Why Avram is in a spin in Moscow

Grant's latest consultant is Matthew Freud, the best connected of all spin doctors as Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law. He met Grant through their mutual friend, Israeli film producer Aaron Milchan, whose credits include Pretty Woman.

Ready for action: Avram Grant arrives at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Moscow ahead of their Champions League Final

Freud, who has become a close family friend of the Chelsea manager, accompanied him to Auschwitz for the Holocaust memorial day when Grant's impassioned speech in front of 12,000 people included high-powered rhetoric never heard during his normally sullen Chelsea press conferences. Freud now talks to him regularly but on a close friend basis rather than in any official tie-up.

Grant also has the Chelsea PR machine, led by Simon Greenberg, at his disposal. This includes ex-Sun editor Stuart Higgins, who is on the payroll, while former News of the World editor Phil Hall has also been used in a consultancy role by the Stamford Bridge boss.

Hall organised a dinner with football writers, since when Grant's personal PR has markedly improved — as it should be with all this spinning going on.

In contrast, his Champions League Final rival Sir Alex Ferguson is disdainful of the PR invasion of football. But he still confers with his media-savvy son Jason, a former football agent, and Tony Blair's ex-spin doctor Alastair Campbell, who is a regular match-day guest when United play in London.

The complex cricket authorities in India recently showed an England and Wales Cricket Board delegation of John Carr and Roger Dickerson around the international grounds due to be used for England's tour this winter. But when they confirmed the fixtures, four unseen venues had been slotted into the schedule.

The ECB have complained but fear the worst. The Twenty20 gold rush is such that the ECB are planning to dismantle the unloved Pro40 competition and reinvent it as a two-innings Twenty20 affair.It hasn't impressed the legion of broadcast cricket pundits commenting on the first Test against New Zealand at Lord's that former England coach Duncan Fletcher is pontificating as a columnist for a national newspaper while watching on TV in Cape Town.Ryder Cup hero Sam Torrance is paid £100,000 for just three days work a year for Visit Scotland. So the tourist organisation were less than pleased when Torrance, hosting a worldwide media party on a new course at St Andrews, lost his temper in a foul-mouthed tirade on the first tee when the Visit Scotland marketing man failed to appear.

Torrance's humour didn't improve and he later cancelled a nearest-the-pin competition and a question-and-answer session with his bemused guests.BBC Sport have decided to make a fresh start with their Formula One coverage next season and use an in-house production team rather than the award-winning North One outfit responsible for the ITV programming over the last 12 years.

This means that Radio Five Live's David Croft will be hot favourite to become the new voice of motor racing, while Adrian Chiles could be the presenter. The Top Gear hosts will be employed in some feature work in the build-up to the races.Stamford Bridge is a big enough political jungle to attract Stephen Atkins, deputy press secretary at the British Embassy in Washington, to become the new head of media.

This frees up combative director of communications Simon Greenberg to relinquish some of his brief to work in other areas of club business. This career move points to Greenberg looking to become a football club chief executive sometime in the future.