Premier League digs deep
The Premier League, for once, showed its nice side yesterday when Richard Scudamore, the chief executive, lined up on the top table as the Football Foundation announced another £135million over the next three years for the development of the grass roots of the game. Scudamore suffered a brief moment of frustration when he realised that the League's £45million donation would almost certainly be overlooked.

But not by Andy Burnham, the Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport, who was sat alongside. Burnham holds up Scudamore as an example of how leading professional sports can dig deep to help youngsters come through.

“Football gets a kicking from time to time,” Burnham said yesterday, “but Richard deserves credit for what he and the Premier League have done for the grass roots. We are going to ask more professional sports to invest the money they make for the benefit of youngsters.”

Burnham is not setting targets for investment, but it is thought that professional sports could siphon off as much as 5 per cent of their spending to channel into the development of youngsters.

After giving professional sport a nudge, Burnham is expected to unveil drastic reform of Sport England next month. He will give governing bodies more control over the money they are given from the public purse, but the trade-off will be that they will be expected to exercise greater accountability.

If ever there need be a dressing-down
A curious exchange of e-mails is drawn to our attention by Grandprix.com, which has been detailing the complaint of Surinder Thatti, head of the FIA Confederation of African Countries in Motorsport, to Morrie Chandler, the World Rally Championship chairman. First, Thatti singles out Sébastien Loeb, the rugged French world champion, as “unshaven, scruffy and with unkempt hair”. Chandler replies that perhaps the television cameras should not cover Loeb and concentrate on tidier types. Have these chaps ever watched football?

Terry Robinson, the Sheffield United chairman, is doubling his worries. As well as watching his side struggle to return to the Barclays Premier League from the Coca-Cola Championship, he is now chairman of Ferencvaros, the Hungarian club acquired in February by Terry McCabe, chairman of Sheffield United plc. Apart from overseeing the building of a new 25,000-seat stadium, Robinson will grapple with a basketcase of a club trying, like United, to get out of football's second tier.

Capello clueless
Good news that Fabio Capello is four-square behind FA plans to develop the new National Football Centre in Burton upon Trent, which happens to be in Staffordshire, but has been lambasted by critics as though it was in Norway or somewhere, instead of a mere 130 miles from Wembley. The England manager confessed that he does not know where the site is, either.