Their first season in the top flight was also encouraging, with a sixth-place finish that defied all predictions.It was last year that everything began to go wrong, with Salford slipping to 11th out of 12 and Gregory becoming embroiled in a series of disputes with referees which eventually saw him fined pounds 1,500 for abusing one of their number.It was those referees on whom he heaped much of the blame for his demise yesterday. “Referees hate Andy Gregory and they’ve been taking it out on my players,” he alleged. “All the 50-50 decisions have been going against us.”Gregory said that the hostility of a section of the crowd had not been a factor in his departure. “Most of the supporters have been fine and I still have the greatest admiration for the chairman, John Wilkinson.”I hope to pick up the paper on Thursday morning and see that Salford have beaten Leeds.”The immediate responsibility for trying to turn around a season falls on Gregory’s assistants, Steve O’Neill, John Foran and Steve McCormack. They will select and prepare the side to face the Cup-winners at The Willows tonight.Numerous names will be mentioned as possible successors. The New Zealand Test coach, Frank Endacott, expressed interest in a job in Britain during their tour last year.

Steve Simms, now back in Australia, has been linked with the club, as, more recently, has Ian Millward, who has been impressive at Leigh.The best bet could be Dean Lance, previously in charge of the Perth Western Reds. Like Endacott, he is on Leeds’ list, but informed sources point to him being Salford’s first choice for a difficult and demanding task.. FOOTBALL’S WANNABEE Tony Blair launched his bid for power yesterday with the same mix of glossy style and compromised substance that enabled the Labour leader to be elected Prime Minister in May 1997. Whether the combination will work for David Sheepshanks in June, when he hopes to be chosen as the next chairman of the Football Association, remains to be seen. The problem for Sheepshanks, the 46-year-old chairman of Ipswich Town, is that the organisations which most need reform if the game is to progress at all levels are the ones he needs on his side to win election. The FA Council, which is the electorate, needs to be neutered while the Premiership, without whose support he has no chance, needs to have its financial dominance emasculated and its profligacy curbed.
Thus, while Sheepshanks yesterday pledged to support the game’s grassroots, from the parks to the Nationwide League, he was unable to suggest he would “soak the Premiership rich”. Instead he spoke optimistically of an improbable public-private partnership.Similarly he spoke of the need to restructure the FA Council while insisting there could be a role for the 96-strong body whose members range from the anachronistic (Cambridge University) to the irrelevant (New Zealand).Sheepshanks, who made his fortune running a variety of food companies, is the sort of dynamic, shrewd and smooth figure the FA needs to rebuild its prestige and influence at home and abroad.

However, the favourite for the post is Geoff Thompson, currently doing a solid job as Keith Wiseman’s temporary replacement. As the representative of the Hallamshire and Sheffield FA, he is likely to have the support of the county FAs who dominate the Council. He has not, however, yet shown an inclination for sweeping change.Sheepshanks admits he is “the underdog” – thus yesterday’s presidential style campaign launch complete with glossy manifesto: “The Way Forward with David Sheepshanks”. He is also lobbying every individual Council member.In the manifesto Sheepshanks calls for the development of a seven-year plan designed to end in England hosting and winning the 2006 World Cup. Previous such plans have been broken on the wheel of self- interest but, in a departure, Sheepshanks says the FA (and, thus himself) should be held accountable for its success.Many of his ideas are sound, if lacking in detail and occasionally contradictory. The general thrust is to raise standards of play, behaviour and leadership at all levels.”The English game is underachieving,” said Sheepshanks. “The consequences if we don’t embrace the type of change I have proposed do not bear thinking about.”He is in favour of restrictions on foreign players, if this can be squared with the European Community, and wants to tackle wage inflation and the accountability and control of agents.

Other tilts at windmills include the eradication of hooliganism. He is in favour of Kevin Keegan (he is hardly going to say otherwise) but his preference for a chief executive with a business background would appear to rule out the temporary incumbent, David Davies.Sheepshanks, who would like the position to become a paid one – it is three to four days’ work a week – intends to cut back his work at Ipswich regardless of his fate at the FA’s summer meeting in Chester on 26 June. His work there, and with the Football League, is one of the strongest parts of his candidacy. “He has,” said an employee of the Suffolk club, “really turned the club around.

He is popular and respected even though he has not spent millions on the team.”. SEVENTY-TWO HOURS after a million home truths had exploded out of Brian Kidd and crashed about the ears of Blackburn Rovers’ expensive and cosseted players the scene was tranquil yesterday No shouting, no rows, just a sense of foreboding. Even the building work on Blackburn’s youth academy was too distant to impose on the picture-postcard views from Brockhall, Rovers training ground, which was the essence of tact. The development speaks of the future and how can you think about that when the present holds so little?
If they lose or draw to Manchester United at Ewood Park tonight it will carry even less. The promise, the joy that accompanied Blackburn’s championship win four years ago will have been overtaken by relegation from the Premiership and a return to the nobody status that the club had assumed for 30 years.How can a club bankrolled by Jack Walker be facing this? The supporters have been asking until they are as blue as half the club’s shirts and on Saturday Kidd provided the answer that his predecessors, Ray Harford and Roy Hodgson, had left unsaid.