“If I’ve committed fraud, I’d hold my hands up and you could handcuff me.”The investigators will now be joined by a team from the Official Receiver. As a condition of accepting Pearson’s offer, the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise demanded that the former company be liquidated and its affairs investigated. A further condition was that no former director would have any role in the new set-up.Pearson is clearly a new breed of executive – at 36, schooled in the age of the football plc. He said on Monday that he is a “100 per cent shareholder” in the new Hull City, but he is understood to be backed by Peter Wilkinson, an internet entrepreneur, one of whose ventures, Planet Football, was taken over for £24m last year by the Sports Internet Group.Pearson this week breezily talked football’s new commercial language: sponsorship, merchandising, internet deals. He referred to the club, in England’s seventh biggest city, as “One of the biggest franchises left in British football which is untapped in terms of potential and the size of its fan base.”Angie Rowe, of the Tigers Co-Operative, a supporters trust which has 1,600 members – nearly a third of Hull’s regular support – and has raised around £50,000, cautiously welcomed Pearson.”We’ve heard he is respected, knows about football, and we think he has the right vision for our club,” she said. “We hope to meet him soon and to play a meaningful role in the future.”Investigate the old, ring in the new: the times have changed quickly at Hull City.davidconn freeuk .

David Hopkin is returning to one of his former clubs, Crystal Palace, in a £600,000 move from Bradford City. The Scottish international midfielder is still seen as a hero at Palace after he scored the goal in the play-off final at Wembley that saw the club promoted to the Premier League in 1997, only to leave the club for Leeds in a £3.5m deal that summer. David Hopkin is returning to one of his former clubs, Crystal Palace, in a £600,000 move from Bradford City. The Scottish international midfielder is still seen as a hero at Palace after he scored the goal in the play-off final at Wembley that saw the club promoted to the Premier League in 1997, only to leave the club for Leeds in a £3.5m deal that summer.
He was then sold to Bradford prior to the start of this season for £2.5m and, should Palace agree terms with the player, it would represent a tidy piece of business for the club.Hopkin is the latest casualty of Bradford’s ruthless pruning back of their playing staff. The Bantams’ chairman, Geoffrey Richmond, seems to have accepted that the club are heading for relegation and would rather have the player’s substantial salary package off the books as soon as possible.Also seemingly on the way out of Valley Parade is the highly rated centre-half Andrew O’Brien, who is on the verge of signing for Newcastle United in a £1.5m deal.Newcastle see O’Brien as a promising defender, filling the vacancy left by Alain Goma’s departure for Fulham. The final detail in the negotiations concerns a 20 per cent sell-on clause that Bradford want to insert.The Newcastle striker Shola Ameobi could still play for Nigeria despite having turned out for the England Under-21 team against Spain last month, according to the country’s Dutch coach, Jo Bonfrere.”We have not lost Ameobi yet,” Bonfrere said. “I’m aware he has played a friendly match for the England youth [sic] team.

But I also know he is yet to decide whether to play for Nigeria or England. We hope to call him for one of our games soon and then we hope he will agree to play for us,” he added.The Bolton Wanderers manager, Sam Allardyce, has turned to Celtic’s forgotten man Dimitri Kharin as he runs out goalkeeping alternatives.The former Chelsea No 1 Kharin could sign for Wanderers on loan for the rest of the season. Kharin may take the chance to get back in the spotlight after a couple of miserable years in Scotland.Allardyce is also thinking of signing the American playmaker Jovan Kirovski, once on Manchester United’s books, on loan from Sporting Lisbon.Thomas Myhre has completed his loan move from Everton to Roy Hodgson’s FC Copenhagen, while the Goodison club are on the brink of signing a Danish international defender on loan. Brian Steen Nielsen will discuss personal terms over a possible three-month loan spell, and could go into Everton’s squad to face Southampton on Saturday.