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By Laura Williamson and Ivan Speck Last updated at 9:00 PM on 18th February 2011

After Xavi, Iniesta and Messi come Scott McGleish and Alex Revell.

It's another cup match but, in the shadow of the Olympic Stadium, Arsenal will have very different challenges.

Leyton Orient versus Arsenal restores Arsene Wenger's team to the status of favourites. Their hosts will be the ones chasing the ball this time.

But Wenger is proud of his record of never having lost to a side outside the Premier League in 25 FA Cup outings against lower league opposition.

Before training on Friday morning, the Frenchman watched 30 minutes of Orient's 3-2 win at Milton Keynes on Tuesday night and finished off the rest of the match in the  afternoon.

The Gunners boss said: 'We always try to prepare properly. We watched them against MK Dons so we always research them.

'They have a good left back (Charlie) Daniels and a striker who looks dangerous, Revell. They have (Ben) Chorley, a former Arsenal player, and also Jason Crowe, who played here when I arrived.

'To be successful in the end, you need to go through these kind of games. It is a mental test of how much we want to win.'

But before the Carling Cup final against Birmingham City at Wembley on February 27 and their Champions League trip to the Nou Camp on March 8, Arsenal must navigate an FA Cup fifth-round test at 9,271-capacity Brisbane Road.

Russell Slade's side, 10th in League One, are unbeaten since New Year's Day and have not lost at home since September 11. Arsenal are in giant-killing territory in East London.

Revell, 27, and veteran strike partner McGleish, 37, are the players most likely to create a headline. The pair have scored 27 goals this season, 15 years after meeting at Cambridge.

McGleish was on loan from Peterborough and became an idol for the young Revell when he gave him a pair of yellow boots. Despite meeting as opponents, it was only when Revell signed for Orient last summer he dared mention the boots.

Revell said: 'We were doing a 4km run in pre-season, and I said to Scotty: "Do you remember those boots you gave me?" He said: "What, those yellow Apta ones?" "Yeah." We started giggling away like two school kids. Scotty was an idol to me for doing that. I always looked out afterwards to see how he was getting on.'

McGleish is a traditionalist when it comes to boots and, while he scored seven goals in that 10-match spell at Cambridge, he never actually wore the yellow boots in a match.

He said: 'I wore them only in the warm-up. I just looked at them and thought: "No, I can't wear these." Even now I only ever wear black boots. It was only when Alex mentioned it I twigged it was him that I gave them to.'

But McGleish has picked up his share of souvenirs along the way. He said: 'At Barnet we played Wolves in the Carling Cup and I got Keith Curle's shirt.

'I was having my first house built and they were just giving everyone a small three-by-three slab patio. The site manager was a massive Wolves fan. He asked if he could have the shirt and I said: "Yeah, for a bigger patio." I had a huge one done that was eight slabs by eight.

'The only other one I've got was Jamie Redknapp's Southampton shirt from a Cup tie when I was at Northampton. But my missus won't let me get rid of that one.'

And if they can't do it, here's a kid from Spurs who might...

Harry Kane has added motivation to knock out Arsenal. The 17-year-old striker belongs to Tottenham and is on loan at Orient until the end of the season.

The highly rated forward scored 18 goals in 22 games for Spurs Under 18s last season, and has three since arriving at Brisbane Road in January.

He has done pretty well at international level too, firing in two goals in three games for the England Under 17s before it was decided he was too good for that age group. Since moving to the Under 19s, he has hit two goals in two appearances.

Arsenal's defence might want to keep a special eye out for his David Beckham-esque set pieces.

Labels: daily, Heaposs, Itaposs, McGleish, Messi, Revell, Wenger

By Lawrence Booth
Last updated at 9:21 AM on 18th February 2011

England take on Pakistan today in a warm-up game that feels more like a grudge  match following the acrimonious events of 2010.

The sides have been staying in the same Dhaka hotel during the build-up to the  World Cup, which starts here tomorrow with Bangladesh against India following  last night's colourful opening ceremony, but Stuart Broad admitted the two  teams – who have not met since the summer – have given each other a wide berth.

'We’ve seen them but not spoken to them,’ said the England fast bowler. ‘And it’s not like we've been going out for dinner with them.’

The banned trio of Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer are absent  following their part in the no-ball scandal that wrecked the Lord’s Test.

But  Wahab Riaz – the seamer who clashed with Jonathan Trott before the one-day  international at the same ground – is in Pakistan’s squad.

Broad, whose career-best 169 at Lord’s was all but forgotten amid the controversy, admitted: ‘Obviously it was a tough time for us last year: all  England players will say the same.

'We enjoyed the cricket, but the  off-the-field incidents did damage our wonderful summer of cricket. But you've  got to move on and the World Cup campaign is our sole focus.’

England made an unconvincing start to their tour on Wednesday when they  squeezed out minnows Canada by 16 runs in their opening warm-up match Fatullah,  but Broad’s haul of five for 39 in his first game since tearing stomach muscles  in Adelaide in December was a rare ray of light.

‘It was great to get back on the pitch,’ he said. ‘I was a bit nervous before  the start, but I feel very fresh having not played for a long time and very fit  after all the gym work.’

Labels: daily, England, final, friendly, hardly, Itaposs, Match, Pakistan, warmup

As if Bernie Ecclestone, the 80-year-old workaholic head of Formula One, did not have enough worries with riots in Bahrain threatening the start of the international season, there are also rows on the home front because of an upcoming book.

The biographer, Tom Bower, has a track record of upsetting the people about whom he writes, but when he started work on his latest opus it did seem to be one that might get off the presses with less fuss than usual.

Mr Ecclestone, a working-class boy who made good and become fabulously rich by bringing business acumen to motor sport, is thicker-skinned than a lot of billionaires. When he and Mr Bower discussed the project in its early stages, the writer warned that if he turned up anything bad, he would use it. Mr Ecclestone shrugged off the warning and replied: "I'm no angel", thus furnishing Mr Bower with a title for his new book, which is to be published on Monday. He even took the author around in his private jet.

But trouble began when an extract from the book appeared in the Daily Mail. As usual, when a newspaper buys the rights to a book, the section that was likely to cause the most controversy and upset was given the greatest prominence.

In this case, the newspaper pulled out the story of how Mr Ecclestone ended his 17-year relationship with Tuana Tan to marry Slavica Maric, a feisty Croatian model who stands 1ft taller than the diminutive Mr Ecclestone and was pregnant with the first of their two daughters.

Mr Ecclestone has dominated the world of Formula One for decades. Before he arrived, it was more like an amateur club, but he turned it into a multimillion-pound business. In 1997, he hit the headlines when it was found that he had quietly donated £1m to the Labour Party – a huge sum by the normal standards of political gifts, but for Mr Ecclestone it was not more than a week's income.

Yet at home, his strong-willed wife was easily a match for him. They first met on the Italian race circuit in 1982, when she was 23 and he was 51. Their stormy 23-year union ended in November 2008. The former Mrs Ecclestone and their daughters did not like what they read, causing a rift between the biographer and his subject.

This is not the biggest problem on Mr Ecclestone's plate right now. The 2011 Formula One programme is scheduled to begin on the Bahrain International Circuit on 13 March.

The same circuit was the setting for the GP2 Asia series, but yesterday its organisers announced that they had cancelled the rest of the race weekend because of political unrest. Bahrain's authorities are insistent that the Formula One fixture will go ahead, but that depends on whether political stability has returned to the desert kingdom.

"We'll have to keep our eye on things and make a decision quickly," Mr Ecclestone said yesterday. "I spoke to the Crown Prince this morning. He doesn't know any more than you or I, but they're monitoring exactly what is going on. Next week we will make a decision on what we are going to do."

Another problem is that German prosecutors are investigating the sale in 2005 of 48 per cent of Formula One by a Munich bank, Bayerische Landesbank, to a private firm, CVC Capital Partners. The banker who engineered the deal, Gerhard Gribkowsky, is currently in the same prison that held Adolf Hitler nearly 90 years ago, accused of taking a huge bribe disguised as consultancy fees. The police have not said who paid the alleged bribe. Formula One and Mr Ecclestone have denied any knowledge of payments to Mr Gribkowsky.

With all that to worry about, Mr Ecclestone understandably did not need a family row and is now expected to stay away from next week's party to launch the new book.

For Mr Bower, who declined yesterday to comment about his relations with Mr Ecclestone, it is another in a series of clashes with his subjects. The 64-year-old author – who lives in Hampstead and is married to the former Evening Standard editor Veronica Wadley – was a reporter for BBC's Panorama in the 1980s, before branching out on his own as an investigative writer. He has a track record for writing "warts and all" biographies of rich men, many of whom have vehemently objected.

Two years ago, he won a hard-fought libel case brought by the owner of the Daily Express, Richard Desmond, who objected to a single paragraph referring to him in Mr Bower's biography of Conrad Black, the former owner of The Daily Telegraph who was sentenced to jail in the United States for fraud.

Mr Bower's other targets have included Richard Branson, Tiny Rowland, Mohammed Al Fayed, the late Robert Maxwell, Gordon Brown, the Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson and the seamy side of the football world.

Bower's other victims

Richard Desmond Bower's biography of the owner the Daily Express remains unpublished, but Bower won a high-profile libel case against him in 2009.

Robert Maxwell The crooked former press baron was Bower's first living subject. Maxwell tried to intimidate him by setting private detectives on him.

Richard Branson "It is a foul, foul piece of work from the first words to the last – really rotten, nasty stuff" is what Branson said after reading what Bower had written about him.

Harry Redknapp and Brian Clough They may have been heroes to football fans, but in Bower's book, Broken Dreams, they were portrayed as greedy men who were only too happy to pocket bundles of unearned cash.

Labels: Bernie, biography, hates, Independent, Itaposs

Labels: champions, Chelsea, disaster, Frank, Itaposs, Lampard, league, Metro, Spurs

Tony Fernandes has revealed that Group Lotus did make an offer to settle the damaging ongoing Lotus naming row out-of-court, but he insists it was one that ?would have bankrupted us? ? as he called for both sides to ?grow up?, stop muck-spreading and bring an end to their ?petty? dispute.

The row over who should be allowed to run under the iconic Lotus banner in F1 2011 still shows no signs of reaching any sort of conclusion, with a trial date now set in London?s High Court for 21 March. The stand-off centres around Group Lotus? termination of Fernandes? licence to use the ?Lotus Racing? name last year, and the AirAsia founder?s subsequent purchase of the rights to revive the classic Team Lotus moniker from David Hunt, brother of Britain?s late 1976 world champion James Hunt.

Proton-owned Group Lotus ? which under the guidance of ambitious new CEO Dany Bahar has taken the plunge into F1 itself with title sponsorship of Renault this season ? contends that the rights were never Hunt?s to sell in the first place, and that there is only one rightful Lotus entry in the field, denigrating Fernandes? operation as a fake. The Malaysian entrepreneur, for his part, is adamant that for Group Lotus to rescind his licence four years early was unlawful.

The tit-for-tat spat ? one that has done F1, it should be noted, few favours ? has seen both sides hit out at each other through the media, with the most recent outburst made by Lotus Renault GP chairman G?rard Lopez, who accused Fernandes of ?trying to twist things? by pretending the battle is not about money and suggested any attempts to paint the new Team Lotus as the true Lotus effort are ?a bunch of bullsh*t? [see separate story ? click here].

Fernandes himself argues that it is about time the bullsh*t stopped, and whilst acknowledging Bahar?s assertion that an offer was made to resolve the disagreement, the 46-year-old describes it as little more of an insult, with reports hinting at a figure of under $10 million, far less than would potentially be lost in terms of prize money by an enforced name change.

?If he (Lopez) expects me to give away Team Lotus and bankrupt this team, that?s a crazy thought,? he railed, speaking to the Norwich Advertiser. ?I looked at an offer, with the best of gentlemanly conduct, and I considered doing a deal, but the one they (Group Lotus) offered me would have bankrupted us, which is obviously something I?ve no intention of doing as I?ve worked hard to build it.

?As I saw Dany Bahar doing his best to unravel a good relationship with Proton, I decided my investment and 250 jobs were in jeopardy, so we bought the name from David Hunt. I would much rather we remained as Lotus Racing, but I had no choice because my licence was terminated, would you believe over nothing more than some T-shirts. We spent ?80million, and yet they (Group Lotus) said we didn?t have approval for some T-shirts. It?s a laughing matter.

?It?s petty. I think we should all grow up and let the courts decide, and at the end of the day we honour the courts. I said I didn?t want to say anything anymore, but they keep making statements. I can?t just say silent.?

Meanwhile, Fernandes has been awarded a CBE by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II ?for services to promote commercial and educational links? between the UK and Malaysia. With a philosophy to ?serve the under-served?, amongst his major successes in business has been the dramatic turnaround of the loss-making AirAsia airline to become Asia?s biggest low-cost carrier advertised by the slogan ?Now Everyone Can Fly?, whilst he has already gained a wealth of support ? and respect ? in F1.

?I?m grateful to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for the honour,? he enthused, having previously been bestowed with France?s L?gion d?honneur, the highest award for a non-French national, for his outstanding contributions to the aviation industry and having recently been named ?Asia Businessman of the Year 2010? by international magazine Forbes.

?I realised my dream, and I am determined to help others realise theirs, too. [The CBE] is recognition of the hard work, determination and effort on the part of all my partners, colleagues and staff in AirAsia, Tune Group and Team Lotus. We have a terrific bunch of talented people working with us to make things happen in whatever venture we undertake. This is as much their award as it is mine.?

Labels: aposgrow, apospettyapos, Eurosport, Fernandes, Itaposs, upapos, Yahoo