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oic Wacquant, perhaps the only French sociologist who spent at least three years in the Woodlawn Gym in Chicago, Illinois, boxing with both amateurs and professionals, emerged from the experience strong, spry and of a mind to punch out some books and papers.

Wacquant is now a researcher at the Centre de Sociologie Européenne in Paris, and a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley.

His book, Body Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer, published in 2003 by Oxford University Press, serves up more than 200 pages of detail. Wacquant writes that, prior to entering "a boxing gym in a neighbourhood of Chicago's black ghetto, I had never practised that sport or even considered trying it. I thus found myself in the situation of the perfect novice". That was in 1988.

Three to six sessions a week he trained - shadowboxing, working the speed bag, sparring - and eventually fought in a Golden Gloves tournament. "I even thought for a while of aborting my academic career to 'turn pro'," he writes, "and thereby remain with my friends from the gym and its coach, DeeDee Armour, who had become a second father for me."

The book grew in part from a paper Wacquant scribbled during his first summer there, "when getting my nose broken during a sparring session had forced me into a period of inactivity propicious to a reflexive return on my novitiate in progress".

We get analysis, but best of all we get a fist/hand account of the action: "Jabs from me, blocked by his fists, versus jabs from him, blocked by my nose. I'm better able to see his punches coming, but I still don't move fast enough. He lands another punch on my face, a right that makes my headgear turn sideways. DeeDee growls 'Move yo' head, Louie!' I'm trying!"

A second book, to be called The Passion of the Pugilist, will, Wacquant says, address "the dialectic of desire and domination in the social genesis of the boxer's vocation", "the work of the trainer as virile mothering", "confrontation in the ring as a homoerotic ritual of masculinisation", and other topics that did not fit or had not matured in time to go into Body Soul.

But one needn't entirely wait. Waquant has published monographs galore. The titles, like the text, are sweaty admixtures of sociologicalese and pulp non-fiction. Among his more hard-hitting papers one finds A Fleshpeddler at Work: Power, Pain, and Profit in the Prizefighting Economy and Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labour Among Professional Boxers.

A paper called Whores, Slaves, And Stallions - Languages Of Exploitation And Accommodation Among Prizefighters, in the journal Body and Society, hard-boils down to this:

"The boxer's experience of corporeal exploitation is expressed in three kindred idioms ... The first likens the fighter-manager combo to the prostitute-pimp duet; the second depicts the ring as a plantation and promoters as latter-day slave masters; the third intimates that boxers are used in the manner of livestock".

* Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
* The original picture used to illustrate this article was removed on 12 January as it had been captioned wrongly and was not relevant.

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Boxing proves a hit for French sociologist

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oic Wacquant, perhaps the only French sociologist who spent at least three years in the Woodlawn Gym in Chicago, Illinois, boxing with both amateurs and professionals, emerged from the experience strong, spry and of a mind to punch out some books and papers.

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Anton Ferdinand: Football, Racism and Me

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Anton Ferdinand: Football, Racism and Me

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Former footballer Anton Ferdinand explores the issue of racism in the game from a personal perspective, speaking for the first time about his highly publicised incident with John Terry in 2011.

Former professional footballer Anton Ferdinand explores the issue of racial abuse in the game from a personal perspective. Following a sharp rise in reported incidents of racial abuse in football, Anton talks for the first time about his own highly publicised 2011 incident with the former England captain John Terry. Anton wants to understand his own story and find out what needs to be done to address the problem of racism in the game today. He also confronts the online abuse he has experienced since, which has affected his mental health, his career and the lives of his loved ones.

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BBC One - Anton Ferdinand: Football, Racism and Me

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Former footballer Anton Ferdinand explores the issue of racism in the game.

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The Football Supporters' Federation is calling on fans to join a march on the Premier League and Football League headquarters on 14 August to protest against spiralling ticket prices and demand "affordable football for all". This demonstration, setting off from London's Marble Arch, has become an annual fixture, as clubs have shown no inclination to use their TV rights windfalls to reduce historically inflated ticket prices.

For this forthcoming 2014-15 season, a handful of clubs (see table), including Tottenham Hotspur, Swansea City and West Bromwich Albion, have frozen ticket prices at the same level as last season. Manchester City, the Premier League champions bankrolled by the Abu Dhabi oil fortune of Sheikh Mansour, stand out with a benevolent £299 cheapest adult season ticket, which bears comparison with prices through football's history when the sport was built and fondly referred to as "the people's game". Such tickets are limited, however, and prices at the Etihad Stadium go up to a high of £860 while matchday ticket costs, yet to be confirmed, were the target of complaints from some away fans last season.

Arsenal, whose £62 away-ticket price sparked a near-boycott by City fans when the two clubs met last season, will, as ever in modern times, be pricey to support. The cheapest adult season ticket at the Emirates Stadium is £1,020 - although that includes early-round cup matches, making for 26 games in total. The most expensive tickets, at a club that began building its new stadium in 2004 with the express aim of maximising income from more supporters, are more than £2,000 for a ticket and £129.50 for the most expensive single matchday ticket.

Such prices charged to supporters for watching their English clubs are a culture change from the century of the game's development that passed before the First Division clubs broke away from the Football League, forming the Premier League and keep all ofing the money from the new pay-TV deal in 1992.

In the 1989-90 season, for example, during which Lord Justice Taylor produced his final report on the wider issue of football ground safety, there were thousands of tickets in Old Trafford's standing accommodation where fans could watch Manchester United against top opposition for £3.50. Adjusted for retail-price inflation in the 24 years since, that ticket would now cost £6.94, just under a 100% increase. United's lowest-priced ticket for this season, of which there are very many fewer than in the days of standing, will be £31.

That is cheap compared to £65.50 at Arsenal (for the highest category games), £55 at West Ham United with several clubs charging more, but United's £31 price nevertheless represents a 785% increase since 1990.

At Liverpool, where prices have been increased significantly since the 2010 takeover of the then financially-troubled club by John Henry's Boston-based Fenway Sports Group, the 1989-90 cheapest ticket price, accommodating thousands of fans on the Kop, was £4. This season, Liverpool's cheapest matchday ticket will be £46, an increase of 1,150%.

Liverpool's cheapest Anfield season ticket is £710, significantly more than at City, United and all clubs outside London; in fact it is the Premier League's fourth most expensive lowest-priced season ticket after Arsenal's £1,020 (for 26 matches), Chelsea's £750 and the £745 that Tottenham Hotspur charge at White Hart Lane. Liverpool's chief executive, Ian Ayre, has made it clear that the expansion of Anfield, for which preparatory work has begun with the demolition of surrounding houses, will be aimed at making more money for the club from fans, not reducing prices.

Kevin Miles, the FSF's chief executive, describes high pricing as one issue which unites modern supporters, most of whom grew up and became loyal to their clubs in the pre-Premier League era. "There is an assumption that football has become a middle-class pastime, but I don't necessarily see that," said Miles. "I see traditional supporters stretching themselves, paying prices they think are unreasonable, to do the thing they love. It is such a captive market, clubs can squeeze people in a way other businesses can't."

Premier League clubs point to family sections that offer reduced ticket prices for both parents and children, and more clubs are now not charging fans full price at 16. Several, including Everton, Newcastle United, Manchester United and Hull City, have a concession or student price up to 20 or 21. The FSF argues that many people of that age are still students, on apprenticeships or in low-paid jobs and that football, which was celebrated as a constant in young adults' lives, is now largely pricing them out.

The Premier League acknowledges that the average age of a Premier League club supporter is 41, but has claimed that young people are not priced out, that the highest proportion of fans are young, around 10% are from an ethnic minority background and "around a quarter" are women. However, these percentages are not a picture of the crowds regularly attending matches on a given weekend, where nothing like that proportion of women or ethnic minority fans are seen in grounds.

In fact, a Premier League spokesman has explained that the figure takes a total of all people who have attended a single match across a whole season, taking no account of how often each went, then calculates the percentages of young people, women and ethnic minority attendees.

In Germany the football association and Bundesliga have maintained standing areas throughout, and insisted on keeping the game affordable for the young and less well off who have long been the backbone of support. This season at Bayern Munich, still 75% owned by supporters, Bundesliga champions, 2013 Champions League winners and suppliers of the bulk of Joachim Löw's World Cup-winning team, thousands of fan-members can buy a season ticket to stand for €144 (£114).

Here, the fans are marching on Premier League HQ to keep alive the tradition that football is not a business that should charge its followers whatever it can, but a game that belongs to everybody.

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Premier League ticket prices defy the very culture that built the game | David Conn

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The Football Supporters' Federation is calling on fans to join a march on the Premier League and Football League headquarters on 14 August to protest against spiralling ticket prices and demand "affordable football for all".

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McIlroy and Murray: A tale of two 'middle-class' sports

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Some think the sheer cost of tennis and its middle-class image is stopping Britain producing champions. So why is British golf flying high?

This is the time of year when a rash of early exits by British players at Wimbledon prompts a familiar bout of soul-searching among fans and officials.

While British tennis struggles to replicate the achievements of Fred Perry, 75 years ago, a sport with a similar social status offers a stunning contrast.

In golf, the UK now dominates the world. On top of the stunning victory in the US Open of Rory McIlroy, the UK boasts the world number one and two in the form of Luke Donald and Lee Westwood. With four entrants in golf's top 10, the UK outranks even the golf powerhouse of the US.

The failure to create a similar situation in tennis has variously been blamed on lack of mental strength, poor facilities, confused funding choices, and inadequate coaching. There are also critics that suggest that the cost of playing tennis in the UK or the sport's middle-class image is robbing it of potential future stars.

Perry was the son of a Stockport cotton spinner. But the two most successful British men of recent years - Tim Henman and Andy Murray - both came from middle-class backgrounds. Henman was the son of a lawyer who could afford to have a tennis court in the garden.

It's a dirtier, rougher, rawer image in France. Wimbledon does us no favours presenting this squeaky clean image
Paul Jessop, Tennis for Free

Wimbledon on the BBC BBC Sport: Wimbledon tweets
Murray was sent to Barcelona when he was 15, with the bulk of the £25,000 a year cost paid for by the family. Heather Watson, tipped to be British women's number one, also had to go overseas at great expense. "The message is you have to leave the country to get better at tennis," says the Guardian sportswriter Barney Ronay.

The Murrays lived 500 yards from a tennis club. When Judy Murray's sons needed to play 12 months of the year, they had access to the indoor courts at Stirling University, which was only five miles away.

"If that centre wasn't there and we'd had to drive 40 or 50 miles to Glasgow or Edinburgh then Andy and Jamie may never have gone down the tennis route," Murray tells the BBC News website.

And even for those who stay in Britain, tennis is not a cheap sport. Paul Jessop, chief executive at the charity Tennis for Free, estimates that a youngster who wants to compete will have to spend £400 on equipment and £35 a week on private coaching.

Club membership will cost about around £70 a year for a standard club or £100 a month at a top tennis facility. As players progress, some families have decided to invest up to £40,000 a year of their own money. "I was chatting to the mother of one of our talented kids the other day. She said that supporting his tennis was like getting a mortgage," Jessop says.

The demands on parents are huge, says Murray, who has just launched the charity Set4Sport. As the boys improved they needed to travel further afield to compete against better players. Competition entry fees were £20 or £30 to enter. Add to that petrol costs and large amounts of time ferrying, waiting and watching, and it places huge demands on parents.

Then comes the national and international competition. "I don't think anyone understands how expensive and time consuming it is to bring someone up through British tennis," Murray says. "I can understand why a lot of families feel they can't afford it."

Golf is also perceived as expensive and middle-class. A set of golf clubs can set you back a substantial sum, and a round of 18 holes at a municipal course might cost £10-20. But in many areas, the nearest course would be a private club which would cost much more.

To pay for Rory's golfing development, father Gerry worked 100 hours a week as a barman and cleaner, while mother Rosie did the nightshift at a local factory. "I'm a working class man," Gerry McIlroy declared on the day of his son's US Open triumph.

In fact in Northern Ireland, Scotland and parts of north-western England, golf is more affordable and has a less middle-class image than in the home counties. At the Holywood course where McIlroy learnt his game, juniors pay less than £20 a month. Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood are other top golfers who don't fit the sport's middle-class stereotype.

Every golf club has a professional whose job is to bring on the best juniors. "There's a massive pool of coaches for youngsters as they come into the game," says Peter Dawson, chief executive of the R&A, the sport's governing body outside the US and Mexico.

Once young golfers show promise they are taken abroad during the winter for warm weather play over the winter. Tennis does not have the same coaching structure.

The cost of junior tennis

Babolat Nadal junior tennis racket: £17.99

Adidas tennis T-shirt: £21

Adidas tennis shorts: £12

Nike city court trainers: £23

Wilson tennis balls pack of 12: £18

Private coaching: £25 an hour

Club membership: 80p- a week at basic club. £25 a month at David Lloyd

Court fees for park courts: £5 an hour

Sources: John Lewis, Islington Tennis Centre, LTA, David Lloyd Leisure Group

The Lawn Tennis Association argues that it is investing in future Andy Murrays and Tim Henmans. The sport's governing body has poured £250m into British tennis over the last five years, largely from the surplus generated at Wimbledon. Last year the LTA spent £19m on tennis coaching and infrastructure and £13.4m on developing talent both at junior and elite level.

But Andy Murray apart there is not another British man in the top 100 and no sign of a budding Nadal or Federer. The situation for British women is slightly different, with two women in the top 100 but no-one anywhere near the top 20.

In 2007 the LTA's National Tennis Centre in Roehampton opened at a cost of £40m to support the elite end of the game. But many argue the centre is barely used.

Judy Murray argues that what is lacking is strong regional clubs that can act as hubs to the hugely important small clubs up and down the land. "If someone had given me £40m I would have built 40 £1m centres. It's more important to grow the game than to stack it all at the top level."

According to the LTA, over 420,000 people in the UK play tennis regularly. But Jessop says in recent years tennis clubs have closed and the number of players has fallen significantly since the 1980s.

Judy Murray's view

When he was 15, Andy went to train full time in Barcelona. It cost about £25,000 a year for everything and is like going to a boarding school that specialises in tennis.

The international environment is important. At the time he was the best in Britain and one of the best in Europe.

It's too easy in Britain because you are a big fish in a small pond. In Spain there are thousands of tennis players who come from all over the world. If you have talented young players you need to keep challenging them.

The atmosphere in Barcelona did that - he was a 15-year-old taking on players aged 19 to 26.

If he'd stayed in the UK he probably would have been part of a group of four 15-year-olds.

And tennis can be a lonely business. In Barcelona he had those likeminded sparring partners and a pack of players to travel with to the major tournaments.

France, which has nine men in the top 100, has about four times as many tennis clubs and many more people playing the game regularly. Without the critical mass of people taking up the game, the UK will have to keep sending their best players abroad to learn their trade.

Some argue the whole culture of the game is wrong in the UK. And cost is a frequent complaint.

The LTA highlights 132 beacon sites that offer some free tennis. But, Tony Hawks the tennis loving comedian who co-founded Tennis For Free, says that weekends - the time when kids want to play - are excluded from the offer.

Tennis for Free runs free coaching on Saturdays in south London and argues that for £3m a year the LTA could roll the scheme out in every borough in the country. But with children expected to pay £5 an hour and club membership on top many are being put off.

There's also the class issue. The reason tennis has a middle-class image is because that's not far off the truth, Hawks argues.

His colleague Jessop says that tennis clubs in France have a totally different feeling. "It's a dirtier, rougher, rawer image in France. Wimbledon does us no favours presenting this squeaky clean image."

But former professional Andrew Castle says Wimbledon and tennis can appeal to the working classes. He grew up in a chip shop and a council house but was captivated by Wimbledon as a child.

The event is one Britain can be hugely proud of, he says. "There's universal appeal. It's a fantastic sporting event, run in a very professional way and makes vast sums of money. If we didn't have Wimbledon - where would we be?"

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Why is UK bad at tennis and good at golf?

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Some think the sheer cost of tennis and its middle-class image is stopping Britain producing champions. So why is British golf flying high? This is the time of year when a rash of early exits by British players at Wimbledon prompts a familiar bout of soul-searching among fans and officials.

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Liverpool's failure to build a new stadium has let down city and fans

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Contemplating Liverpool's revised plan to stay within Anfield's confined, squalid streets and enlarge two sides of the ground, the worry intrudes that for the short-term cash flow of relatively new US owners, the club could regret missing a once-in-a-generation chance to build the long-promised new stadium. It is striking that there has been so little questioning of the decision in October, never fully explained, to scrap that project, to which Liverpool city council and the wider community were signed up and planning permission secured.

Largely this was because supporters had waited so long, for the shiny vision to become reality, that, like the council, they grew sceptical and just wanted something certain to happen. John Henry's Fenway Sports Group made it clear from when it bought Liverpool in October 2010 that a brand new 60,000-seat stadium looked very expensive for the 15,000 extra seats it would gain. So Ian Ayre, the club's managing director, presented the scrapping of the stadium, and reversion to the Anfield plan of 14 years ago, as "a great leap forward".

The council, which wholly supported the new stadium as the basis for planned regeneration of the whole battered area, is now supporting Liverpool staying at Anfield with compulsory purchase powers to ensure the removal of residents whose homes the club want to demolish. Regeneration is earmarked around an enlarged Anfield, and the space controversially cleared in Stanley Park will never see a stadium.

Yet after the 20-year legacy of blight the club deepened by buying up odd houses and leaving them empty, this is a historic failure to make good on the promise of the new stadium. These major landmarks are very difficult and expensive for football clubs, local authorities and communities to achieve. It is usually easier not to go through with them than to bring them to fruition and, at the time they are called off, it is often a relief, as it was to many in Liverpool, if not the local residents, in October.

It felt a little like that when Everton, across the park in Goodison, called off the proposal for a new stadium on the waterfront Kings Dock, after boardroom and shareholder squabbles and a struggle to find the money. History, though, puts the day-to-day difficulties into perspective. It is now accepted that the Kings Dock was Everton's big chance to propel themselves into the modern era and genuinely compete as a big club, and they lost it. A decade later, they are still at outdated Goodison, their £81m turnover a quarter of Manchester United's, punching above their weight due to David Moyes and careful husbandry, the future uncertain.

History may not consider Liverpool's retreat under FSG, back to the 1999 plan to expand Anfield, quite the great leap forward interpreted by Ayre. It will of course take into account the ballooning costs of a stadium, from perhaps £140m or less when it was conceived, to the £400m club sources said it would be now, even in a recession and with the construction industry desperate for work.

The long view will see Old Trafford's relentless expansion to 76,000 seats, the Emirates and Etihad Stadiums which incorporate greatly more facilities than even the expanded Anfield will be able to, plus some space around them. The very idea for a new stadium on Stanley Park came from seeing how constricted Anfield still will be by its surrounding terraced streets even if expanded.

The council became enthusiastic for the new stadium because it was a grander plan for the area's revival. The stadium itself was intended to be a statement of ambition for a better economic future in Liverpool after the economic devastation and consequent decline of the 1980s. The land on which Anfield stands was to be developed into a commercial centre intended to bring real businesses to the area. The horrors of the housing would be dealt with as part of that whole.

Then the club were sold - the sole rationale being that rich owners would arrive to build a new stadium. It will not make great reading in the history of Liverpool that owners finally came who decided they could not afford the plan and went back to one the club could have got on and built in 1999. It risks making the council, too, look like it has not achieved the best possible for Liverpool, compared with Manchester's. It used the 2002 Commonwealth Games to lever in public money for the new stadium which City occupied, thereby attracting a genuinely wealthy owner prepared to massively invest, as neither Everton nor Liverpool, lacking a new stadium, have been able to.

Funding is difficult and neither club has dared even approach making a vigorous case for a shared stadium, for which both know there is a deal to be done.

Instead, FSG, which may not be the owners of Liverpool very long itself, decided it makes more financial sense to stay put.

That is true now, of course, so the drawing board is chucked in a skip and design costs are written off - but such an opportunity for a new era will not come again for a very long time.

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Liverpool's failure to build a new stadium has let down city and fans | David Conn

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Contemplating Liverpool's revised plan to stay within Anfield's confined, squalid streets and enlarge two sides of the ground, the worry intrudes that for the short-term cash flow of relatively new US owners, the club could regret missing a once-in-a-generation chance to build the long-promised new stadium.

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Liverpool's football activists are part of a wider social movementDoreen Massey

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Liverpool's football activists are part of a wider social movementDoreen Massey

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The ownership of football clubs, writes Martin Kettle, does not matter. The ownership of Liverpool Football Club, in particular, ranks among those things "about which one does not care and which don't matter either". I don't care whether or not he cares, but it does matter.

The current nature of ownership of many of our clubs is a particular manifestation of the larger recent dominance of the economy by neoliberalism and financialisation. It is one way those huge shifts in economy and society touch people's lives. And it is through such specifics that people encounter, and learn to address, the more general political issues. If we are to build opposition to this society in which everything is for sale and everything has a price, then it has to start at ground level, from the myriad concrete ways in which people are affected. The ownership of our football clubs is one of them.

A social movement has grown up around Liverpool FC. It began, of course, with opposition to Hicks and Gillett. Its activities are multifarious and imaginative: rallies, marches, email campaigns, lobbying, banners, songs, videos, fanzines and an attempt to take ownership of the club through establishing a credit union.

One day in Manhattan, Hicks was spotted by a fan, a financial consultant. Guessing that Hicks was there seeking funds, the fan sent images to his partner, who put them on Twitter, where they were picked up by a cabby in Liverpool, who posted a form letter online. In an hour, emails were flowing in to the financial institutions on that Manhattan street. It was all written up in the Wall Street Journal. A small example.

This is a movement that certainly has its internal disagreements, but it is remarkable for its social mix, its international nature, its careful tone (and debate over this), and its depth of knowledge. As SaveLFC says, in calling for people to lend their skills, "Ordinary people did all this". This is an organic creation drawing on and developing a popular and collective expertise. Stand on the Kop, read a blog, walk down a train on the way to a match, and you'll find it being developed.

Still, isn't it all over now? The club's been sold. One set of Americans has gone, another installed. The debt has been cleared.

First, for many of us this was not just about "Americans" or even "foreign" ownership. There are certainly localist hostilities, but the club's fanbase is global, the campaign itself international. The supporter-based ShareLiverpoolFC, facing geographical restrictions on where it could offer shares, appealed to Norwegian fans, especially lawyers, for information about financial regulations there. An optimistic reading is that it is in movements such as these that some of the tensions of local/global are being addressed.

Second, what's at issue for me and many others is the whole model of ownership. Spirit of Shankly - ShareLiverpoolFC have long called for democratic supporter ownership of the club and this remains their long-term goal. For now, they are pressing for "supporter-ownership through a direct equity shareholding in LFC, in partnership with new owners, giving the supporters real and meaningful representation". In this, fans are challenging "the laissez-faire stance of the football authorities" so well described by Andy Green on Comment is free. The arguments learned here could be carried into a wider movement against a form of economy in which nothing has value, everything has a price, and all that matters is short-term gain.

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Liverpool's football activists are part of a wider social movement | Doreen Massey

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The ownership of football clubs, writes Martin Kettle, does not matter. The ownership of Liverpool Football Club, in particular, ranks among those things "about which one does not care and which don't matter either". I don't care whether or not he cares, but it does matter.

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British athletes have ‘fewer rights than an Uber driver’ says Damian Collins MP

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Britain's elite athletes "have fewer rights than an Uber driver" and desperately need an independent watchdog to protect them, the chair of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee has warned.

Damian Collins MP told the Guardian that the worrying number of bullying, sexism and racism cases inside the UK Sport system was directly linked to the lack of employment rights for athletes and it is not enough to hope for change to happen organically.

His comments come as Dame Katherine Grainger, the new chair of UK Sport, admits her organisation has faced "significant challenges" over the past 18 months that can no longer be brushed under the carpet. and

Speaking before the UK Sport's World Class Performance conference, which begins in Manchester on Monday, Grainger said: "I recognise and accept that there have been a number of difficult issues across a range of sports in recent months that have challenged our system, and we have to rise to that challenge. These issues do not take away from the achievements of our athletes and coaches, but neither can we brush them under the carpet or just hope that they go away."

Grainger said UK Sport was conducting a "root and branch review" of its policies following reports of a culture of fear in organisations as diverse as British Cycling, British Swimming, British Bobsleigh and British Gymnastics. "We have to aim to be the best in the world at athlete welfare, culture, governance and integrity just as we aim to be so in performance," she said. "And we have to be seen to be the best in order to maintain public trust and pride in our achievements."

However, Collins said more must be done to reform the culture of UK Sport - including an independent sports ombudsman, operating outside UK Sport's control, which he believes is "desperately needed".

"We've seen too many cases of sports bodies effectively marking their own homework," said Collins, whose DCMS select committee has recently investigated bullying and misclassification in paraports and the Football Association's disastrous handling of the Eni Aluko affair. "There's basically no outside scrutiny. If there was, they would have better procedures in place."

"One of the big things that has come out is that athletes don't have very many rights in the face of the governing body of the sport in which they participate," he said. "In many ways they have fewer rights than an Uber driver has and that has been at the heart of the problem.

"Because they don't really have those rights, the governing bodies have got away with not having the sort of proper grievance procedures that would be normal in a lot of professional workplaces. That is something that needs to change."

As things stand, elite British athletes are not treated as employees by UK Sport but rather as recipients of grants. The sports minister, Tracey Crouch, in her appearance in front of the DCMS select committee last week, stopped short of backing the idea of changing this, calling it a "complex issue".

Crouch did acknowledge that she was considering the ombudsmen idea, as recommended by Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson in a review into the culture of British sport in April.

Collins also urged UK Sport to bring in far better whistleblowing procedures. "There has to be a way for people to bring in concerns and at the moment it just doesn't exist," he said, pointing out that Crouch had not been able to name a single sport with appropriate whistleblowing procedures when she spoke to the DCMS select committee.

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British athletes have 'fewer rights than an Uber driver' says Damian Collins MP

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Britain's elite athletes "have fewer rights than an Uber driver" and desperately need an independent watchdog to protect them, the chair of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee has warned.

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The annual BBC Price of Football study is the biggest of its type in Europe, gathering season and matchday ticket prices from clubs across 13 divisions in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as some of the biggest leagues on the continent.

This year we have analysed over 2000 ticket prices in 10 categories - cheapest and most expensive matchday ticket (on the gate and online), cheapest away ticket and most expensive away ticket, cheapest season ticket and most expensive season ticket, and for the first time this year, young adult season ticket and matchday prices.

The study also looks at how much clubs in the UK charge for pies, programmes, shirts and a cup of tea.

You can see the results of that data below and also see the full list of young adult prices we collated here.

Premier League 2017-18
Mobile phone and tablet users may have to scroll left or click here to see full data.
*Arsenal season tickets include seven cup credits for FA Cup and European competitions (League Cup not included)

**All Brighton match and season tickets (for home and away supporters) include free park-and-ride or travel by bus or train to and from the American Express Community Stadium, within the matchday travel zone
Premier League prices frozen or cut
***500 tickets available for each match at this price to people living in the L postcode
Championship matchday ticket costs down
****Tottenham's food and drink prices are set by Wembley Stadium this season
League One's average cost of season tickets is cut
Championship 2017-18
League Two ticket prices rise
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Anfield: the victims, the anger and Liverpool's shameful truth

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In the blighted streets around Liverpool's Anfield stadium, residents are packing up and leaving their family homes, so the football club can have them demolished and expand their Main Stand. In the six months since the club scrapped their decade-long plan to build a new stadium on Stanley Park, and reverted to expanding Anfield instead, Liverpool city council has been seeking to buy these neighbours' homes, backed by the legal threat of compulsory purchase.

People's farewells are bitter, filled with anger and heartbreak at the area's dreadful decline and at the club for deepening the blight by buying up houses since the mid-1990s then leaving them empty. A few residents are refusing to move, holding out against the council, which begins negotiations with low offers. These homeowners believe they should be paid enough not only to buy a new house but to compensate for the years of dereliction, stagnation and decline, and crime, fires, vandalism, even murders which have despoiled the area. Their resentment is compounded by the fact that they are being forced to move so that Liverpool, and their relatively new US owner, Fenway Sports Group, can make more money.

On Lothair Road, which backs on to the Anfield Main Stand, one man who lived next door to a house Liverpool own and have left empty, shuttered - "tinned up" as the locals call it - shook his head. "I'm not moving out," he told the Guardian, "I've been driven out."

Residents' bitterness derives from when the club started buying houses in Lothair Road, without saying they were doing so or making their intentions clear. The club used an agency to approach some residents, while some houses were bought by third parties then sold on quickly to the club. That left residents with the belief, which has endured ever since, that Liverpool were buying up houses by stealth, to keep prices low.

The club have never publicly explained in detail what they did, and declined to answer the Guardian's questions about their historic behaviour and current plans. Neighbours, many of whom have lived in Anfield for decades, remembering a vibrant, flourishing area, believe Liverpool bought and left houses empty to deliberately blight the area, intending it would prompt people to leave and drive house prices down.

Howard Macpherson, now 52, was the first to sell his house on Lothair Road to the club, in 1996. He had lived there, at No 39, a four-bedroom end terrace, for 10 years. Macpherson says it was a fine home, which he had spent money refurbishing, but after Liverpool bought it they always left it empty - now for 17 years.

"Anfield was a good area, all the houses occupied, nothing like it is today," says Macpherson, who runs a garage, Aintree Motors. "The area started to decline in the early 1990s with the city's economic problems. But Liverpool football club accelerated the decline, by leaving good houses empty and boarded up. It wasn't a natural decline; it was engineered."

The involvement in the process of a notorious solicitor, Kevin Dooley, acting for the club, did not encourage confidence. Dooley, who acted for several Liverpool players and the convicted drug baron Curtis Warren as well as the club before he died in 2004, was struck off by the Law Society in 2002 after it found him guilty of being involved in fraudulent purported bank schemes.

Liverpool were motivated to buy neighbouring houses by a fear of losing pre-eminence in English football after their mighty playing success and financial dominance of the 1970s and 80s. The club felt bruised by having been delayed in building the new Centenary Stand because of two elderly sisters, Joan and Nora Mason, who refused to leave their house at No 26 Kemlyn Road, until November 1990. Manchester United entered the super-commercialised Premier League era by floating on the stock market in 1991, raising £6.7m to seat the Stretford End, and with Old Trafford's ceaseless, lucrative expansion and Sir Alex Ferguson's team-building, Liverpool fell behind United's money-making capacity.

The club turned their attention to expanding the Main and Anfield Road stands, although they did not announce this intention or discuss it openly with residents. The Main Stand backs tightly on to the terraced row of odd numbers on Lothair Road. Liverpool began buying houses in 1996, mostly leaving them empty. Land Registry records reveal that between January 1996 and March 2000, Liverpool bought 10 houses on Lothair Road.

Most were on the odd side, closest to the Main Stand: Nos 1, 3, 7, 9, 15, 33, 35 and Macpherson's No 39. In March 1999 Liverpool made their first purchase across the road, on the even side, No 16. That row is not needed for a bigger Main Stand itself, but the residents, and those in the row behind on Alroy Road, would have their right to light blocked by it, a major obstacle to planning permission. In March 2000 Liverpool bought No 10 Lothair Road. That house, like most Liverpool bought, was never again occupied, has been empty for 13 years and is "tinned up".

Liverpool also bought houses on Anfield Road: grander Victorian piles with front gardens, backing on to Stanley Park; almost the whole row opposite the stand, Shankly gates and Hillsborough memorial: 51, 53, 55, 61, 63, 69 and 71. These houses were also left mostly empty and allowed to fall into disrepair.

With houses empty and demand for them falling in a city struggling to recover from its 1980s economic decimation, the Anfield area collapsed into dramatic decline. Alongside Liverpool football club, family homes and private landlords, the main other property owner was Your Housing, a large group of housing associations, then called Arena. It also began to leave properties "tinned up" - 265 were empty in the wider Anfield area by 2011. Residents complain that as the area was blighted, problem tenants moved in, bringing crime and antisocial behaviour.

Liverpool's secret plan to get houses knocked down and expand the stadium, which the residents had suspected from the beginning, was exposed by a local free newspaper in September 1999. The club, with the council and Arena, had produced Anfield Plus, a plan to demolish both rows of houses on Lothair Road, the one on Alroy Road backing on to Lothair, and those on Anfield Road, for two enlarged stands. In the wider area, 1,800 properties were designated for demolition. A food, drink and retail area was planned on a cleared corner across from the Kop and Centenary Stand. New social housing, shops, a supermarket and community centre were also envisaged.

Shock at such a plan being conceived without discussion with residents produced an outcry. The council did not support the plan with compulsory purchase threats but instead embarked on a consultation process. Rick Parry, Liverpool's then chief executive, acknowledged the club were seeking a bigger Anfield to compete financially with Manchester United, but said nevertheless: "I believe we can also work much better with the community, be a good neighbour."

In the intense, often fraught discussions with residents, some progress was slowly made. New homes were built or renovated, including the Skerries Road terrace, behind Kemlyn Road, which Liverpool had previously bought up and left blighted. Two health centres have been built and the new Four Oaks primary school and North Liverpool Academy. Yet Lothair Road, Alroy and Anfield Road, on which the club had set their sights, were left to rot.

While the Premier League, its club owners, players, managers and agents were growing rich on pay-TV millions, right around one of its most revered clubs there was squalor and horror. The many empty houses were vandalised, robbed, stripped, set on fire. People living next door to Liverpool's tinned-up houses told the club they feared waking up in the night to find them ablaze. Still, the club did not put tenants in them. Some people began to move out, their houses' value having tumbled, but many good people stayed, determined not to be forced out.

Liverpool's switch to a plan for a wholly new stadium on Stanley Park came partly out of the post-Anfield Plus community consultation. In one meeting, Parry looked at a map and was struck by how hemmed in by houses the ground would still be, even if expanded. Yet even as the plans developed over years, many residents did not believe Liverpool would ever build a new stadium. Partly this was because even after all the outcry over Anfield Plus, Liverpool still bought houses on Lothair Road, including No10.

In October 1999, 33 Lothair Road, owned by Liverpool and unoccupied, was set on fire, filling the house of the elderly couple who lived next door with smoke and soot. Residents say that three people were killed, set alight, in a horrific incident, in a house further along Lothair Road. A woman reported to be renting on Lothair Road who worked as a prostitute was murdered, in 2001.

A Lothair Road resident, who did not want to be named because he is in negotiations with the council to finally leave, recalled his elderly father going out to fill a coal bucket from the old-fashioned scuttle under the front steps. Two tenants who had moved in across the road threw a brick at his father's head. The resident went across the road, banged on both doors, and roared at them to come out, which they did not.

"These are some of the drastic things we've had to do," he said, talking on his doorstep. "I brought three children up here. If Liverpool had been honest from the beginning, said they wanted our houses to expand their ground, we're realistic, we know they're a huge football club, most of us support them, deals could have been done. Instead they were underhand, blighted the area and we've had to live like this for years."

The sorry saga of how the new stadium plans turned to dust was played out in public, while residents suffered stagnation and wreckage. The club had continued to buy houses on Anfield Road: No 65 in 2001, 47, 49 and 67 in 2007. Parry and the then majority shareholder, David Moores, believed they needed rich owners to stand behind the borrowing required for a new stadium, which could have been built in the early 2000s for perhaps £140m. It took years before finally in 2007 they sold the club for £179m to the Americans Tom Hicks and George Gillett. Moores personally made £89m.

Hicks famously promised "a spade in the ground" and work to begin on the new stadium in 60 days, but he and Gillett had borrowed the money to buy the club and were planning to borrow for the stadium too, then could not. Under pressure from Royal Bank of Scotland, in October 2010 Hicks and Gillett were forced by court order to sell the club, John Henry's FSG paying the £200m price of the RBS debt.

FSG, which renovated the Boston Red Sox stadium, Fenway Park, rather than build a new one, suggested from the beginning it might scrap the new stadium plan as too expensive. In October, Liverpool's managing director, Ian Ayre, confirmed that, describing the intention to go back to expanding Anfield as "a great leap forward".

FSG's current plan envisages expanding the Main and Anfield Road stands, with both sides of Lothair Road, and one side of Alroy Road, demolished. A hotel is proposed behind the enlarged Main Stand on the footprint of Lothair Road's even side and Alroy, because a commercial property does not have the same right to light as homes. A development, probably bars and restaurants, with training promised for young people, is proposed opposite the corner of the Kop and Centenary Stand. With Liverpool having purchased a whole row on Anfield Road, they have already knocked those houses down, so there is no obstacle to enlarging that stand.

This FSG plan, then, is strikingly similar to Anfield Plus, which was worked up in 1999, then put on hold for 13 years in favour of the new stadium proposal.

Ruth Little, of the Anfield and Breckfield community council, says: "After people suffered so much, from the football club and Your Housing leaving properties empty and blighting the area, when they went back to the original plan I did wonder what the last 12 years of consultation have been for.

"A lot of good work has been done, though, much of it by local people volunteering. At least we have some certainty now, and we have to make sure that the people who are left are treated with respect."

Reports on that are mixed. While many homeowners have sold their houses over the years for little, the council's final offers now are more generous. Some residents have settled for around £80,000, more than the houses would have fetched on the market in such blighted conditions, and the council is also providing interest-free loans. This enables those who own their own homes to buy another similar house without taking on a new mortgage.

However, several people accuse the council, which is negotiating via agents, of starting with low offers, forcing people in difficult circumstances to negotiate hard or be seriously disadvantaged.

Bill Higham, who owns 25 Alroy Road, says he was offered £55,000, which he refused outright, for a house he has had to refurbish twice after it was seriously vandalised.

"I find it disgraceful," he says. "After the way the area has been run down, I'm being forced out and they want the properties for a song. They could pay everybody up, properly, for less than one Liverpool player's wage."

Bill McGarry, vice-chair of the Anfield Rockfield Triangle residents' association, a qualified town planner, has helped some residents negotiate with the council. Patrick Duggan, chair of Artra, is an ardent critic of the club, whom he vehemently accuses of running the area down. Duggan runs Epstein House, a refurbished hotel in the old Anfield Road family home of the Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein. Duggan bought it for £450,000, partly, he says, because Liverpool were building a new stadium which would regenerate the area. He has been shocked instead to find the area's degradation, then felt betrayed when FSG scrapped the new stadium plan.

"I have always been a Liverpool fan," says Duggan, who has mounted a campaign targeting Ayre. "They play 'You'll Never Walk Alone' but they have left their neighbours to walk alone for years."

Paddy McKay, 58, a builder who has lived for 37 years on Walton Breck Road, is refusing to accept the council's offer. He and his wife Carol brought up three daughters there; he has paid his mortgage off in full and argues that, if he is forced to move, he should be paid enough to buy a similar house somewhere decent and compensation for the years of blight. Even now, antisocial behaviour is continuing on those streets, including house fires.

"Liverpool FC have said they want to be good neighbours? They're the world's worst neighbours; they couldn't care less," McKay says. "After all the damage they have done to the area, they should do the decent thing by the residents."

James McKenna, chair of the Spirit of Shankly supporters' union, says the fans have sympathy for the club's neighbours. "The stadium expansion is all about the club making more money, and fans will have to pay more for tickets," McKenna says. "To do that, Liverpool have played a part in derelict houses, streets boarded up. It's a blot on LFC's record."

A council spokesman declined to discuss details of the house-buying process. "Since last autumn we have been developing a robust set of plans for the area which are absolutely on track," he said. "This will include working with the local community on a blueprint for the wider regeneration of Anfield."

Brian Cronin, chief executive of Your Housing, defended his organisation's property stewardship in the area and said the group has invested more than £23m in refurbishments or new homes around Anfield since 2009. Your Housing has 22 properties on Lothair, Alroy and Sybil Roads behind the Main Stand, of which 12 "are long-term vacant". Cronin said: "We are currently working very closely with Liverpool city council and other partners in Anfield to establish the best long-term future for these properties as part of the wider regeneration of the area."

Liverpool declined to comment but last month Ayre updated the Liverpool Daily Post, saying: "To extend Anfield, we need to acquire a bunch of privately owned property around the stadium. We're making really good progress with that. We said some months back it would take several months to improve that property acquisition situation. We're definitely on target so far."

Once the properties are bought, Ayre said, the club will apply for planning permission. After that, the third challenge is to "build the thing".

He told the Guardian in October that an expanded Anfield with a 60,000 capacity will not allow cheaper tickets; its aim is to make more money. Liverpool have employed PricewaterhouseCoopers to survey fans, and corporate customers, to help plan price brackets for the new facilities.

Some fans wonder if FSG, which is quite remote as owner, with Henry hardly in Liverpool and progress slow and costly, may sell the club, particularly once planning permission has been secured. FSG and Henry have not said that is a possibility. The stated plan is to expand the ground and enable Liverpool to compete again by making more money, so attracting better players by offering them huge wages on a par with the other top clubs.

Liverpool's remaining neighbours, suffering some of Britain's worst living conditions, are grappling with hardball offers, to have their houses knocked down and make way for it all. In the Premier League of the 21st century, this is Anfield.

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Anfield: the victims, the anger and Liverpool's shameful truth | David Conn

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In the blighted streets around Liverpool's Anfield stadium, residents are packing up and leaving their family homes, so the football club can have them demolished and expand their Main Stand.

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Shankly: Nature’s Fire (10 days left to watch) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09g3d4s

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Shankly: Nature’s Fire (10 days left to watch) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09g3d4s

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Class and the Olympics

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Charities seek return of £425m lotto cash used for London Olympics

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More than £400m diverted from supporting communities in need across the UK to help fund the London 2012 Olympics has yet to be returned, and the shortfall has raised questions about the Games' legacy.

With the 2016 Rio Olympics now underway, there are calls for the new mayor of London and the prime minister to ensure the cash - taken from the Big Lottery Fund which makes small grants to local charities - is paid back.

The previous mayor of London, Boris Johnson, stated that a key legacy aim of the 2012 Games was the "convergence in life chances and prosperity between east and west London, and to bring the city and its communities together". But charities say the failure to return the lottery cash has undermined this commitment.

Ciaran Price, policy officer with the Directory of Social Change, the organisation that campaigns to improve conditions for charities in the UK and is leading calls for the return of the money, said: "The government failed to honour its promise to Britain's communities, which have been struggling in the wake of a devastating recession, to repay the £425m it took from the Big Lottery Fund to construct the Olympic Village.

"While many charities are seeing demand for their services rising at a speed never before experienced, and while they are finding it more and more difficult to get the financial support they need to meet this new level of demand, the government has been sitting on this money, continuously trying to kick it further into the long grass, hoping we'll somehow forget about it."

It emerged after the Games that the government had underspent on the Olympics by more than £500m but, despite this, none of the £425m taken from the Big Lottery Fund has been returned to good causes.

Charities were further dismayed when the Olympic stadium, which cost £486m to build, was handed over to the Premier League football club West Ham on a 99-year lease, at a cost to the club of £2.5m a year. The Directory of Social Change has now written to both mayor of London Sadiq Khan and the prime minister, calling on them to intervene.

The organisation says it is vital that lottery money goes to the charitable causes for which it is intended. In its letter to Theresa May, it points out that when she was shadow secretary for culture, media and sport she stated: "We believe that the lottery should be independent of government but accountable to parliament. It should not become a tool of government."

In a speech to parliament in 2005, May claimed that governments should not be able to raid lottery funds. "Every pound that the government choose to snaffle that way is a pound that cannot go to help community groups or to preserve our historic buildings."

Debra Allcock Tyler, chief executive of the Directory of Social Change, claims in the letters that more than 10,000 charities could be supported if the money were returned, and around eight million people would benefit.

She acknowledges that the government has committed to repay the money via the sale of assets in the Olympic park. But the previous and current governments have said this will not happen until the next decade at the earliest, and possibly the one after.

"This is too late for so many communities in need," Allcock Tyler says in her letter to Khan. "We maintain that giving back this money now would make a huge difference to organisations and the individuals they serve across London and the rest of the UK at a time when so many people are in need of support."

The Directory of Social Change claims that the Brexit vote has given a renewed urgency to claiming back the millions owed to the Big Lottery Fund. It points out that the EU currently gives £200m to 249 charities in the UK and that the future of this funding is now uncertain.

"Now, in a period of unprecedented uncertainty in the wake of the EU referendum result, the money is needed more than ever," Price said. "Charities are struggling to cope. The decision to give away the Olympic football stadium to West Ham United for the next century, for the private benefit of its wealthy club owners, casts serious doubt over the government's sincerity.

"In reality, £425m is such a small amount of money and it would have such a huge, positive impact for Britain's communities, which will improve the lives of absolutely every person in the country. The government cannot deny the sector this money any longer."

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Charities seek return of £425m lotto cash borrowed for London Olympics

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More than £400m diverted from supporting communities in need across the UK to help fund the London 2012 Olympics has yet to be returned, and the shortfall has raised questions about the Games' legacy.

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The long term vision for the
legacy of the London 2012
Olympic & Paralympic Games

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How football’s working-class fans were sold out for a fistful of popcorn

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How football’s working-class fans were sold out for a fistful of popcorn

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Watch Mo Farah winning his golden track double in the 5,000m at London 2012, or Jessica Ennis landing the heptathlon title by winning the 800m, and you will notice that every single person in camera shot at the Olympic Stadium is on their feet. Tens of thousands of them roaring their heroes to glory.

The London Stadium, as it will be known until the naming rights are sold, is now the Stratford home of West Ham United FC. But only a few thousand people have been on their feet during the four home games this season, most of them near the area where Farah made his decisive break on the last lap.

This time, it has led to bitter infighting, physical as well as verbal. Crowd trouble at football was back in the headlines after last week's Premier League game against Watford. There was fighting with away fans, who were poorly segregated, and in the lower tiers West Ham supporters fought each other. On Friday 20 fans were banned and had their season tickets revoked.

"I was disgusted, ashamed to be a West Ham fan," said lifetime follower Ciro Castaldo, who stood near one of the troublespots. So why are so many fans losing their temper and self-control? Why are parents saying they feel so unsafe they cannot take their children to games? Why are West Ham beset by spectator problems after signing the best stadium deal in living memory, whereby they pay only £2.5m a year to lease a stadium built with taxpayers' money?

There are no simple answers, but poor planning, poor stewarding, pig-headedness among some supporters, and even popcorn have all played a part. While practical issues are largely to blame, some fans cite a wider problem of the creeping gentrification of football.

For former Manchester United captain Roy Keane in 2000 it was fans eating prawn sandwiches. For West Ham's more robust supporters in 2016 it is popcorn, which is on sale around the stadium. "Popcorn? What have they done to West Ham's soul?" was one fan's reaction on social media.

Standing up at football matches in England's top two divisions is illegal. The Premier League has no intention of making any changes, and a spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said: "The government currently has no plans to change its position and introduce standing accommodation at grounds covered by the all-seater requirement."

The problem is that tens of thousands do stand up every weekend, and have done for years. Stewards, and the clubs that employ them, turn a blind eye. At West Ham's former home, the Boleyn Ground, usually known as Upton Park, an entire section stood up at every game for more than 10 years.

They were in the lower section of the Bobby Moore Stand, named after the club's most famous player. Now they stand up in the Bobby Moore Stand in the new stadium, but West Ham sold seats in that section to people who did not know about the tradition. There are arguments. Children often cannot see.

Children are all over the stadium. The club's family section has 1,400 seats, but there are 25,000 family members. After offering junior season tickets for £99, West Ham has more under-16s, around 10,000, than any other club. That would explain the presence of popcorn. "We are very proud to have so many families and children attending our games," said a club spokesman.

"In some ways the old regulars, the authentic fans, feel threatened," said Pete May, author of a forthcoming book Goodbye to Boleyn. "Standing up and singing is the only link they've got with the old West Ham, and they're worried it's going to disappear in the creeping commercialisation and the 60,000 crowds. They don't want to change.

The potential for growth is clear, but West Ham are an East End club, not a Chelsea or an Arsenal

Iain Dale, the political blogger, former Conservative candidate, radio presenter and West Ham fan, said: "Those who do stand now, they're just being selfish. We all stand up at times, when we have a corner, for example. It's part of the football experience. But standing throughout the game, they ruin it for others. If you have kids behind you, why would you do that?"

Peter Caton, 55, is among those who stand up at every game. He is one of the many fans who blame Karren Brady, the club's vice-chairman, for "riding roughshod over supporters' wishes" by moving the club to the new home.

West Ham are among the 20 richest clubs in the world. Their move has added 22,000 seats to matchday income and their supporters, too, are wealthy - "right at the top in terms of highest average income", according to Dale. The potential for growth is clear, but West Ham are an East End club, not a Chelsea or an Arsenal.

"People are standing their ground quite literally," said Caton. "West Ham has a core of working-class support and Brady wants to turn us into Arsenal. But we're not Arsenal. There was no proper consultation of fans before we moved. They'll have to carry me out if they want me to sit down, and I won't come back."

There are more complaints about the lack of pubs near the stadium - "it's a half-hour walk" said May - and the pre-match eateries at Westfield are way upmarket from old Upton Park favourites. "The food outlets are all very different and the whole experience of the Olympic Stadium will appeal more to a middle-class audience than working-class," said Dale.

"But if you ignore the trouble for a moment, it is the most amazing stadium, every seat has a good view. The negative stories need to be balanced out by the fact that most people like the place. When we start playing well again a lot of problems will ebb away."

Others from around England will see the bitterness as another example of the distancing of elite football from "real" fans. It was an affordable sport watched by largely working-class fans before the Hillsborough disaster brought an end to terraces, before Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, the Premier League (25 years old next year), the Sky Sports stranglehold, and Keane's "prawn sandwich" outburst.

By the end of the 1980s, wrote Andrew Hussey in an essay on Hillsborough for the New Statesman, football fans "had become the object of scorn and derision. To be working class, to be a football fan ... was to be scum". Many working-class fans have felt marginalised ever since.

But while Premier League stadiums are nearly 97% full every week you will not find many in the boardrooms harking back to 30 years ago when the Sunday Times said football was "a slum sport played in slum stadiums and increasingly watched by slum people".

And there can be no complaints about ticket prices at West Ham. While Chelsea fans must pay £56, plus a membership fee, even for the cheapest match seat, and Liverpool fans felt obliged to stage a walkout protest over price hikes in February, West Ham sold season tickets for £289 - around £15 a game. "The club have done a really good job of keeping the prices down," said Dale. "A lot of fans who were priced out at Upton Park can now afford to come, and I see a lot more black and Asian faces in the crowd."

There was, he said, a divide between the old-style fans and some of those 22,000 newcomers. "Old" fans believe the "new" fans leave games early, return to seats late after half-time popcorn forays, and never stand up and sing. Some diehards have responded with vicious abuse, leading West Ham to move fans to other parts of the stadium if they are unhappy.

Jon Darch, the leading advocate of standing at league games, said: "Some West Ham fans have been asked to give up their football lifestyle. There are supporters all mixed up together who have different views about what constitutes a good matchday experience."

Darch said that some fans believe the club wants only middle-class fans: "They think their way of supporting the club for 30 to 40 years is being excised, their style of support is being obliterated. I don't agree with them, but that's their underlying anxiety."

TRADING PLACES

Arsenal 2006, moved from Highbury (38,419 capacity) to the Emirates Stadium (60,360).

Cost: £390m.

In its opening season, the Emirates was sold out for every first-team game.

Swansea City 2005, from Vetch Field (11,475) to Liberty Stadium (20,909).

Cost: £27m.

In August, the club's American owners revealed they are in talks with Swansea council to expand the stadium.

Manchester City 2003, from Maine Road (35,150) to Etihad Stadium (55,097).

Cost: £20m for repurposing, £2m per year.

City hold a 250-year lease on the ground, owned by Manchester city council.

Leicester City 2002, from Filbert Street (22,000) to King Power Stadium (32,312).

Cost: £17m.

The club is considering expanding the stadium's East Stand or building an entirely new stadium.

Southampton 2001, from Dell Stadium (15,200) to St Mary's Stadium (32,205).

Cost: £32m.

The stadium has taken on the club's original name, Southampton St Marys.

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How football's working-class fans were sold out for a fistful of popcorn

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Watch Mo Farah winning his golden track double in the 5,000m at London 2012, or Jessica Ennis landing the heptathlon title by winning the 800m, and you will notice that every single person in camera shot at the Olympic Stadium is on their feet. Tens of thousands of them roaring their heroes to glory.

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Reclaiming football for the working classes 

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Reclaiming football for the working classes 

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Is football still affordable for the working classes?

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Is football still affordable for the working classes?

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With players earning £200,000 a week, transfers of more than £50m and match tickets up to £126, can football still be considered a sport of the working classes?

Wales manager Chris Coleman says the distance between players and fans has grown because of what the two sets are earning.

So what are the opinions of others involved in the game and how can it be made more affordable? We asked three people their views.

Tim Hartley has been following Cardiff City for the past 38 seasons. When he started going to matches the price of tickets was hardly a consideration. Now he feels it's getting harder for supporters.

"I fear the working man is being priced out slowly and it would be a pity if this continued.

"There is no atmosphere in a stadium without passionate, committed fans.

How clubs help

Stoke City hasn't increased their ticket prices since being promoted to the Premier League in 2008. This year they're offering free coach travel to away games

Arsenal has a discount scheme for younger supporters and has set up a ticket exchange scheme for season ticket holders that can't get to a match

Crystal Palace is offering discounts for 18 to 21-year-olds at every home game.

A number of clubs allow fans to pay for season tickets through interest-free direct debit instalments.

Aston Villa offer its season ticket holders a loyalty scheme to get money off tickets, food, drink and merchandise.

Brighton Hove Albion offers season ticket holders free bus travel within the city on match days .

"If you turn football into a one-off special treat like going to the cinema or going to the opera, it's not going to be the game we all love."

As the team start life in the Premier League Tim's still paying Championship prices for his season ticket. A few years ago he took advantage of a price freeze offer at the club.

He says that £349 for the season is great value at around £18 a game but going to away games can be more expensive with some tickets over £50.

"As a family we can't go to every away match like we used to. We are picking and choosing where we go."

As chairman of Cardiff City Supporters' Trust he wants the prices of away tickets fixed.

"At around £20 I think more people would go.

"My top tip to reduce the cost on away games is to fill your car with friends, pack some sandwiches and bring a thermos," he said.

Matt Cook's tips

Book your tickets early - particularly trains, hotels and parking - to get the best deal

Get flexible rates for your transport and accommodation in case kick-off times change

Share cars and fuel costs

Eat before you get to the stadium. Food at the grounds can be expensive, vary in quality and mean standing in a long queue

Buy club branded hoodies or t-shirts rather than the replica shirt. It's usually cheaper and you don't need to replace it every season

Talk to fans of other clubs for their tips and share knowledge about the cost and quality of what's available at each ground

Matt Cook is founder of First Rate Football - a fans' guide to football grounds.

He feels football is still a working man's sport but thinks clubs need to keep focused on catering for all budgets.

For Matt, the biggest challenge is the cost of transport.

"As a Brighton and Hove Albion supporter in London I have to travel by train to every home match," he says.

"With limited car parking spaces and trains servicing the route on match day there's only so much I can do to keep the cost down."

New Financial Fair Play rules start this season, aimed at stopping clubs from getting into money problems.

Matt thinks it will benefit supporters.

"As a fan I fear too much money is going out of the game and straight into the players' pockets.

"Hopefully the new rules will play a part in helping supporters' costs. It's a good idea to prevent clubs overspending and risking their long term relationship with the fans."

Football now appeals to a wider class of people, not just the working man. That's the view of Dr John Beech from Coventry University.

Even Prime Ministers and members of the Royal Family are open football supporters. Prince William is an Aston Villa fan.

Dr Beech is concerned that in the future fans' passion for their teams could be turned against them as teams aim to make more money.

"Football clubs are under pressure to generate revenue to compete at the highest level,

"Clubs are producing a third kit outside the home and away strip for fans to buy. I wonder how much further can clubs go in their pursuit of generating revenue?"

Football and money seem to be more closely linked than ever. Being a fan is unlikely to become much cheaper anytime soon.

For the supporters the game is more about love. Cost will usually come second.

But as prices increase fans may be forced to be more selective about when and how they support.

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With players earning £200,000 a week, transfers of more than £50m and match tickets up to £126, can football still be considered a sport of the working classes? Wales manager Chris Coleman says the distance between players and fans has grown because of what the two sets are earning.