream to be exploited.

The first attempt to offer the British TV public regular live League football started – and finished – on 10th September 1960 when ITV broadcast the Saturday evening fixture between Blackpool and Bolton. In 1953 those two clubs contested a famous Cup Final but by 1960 they were both struggling in the First Division and the fixture was missing its star player – Stanley Matthews – because of injury. It was a dismal match with poor TV ratings and the following Saturday (17th) Arsenal refused permission for their match against Newcastle to be televised as did Spurs the week after that (24th) for their match against Aston Villa. As a result ITV abandoned the project and nearly a quarter of a century passed before there was another live League match on British TV – Tottenham v Nottingham Forest on 2nd October 1983.