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The deal also signalled a new push for the League’s expansion into Asia, and China in particular. The bank’s current three-year deal, worth £57m, expires at the end of the current season. The major feature in the new package, which runs from 2007 to 2010 inclusive, is that Barclays will sponsor a pre-season tournament, the Premier League Asia Trophy.
The event was played in Malaysia in 2003 and in Thailand in 2005, and the first staging under Barclays is scheduled to take place in China in July 2007. The bank is likely to lobby for at least one of England’s “big four” clubs to take part.The Premiership’s clubs will each pocket £1m per season from the deal. There could be significant extra benefits for any teams chosen to play in the Asia Trophy, and there is expected to be fierce competition.

The League will stipulate “qualification criteria”, possibly excluding any club that is relegated.. It is 25 years since Bill Shankly left for the great border-less pitch in the sky. At least that is how the Registration of Births and Deaths has it. But this Saturday night in Bootle Town Hall – and could there be a more appropriate place than this salty stronghold of Anfield passion? – there will be more evidence that we are discussing a misnomer

Shanks merely re-located his old bones in 1981. His spirit, his sometimes wacky but so often utterly brilliant perception of what football means to so many people, has grown down the years to where he has become a beloved point of reference for anyone seeking to impose a hint of logic and a biting feel for how the game should be played.
He becomes not less but more relevant to the football of today, his dictums shining like ancient wisdom on some of the coaching and tactical fads in which even his otherwise excellent successor Rafa Benitez has been known to get entangled.One of the fiercest protectors of this vital legacy is veteran Merseyside sportswriter and broadcaster John Keith. Already he has produced a book – The Essential Shankly – and an audio tape recording some of the great character’s most colourful outpourings.

Now Keith, with the help of actor Kenneth Cope and three of Shankly’s most distinguished servants, Ian St John, Ronnie Yeats and Chris Lawler, is bringing Shankly back to life on the boards.Keith has written the script of The Bill Shankly Story which will be narrated by Cope, who is no stranger to the tribute business, having been flown with the rest of the That was the Week That Was cast to New York to repeat their unforgettable homage to President John F Kennedy. “It was a bit of a disaster really,” Cope, an ardent Evertonian, recalls. “They got us to tell jokes before Millicent Martin sang her famous ode to JFK. That was a crappy idea.” Keith, who has been working on the tones of Ayrshire before portraying a man he knew well and respected so deeply, is determined that in his show nothing will get in the way of an authentic Shankly.”Bill has such a special place in the heart of Liverpool and all of football that I wanted to come up with something different,” he says. “I’m sure there will be plenty of anniversary pieces and broadcasts, even books, but I thought that we might have a chance of making him live again for a few hours in the place which loved him so much.”There might be another benefit. St John, Yeats and Lawler have all promised to set the record straight when some of the legend has got away from the real Shanks.” This is especially valuable in the case of Lawler, the fine right-back who was so reticent he was known in the dressing room as “the Silent Knight”.Lawler figures in one of the classic Shankly cameos It happened during a game at the Melwood training field.

Shankly picked his team and was busily involved when a goal controversy erupted. The manager loudly claimed that his team had scored but there was much heated dispute. Lawler was standing on the touchline and was appointed arbiter. “Chris,” boomed Shankly, ” was that a goal?” Lawler shook his head and said: “Sorry boss, it didn’t go in.” Shankly was horrified. He said: “Jesus Christ, Chris, you haven’t uttered a word in five years and when you do you tell a lie.” Reports Keith: “Chris says that this account is not quite right but he will give the true story for the first time on the stage.”St John and Yeats will also be most valuable witnesses. After breaking curfew before a game in Dublin, the players flew home to Liverpool under a cloud of dread.

Desperately, they concocted a story that they thought might soften, or at least intrigue, the heart of a man whose fascination for cards dated back to the days when he played with the miners in his native Glenbuck. When St John and Yeats reported to Shankly’s office, Yeats was called in first He told the story. The players had been lured into a card game in a bar and had fallen so far behind they had to stay in the game in an effort to get back some of their money Time had of course flown Shankly appeared quite sympathetic. He said:, “Well, let that teach you a lesson, big man – never player cards with Irishmen. They’re all card sharps.”Yeats was much relieved and when he came to the door he winked at St John. Then Shankly snarled: “I don’t want to see you St John – you’ll only tell me the same pack of lies.”St John no doubt will feel an old ambivalence when he arrives at Bootle Town Hall.