MANCHESTER UNITED'S apparently insatiable desire to capture the heart, head and feet of the Blackburn Rovers and England striker Alan Shearer took an extraordinary twist yesterday even by the incredible standard of stories about English football this summer.
It was reported that a certain `A Shearer' had been booked on to Manchester United's July 30th flight to Milan where the English champions are due to play a friendly against Internazionale. The trouble is that there is no `A Shearer' on the books at Old Trafford. Yet.
Despite admiration expressed both publicly and privately over the past few weeks by Manchester United officials, not to mention a bid of £12 million, Alan Shearer remains a Blackburn Rovers player.
However, for the third time in as many weeks Blackburn chairman Robert Coar was forced to issue a statement that Shearer would be making no imminent departure from the club, and certainly not on British Airways flight 5060 to Milan.
The company handling United's flight arrangements to Italy, the Leamington Spa-based Travel Management, launched an immediate inquiry into how Shearer's name came to be on flight list. It quickly found the source and one employee was suspended having been found to have verbally added a name to a written passenger list to British Airways.
Ian Dunwoody of Travel Management (motto: Right People, Right Places) offered swift and fulsome apologies to all concerned and said that as chairman he "accepts full responsibility on behalf of the company and confirms Manchester United had no knowledge whatsoever of this action and categorically did not supply that name for inclusion on the passenger list.
"Travel Management has suspended a member of staff and Ian Dunwoody apologises unreservedly to Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers and Alan Shearer for all the embarrassment."
Doubtless both clubs and Shearer himself are braced for further stories about the future of the top scorer in Euro '96, a situation Blackburn in particular have cause to rue. Only 14,500 of their 31,000 season tickets have been sold so far partly due to the confusion caused by the stalking of Shearer.
