The administrator, Brian Jackson, said he would begin steps to resign his post if the deal was not given the go-ahead.The Second Division club have no ground and no assets. All they possess is the players’ registrations, and three major creditors, including the former owner Jack Steedman, are each owed six-figure sums.A consortium led by the businessman David McGhie is waiting in the wings, but a creditors meeting yesterday failed to produce an agreement.. Kieron Dyer’S season looks to be over after a scan revealed that he needs surgery to remove a cyst which has resulted in a troublesome recurring shin injury. Kieron Dyer’S season looks to be over after a scan revealed that he needs surgery to remove a cyst which has resulted in a troublesome recurring shin injury.
The Newcastle midfielder will have the first operation tomorrow and a second a fortnight later. Yesterday the Magpies released a statement which confirmed that he will be out of action for “several weeks”, but privately, the manager, Bobby Robson, is facing up to the prospect of losing arguably his most inventive player for the rest of the season.The enforced break is certain to rule Dyer out of contention for England’s World Cup qualifiers against Finland and Albania later this month and possibly Greece in June.Tottenham’s Republic of Ireland full-back Stephen Carr has been ruled out for six more weeks which will force the Ireland coach, Mick McCarthy, into making the first change in his World Cup starting line-up during the current qualifying campaign.McCarthy has sent out the same starting XI in the previous three Group Two qualifiers against the Netherlands, Portugal and Estonia and his team are still unbeaten with five points out of a possible nine. But Carr is set to fly to Germany today for a hernia operation and as well as being a blow to the Spurs manager, George Graham, it provides a new test for McCarthy for the qualifiers away to Cyprus and Andorra at the end of this month.Carr has been out of action since Christmas with a groin injury and although he tried a come back as a substitute against Manchester City three weeks ago he has had to accept the need for surgery.The American striker Brian McBride is out of Preston’s promotion push after picking up a serious eye injury in a World Cup game. McBride has stayed in the United States to see a specialist after he was elbowed by a Mexican player in a qualifying game in Ohio.The North End manager Davie Moyes is waiting on reports but is not considering McBride for the game against Crystal Palace tomorrow.

Moyes said: “Brian is as brave as a lion, so it is no surprise he’s taken an injury. We hope he will get the all-clear to come back next week.”Footballers’ agents will have to apply for licences from their national football associations and will have to sign a code of conduct under new rules launched by football’s world governing body yesterday.The new Fifa rules aim to make the relationship between players, clubs and agents more transparent and impose tougher rules on agents and their clients “New Fifa players’ agents regulations… should allow better supervision of the activities of players’ agents and their respective clients,” Fifa said in a statement.Would-be agents will have to pass a written examination held twice a year by national associations instead of the current personal interview by members of Fifa. Candidates will no longer have to make an £84,000 deposit, but will have to take out insurance to cover any compensation claims from players, clubs or other agents..

Wembley should never have been chosen as the site for the new national stadium, Ken Bates and Sir Rodney Walker, the two men who have been in charge of the troubled project, said yesterday. Wembley should never have been chosen as the site for the new national stadium, Ken Bates and Sir Rodney Walker, the two men who have been in charge of the troubled project, said yesterday.
The pair were giving evidence to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport parliamentary committee, which is investigating why Britain struggles to secure major sporting events and has difficulty building major venues.Bates, who resigned from the board of Wembley National Stadium Limited (WNSL) after being replaced as the chairman by Sir Rodney earlier this year, told the committee that Wembley’s infrastructure is “a bloody disgrace” due to “a failure of successive governments”. He also recalled his reaction when first asked to take charge of the national stadium project in 1997, and produced a piece of paper on which he had written a note to himself at the time “To date this is a total cock-up,” it read. “Why didn’t we go to Manchester or Birmingham?”He said yesterday: “I advocated Manchester but also thought we could take the national team’s games around the country as they do in Italy.

But by that time the die was cast.”Sir Rodney echoed Bates’s views, telling the committee that Birmingham had originally been identified as an ideal location. It seems that but for the reticence of some officials in the Solihull council planning department a few years ago the nation might now have a flagship stadium in the west Midlands.Wembley was ultimately chosen because the football authorities pushed for that venue and because London was perceived as the only realistic place in England to stage future world athletics championships and Olympic Games. Bates was seen as the ideal man to spearhead the venture but was replaced by Sir Rodney after the project failed to raise £410m funding from City institutions. Bates subsequently stepped down from the WNSL board and was critical of a lack of support in his resignation letter to the Football Association “Even Jesus Christ only had one Pontius Pilate,” he wrote.

“I had a whole team of them.”Bates re-iterated yesterday that, in his opinion, the failure to attract funding was largely the fault of the sports minister, Kate Hoey. Bates said Hoey’s involvement had led to a 19-month delay in the £660m venture and increased costs by up to £30m.”Since Kate Hoey was appointed as the sports minister there has been nothing but criticism and undermining of the project,” Bates said “I don’t think the Government should have interfered. They should have been standing on the sidelines cheering us on, not knocking us. Kate Hoey consistently undermined us, feeding stories, based on ignorance, to the press.”One of the problems with the sports minister was that she never contacted me for a briefing to take her through the project. Within two weeks of her taking office she had changed designs without any consultation. She was not qualified to do so and it is not the Government’s job to get involved in these sorts of things.”Sir Rodney said yesterday that he still hopes the new Wembley will be open by the end of 2004.