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For the second time in nine months Manchester United used their quarterly financial results today to issue a 'not for sale' statement on behalf of their American owners, the Glazer family.

The latest move comes after persistent reports linking Qatar Holdings or members of the Qatar Royal Family with a possible bid to buy out the Glazers.

Qatar Holdings has already issued a denial and today United insisted: "The owners remain fully committed to their long-term ownership of the club. No discussions have taken place. Manchester United are not for sale and the owners will not entertain any offers."

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There is no doubt the is now viewed by many as the model venue for the new Olympic Park.

On budget and on time, it felt like every senior Olympic official had gathered in Stratford to purr about the natural light, the building's beautiful curves and its fast track.

And so they should. At a cost of £93m and with a legacy plan built in from the start, the velodrome's virtues are all the more apparent when set against the recent squabble over the Olympic Stadium and the ongoing concerns about the aquatics centre.

But is it big enough? With Team GB's Olympic cyclists set to be one of the biggest draws at the 2012 Games, the 6,000 capacity is going to leave plenty of people disappointed.

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Both the Bahrain Royal Family and Formula 1 had no choice but in the kingdom on 13 March.

With blood already spilled and no sign of the anti-government protests on the streets of Manama ending, it would have been wholly inappropriate if the sport had tried to carry on as if it was business as usual.

Formula 1 is often accused of being out of touch with reality and of living in its own bubble.

And while the decision was ultimately one for the country's crown prince - Bernie Ecclestone risked costing the sport almost £40m in lost staging fees if he had pulled the plug - F1 will be relieved it has averted a crisis which would have, once again, called into question the judgment of its rulers.

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If we learned one thing from the last week, it was that the measures in place to stop players contacting undesirable middlemen were not working.

Players might have to hand in their mobiles and Blackberries when they enter the dressing room, but that didn't stop Mazhar Majeed, the players' agent, calling Salman Butt, Mohammed Asif and Mohammed Amir at all hours in their hotel rooms.

Now with the cricket World Cup about to get under way on the betting-mad sub-continent, .

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The marks a significant moment in the countdown to the Games.

Nearly all the milestones so far have been on the construction side of the project. And although progress has been impressive - 79% of venues are now complete - it is hard for the public, especially outside London, to get a sense of what the Olympics will be like.

It is certainly easy to forget that this is ultimately a sporting event amid all the topping out and floodlight ceremonies that have been going on.

But with the publication of the events schedule on Tuesday, all that changes.

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The message from on Monday was that the are still on track and on budget.

And on the whole they are - 79% of the venues and major construction projects on the Olympic Park are complete, a remarkable achievement given Britain's track record in the past with grand sporting projects.

Of the £2.98bn public sector funding package for the Games, £587m of contingency remains unspent. With much of the construction risk now subsiding as venues are completed, ministers and Olympic organisers are hopeful the need to call on that money will also recede. But that does not mean that all the risks have been eliminated.

In fact, two areas which are becoming more risky are security and the cost of actually staging the Games.

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There will be plenty of people - and not just the board of Tottenham - who will greet Friday's decision by the Olympic Park Legacy Company with a measure of concern.

There is concern at West Ham's lack of financial muscle (compared to that of Spurs) and their concern at the plans to play football in a stadium with a running track at a time when most clubs with similar arrangements across Europe are ripping them up and concern at the amount of public money (£75m) being used to finance their £95m project.

But when all things are taken into consideration, the vast majority will probably feel that the OPLC have still made the right decision.

Why?

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Although the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) insists no decision on the future of the Olympic Stadium will be taken until a board meeting on Friday, it is clear West Ham are now in pole position to occupy the venue once the 2012 Games in London are over.

A report analysing both the east London club's bid and that of north London Premier League rivals Tottenham was sent to members of the OLPC board on Wednesday morning.

By the evening, the report's recommendation had already found its way into the public arena, infuriating OPLC chairman Baroness Ford, who seems increasingly bemused with every twist and turn of this acrimonious process.

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Lord Triesman's evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday was more interesting for what he didn't say rather than what he did.

After a session which had included claims of Premier League dominance, a failing Football Association and a bizarre exchange on Premier League chairman Sir David Richards' "colourful" language, former FA chairman Triesman teased us all with another promise to reveal what really went on during the 2018 World Cup bidding campaign.

Shortly after England lost to Russia in December, Triesman went on Channel 4 promising to tell all.

He repeated that promise to MPs on Tuesday, saying: "I think there will be a time when the contact that I and others had with members of the Fifa executive committee should be described in detail because some of the processes I don't think stand up to proper scrutiny."

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The former Football Association chairman has kept his head down since he was from his dual role as head of the English governing body and the 2018 World Cup bid last May.

Apart from the odd interview following England's humiliation, he hasn't said too much about the controversial circumstances of his departure nor his true feelings about the game he was so heavily involved with.

The first independent chairman appointed by the FA following (six years ago now and counting), Triesman's arrival in football was supposed to bring the sort of change that has been talked of for years.

Instead, it has felt like the FA has gone backwards as the Premier League clubs become richer and richer and ever more powerful.

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describes the last six months as the worst time in his life. At the tender age of 18 that is hardly surprising.

But whatever people think about what he has done, there has to be a measure of sympathy for the bowler who, , was Pakistan's great hope.

I interviewed him in his hotel room in Doha on Sunday, almost 24 hours after the anti-corruption tribunal had delivered its damning determination.

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Doha

chief executive Haroon Lorgat declared himself "satisfied" on Sunday with the anti-corruption tribunal's decisions on the three Pakistan players, adding that he didn't feel were lenient "by any stretch of the imagination".

In one sense he is right. When you actually strip this down to basics, two bowlers - Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir - have been banned for a total of 12 years from the game for bowling two pre-arranged no-balls in last summer's Lord's Test match.

The third, former Test captain , has been banned for 10 years (with five suspended) for his part in the conspiracy and for telling his agent Mazhar Majeed he would bowl out a maiden over at the preceding Oval Test against England.

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Doha

Today's punishments for the seemed to please no one.

For two of the players - Salman Butt and Mohammed Asif - the bans spell the probable end of their Test careers.

Butt is 26 and even if he doesn't serve the entirety of his 10-year ban (five years are suspended) he may be too old to come back.

Similarly Asif, who is 28, is unlikely to play at the highest level again after being given a seven-year ban with two years suspended.

Blog update on Sunday

Interesting comments from one of the ICC tribunal members Sharad Rao, quoted by the News of the World.

With the cricket world and the ICC bemused by the apparent leniency of the bans handed out to the players, the Kenyan lawyer is reported to have said:

"We had to take in many factors when considering the sentences against the players. We have to remember this was spot-fixing not match-fixing and it did not affect the outcome of any game. That was something we considered for a long time.

"Also, there is the age of Mohammed Amir to take into consideration. He is a wonderfully talented cricketer and we felt we could end his career. We do not believe this was leniency."

This gives us a real insight into why the tribunal stopped short of handing out lifetime bans - even though they were found guilty of the most serious charges of breaking the ICC's anti-corruption code.

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UPDATE: 1130 GMT FRIDAY

I have been sent an interesting note this morning from an analyst at , which argues the advice from the European Court's advocate general yesterday could be very good news for Sky.

By effectively outlawing territorial exclusivity and opening up the market in each European country to competition from cheaper foreign providers, the amount Sky would have to pay for UK rights would fall.

That's bad for football and the Premier League but Citigroup says there's potentially another upside for Rupert Murdoch and Sky.

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One of the questions which keeps coming up in the debate over the future use of the Olympic Stadium is, why did organisers decide back in 2006 and early 2007 to rule out a design which could have accommodated Premier League football?

Instead of building the £500m stadium only to reduce it from 80,000 seats to a 25,000 capacity athletics arena, why didn't designers come up with a plan that would have kept big football and the track and field community happy?

If they had done so, the would have avoided the difficult dilemma it faces of choosing between two bids essentially from Premier League clubs.

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With the rest of the country fretting over , English football's detachment from the rest of financial reality was confirmed in a frantic 24 hours of spending on Monday.

In total, clubs spent more than £210m in the January transfer window - more than half of that in one day - breaking the 2008 record of £175m.

Two British transfer records inside the space of an afternoon and a club previously committed to prudence and developing young (cheaper) talent spraying their money around like a banker at the height of the credit boom.

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