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Plus: Footballers producing their own food and drink (2); Nickname nominative determinism; and the longest-distance football commuter. Send your questions and answers to knowledge@guardian.co.uk and follow us on Twitter

“Sad to hear about the death of Jimmy Savile,” wrote Sean Mack last week. “In the mists of time, late 70s, I remember watching a Jim’ll Fix It episode where he fixed it for a fan to play in a match for Liverpool. Does anyone remember this episode or the match he played in?”

As several readers pointed out, it wasn’t Jim who fixed it for Lol Cottrell, but Esther Rantzen in her Jim’ll-Fix-It-For-Grown-Ups affair, The Big Time. Bakery delivery driver Cottrell was a keen amateur footballer and Liverpool fan given a chance to play for his beloved Reds in Tommy Smith’s testimonial. Liverpool’s opponents were an international XI, including Bobby Charlton, Norman Hunter and Alex Stepney.

After some coaching from Smith, Cottrell turned out at Anfield and late on the home side were awarded a penalty. Cottrell was given the opportunity to score from the spot and win the game for his side in front of the Kop … and missed. Fortunately the referee “spotted an infringement” and ordered a retake only for the hapless Cottrell to miss again. The referee decided two chances was enough and the game ended 3-3.

“In interview afterward, Smith was clearly livid that this untried player had been allowed to take the spot-kick despite the fact that it wasn’t a competitive match,” writes Jeremy Simmonds. “While Cottrell allegedly received a ban for life a couple of years later for assaulting a referee.”

But Jim did indeed carry out a few football fixes of his own (although not in the Luciano Moggi sense) – a particular Knowledge favourite is the young Arsenal fan who was allowed to referee a friendly between the Gunners and Oxford United and responded by sending off most off the Oxford side.

FOOTBALLERS PRODUCING THEIR OWN FOOD AND DRINK (2)

Last week we looked at the footballers who have made their own beer, wine and hangover-prevention products. This week our very own Paolo Bandini chips in a few more:

First up Antonio Di Natale – he of Serie A top goalscoring fame – produces his own brand of coffee through a company he part-owns. It is called Caffè Totò (his nickname is Totò) and although the official website is still under construction, here is a picture of him looking impish as he contemplates a cup.

Next up is the former Sweden midfielder Glenn Stromberg. He joined Atalanta back in the mid-80s and became so attached to Italian food that he still hasn’t left Bergamo. He is a pundit on Swedish TV these days, but since retiring he has also written several cookbooks and launched his own range of Italian produce. More details on the Glenn Stromberg Collection can be found here.

ROBINS, SADDLERS and LIONS. WELL, LYONS

“Bantering with my mate John, we noted that with the Manchester United v Crystal Palace League Cup draw, it’s a ‘Glazers’ v ‘Glaziers’ (original CPFC nickname) contest,” writes Peter Fisher. “He was then reminded of an ex-Palace keeper, Bill Glazier, and expressed disappointment that the club hadn’t bought Chris Eagles, thus becoming the only club to have had two players whose name was their team’s nickname. Then we agreed that, in fact, no other clubs have ever had a player whose name was their team’s nickname. Prove us wrong …”

Indeed we will. While Steve Cherry was on the south coast with Plymouth but not Bournemouth, Paul Blades never got closer than Rotherham to Bramall Lane and Billy Pilgrim was a character in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five rather than a jinking Plymouth midfielder, there have been other players to match Bill Glazier’s effort.

The Rochdale-born full-back Eddie Lyons turned out for Millwall six times between 1949 and 1951,

Mark Robins scored four times in six games on loan at Bristol City and currently in the Walsall ranks is the former Birmingham City defender Mat Sadler.

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

There have been a few questions of late about Samuel Eto’o’s long-distance commuting in Russia, so in honour of those, here’s Dan Brady back in 2006: “What is the longest distance a footballer has been known to travel on a daily basis to attend training at their club?”

Sometimes, as you watch Rio Ferdinand pick up £120,000 a week for occasionally engaging second gear, it’s easy to forget that playing football is a job, and that its protagonists are subject to the same daily irritants as the great unwashed: working with a hangover, eejit colleagues who nick your favourite mug – and commuting to work.

We had a few nominations for the longest daily to trip to training, including Winston Bogarde (Amsterdam-Chelsea: 356km) and VfL Wolfsburg’s Pablo Thiam (Berlin-Wolfsburg: 150km), but nobody gets near the monster commute, albeit not a daily one, undertaken by the Australian striker Damian Mori.

“Mori, currently playing in the A-League for the Central Coast Mariners, still lives in Adelaide,” says Andrew Stockings. “Last year he was playing for Perth Glory, when he also commuted between matches from Adelaide. The journey from Adelaide to the Central Coast is approximately 1,500km; Adelaide to Perth is 2,700km.”

For thousands more questions and answers take a trip through the Knowledge archive

Can you help?

It seems to be increasingly common for players to retire form international football to preserve their club careers,” writes Adam Harcus. “So my questions are: what is the youngest someone has retired to do this? And has anyone ever retired from club football but continued to play at international level?”

“After Carlos Tevez allegedly refusing to go on the pitch as a substitute for Manchester City against Bayern,” begins Matthew Craig, “has any player caused a somewhat similar brouhaha by refusing to come off the pitch to let a substitute on?”

“I have a college lecturer who keeps saying he “wishes he knew the first footballer to pull his shirt over his head,” writes James Keating. “Thanks to him, now I need to know, can you help?”

“I noticed recently when Scotland bravely lost to Spain 3-1, all goals were scored by Davids; David Villa, David Silva & David Goodwillie,” writes Stephen Dinsdale. “In my sad existence I was wondering if there have been any other occasions when there have been all goalscorers with the with the same first name. Any advance on 3? A 7-0 win, all goals scored by Johns?”

“Estonian Meistriliiga (top tier) side FC Ajax Lasnamäe, who were promoted to the Meistriliiga this season, ended the season with four points,” writes Robi Karhula. “They won zero, drew four and lost 32 matches. In those matches they scored 11 goals and conceded 192 goals resulting in a goal difference of -181. What I’m asking is, have they made a new record in being the worst side in a European top tier league and if not, what team is holding the infamous record?”

“Now that you’ve solved the ‘league leaders with negative goal difference’ issue, how about “Has there ever been a league table in professional football where only one team has a positive goal difference?” writes Oliver Kannenberg. “If not, the Brisbane Roar of Australia’s A-League may claim a world first as they currently lead their 10-team league with a goal difference of +12, while being followed by five teams on a goal difference of zero and four others with a negative goal difference.”

“Recently playing Fifa 12 with my son, he cheekily took a penalty against me with his goalkeeper, and even more cheekily, had the temerity to score it,” writes Phil Laing and Stefan Coombs. “Later on in the match, fate caught up with him as said keeper conceded an own goal, ensuring his name on both sides of the scoresheet and the resumption of my offspring’s pocket money. It got me thinking – has a keeper ever scored at both ends in a match? Not including penalty shoot outs, naturally.”

Send your questions and answers to knowledge@guardian.co.uk

LiverpoolJohn Ashdownguardian.co.uk

When Liverpool host Sunderland two World Cup foes united by a controversial moment meet again

A little over a year ago the Premier League whirligig stopped for a moment while everyone watched the slow‑motion non‑handshake between John Terry and Wayne Bridge at Stamford Bridge. The repeat fixture takes placeon Sunday, and there will be considerable surprise if Roberto Mancini’s erratic Manchester City ambush Chelsea with a 4-2

Great clubs like Liverpool are in crisis – and fans can’t even afford to watch them on TV

As an enemy of football, I’m delighted by the crisis facing Liverpool. Its successes, traditions and combination of a global fan base with a strong geographical sense of identity make it a tricky institution to despise, but I can do it. It’s complicit in one dull sport’s infiltration of so many media and conversations, so much of the precious part of my brain that I reserve for ire and, at times of forthcoming national disappointment, so many upstairs windows and car aerials. It’s the epitome of what makes football hard to kill: popular, successful and even charming. Assuming you don’t support Everton.

So what better sign that my football-destroying hopes might be fulfilled than the mighty Anfield falling victim to a bitter and financially grubby hallowed turf war? Football’s acquisitive ambitions are destroying it. Its popularity has allowed it to court the big money that’s made its coverage spill out of the sport into the news, gossip and financial sections of newspapers, and stimulated huge TV and sponsorship deals, takeovers and transfers, oligarchs and sheikhs. As well as a community of young men so baffled by how much the world over-values their skills that they desperately oscillate between vacuous, self-important wives and cynical, publicity-seeking prostitutes – and then back to the wives again for the glum inevitability of financially motivated forgiveness.

And where has all this led? Liverpool FC, an organisation beloved of its fans with an international reputation for success in a global sport, could fall into the hands of the receivers. Football’s market-friendly approach has allowed the club to be bought and loaded with debt by two American businessmen for whom its purchase was no more than a punt – and one which, like a lot of their punts, looks unlikely to pay off. They’re shit foreign tycoons: their aims are reprehensible and they’re not even up to achieving them.

Stories like this seem commonplace. People say it’s the inevitable consequence of the “free market” and the “modern world”. English football is now an environment in which players are millionaires, football clubs are plcs, valued in the hundreds of millions but paradoxically on the verge of insolvency, and fans can’t even afford to watch their teams on TV.

Those responsible for this state of affairs would probably say that Liverpool’s crisis is the regrettable counterbalance to all the advantages that the money flowing through football has brought. But what are these advantages that apparently compensate for a successful and venerable institution being put beyond the help of its millions of fans and left to the tender mercies of either two incompetent investors or the official representative of their creditors? In this case, the money has flown through the club with such pace and abrasion that it’s taken the paint off the walls.

The answer, I suppose, is investment. In my view, only two basic types invest in football clubs. Liverpool is suffering from the first: speculators out to make money from clubs which were never constituted for that purpose. They see that, in its name, fan base, players or the location of its ground, a club has assets to be monetised and they buy in to do so. Sporting glory is only ever a means to their financial end just as, in seeking the investment, the club’s talk of profit was once a means to its sporting one. Ultimately the two ends will be irreconcilable and, if the club had the latent strengths to attract an investor, it would have been better off finding independent ways of exploiting them.

The second sort of investor, like Roman Abramovich at Chelsea and Sheikh Mansour at Manchester City, are people so rich they can make a football club a loss-making vanity project. To me, this feels tantamount to cheating. Who’s to say what club a random trillionaire might suddenly form an attachment to or have rabidly supported as a child? It’s unfair on all the other clubs that one should be able to win the lottery, even if it pays for its luck with the indignity of becoming a tycoon’s plaything.

And what would have happened without any of this investment? Would top flight football have stopped? Would tickets to matches be even more expensive? Or would Wayne Rooney just have had to settle for cheaper whores?

My schadenfreude will be short-lived because, where football goes, sports I like will follow. It may monopolise column inches but it has no monopoly on foolish governance. Most sports seem to be administered by a combination of incompetents and crooks, led by incompetent crooks. They court investment and corporate sponsorship while allowing ticket prices to rise and fixtures to proliferate. They are unshakeable in their belief that money will make everything better.

They’re wrong. The appeal of sport is simple: people play it because it’s fun and people watch it because they enjoy being swept up in the drama of two players, or two sides, trying their best to win. Sportsmen don’t need to be playing for money to authenticate that drama, they just need to care. In fact, as soon as money is involved, there’s the possibility that someone could secretly bribe players more than the prize money to lose. But while England and Australia play for an urn of ashes, they’re likely to try their best because there’s only one such urn available.

Sport is professional now and there’s no going back. But, if only as a thought experiment to clarify sport’s fundamental appeal and what its maladministration is jeopardising, it’s worth asking how much good that professionalism has done.

Spectators’ interests are so often ignored as if we’re junior partners to businessmen and players. We are not. Without the spectators, the Emirates Stadium gets busted down to a kick-around in the park. The parasitic administrators say sport needs money – well, ultimately, it’s our money. Firms don’t buy advertising around pitches or on players’ shirts unless they think the people who’ll see it have more money to spend than it cost. We’re the big money in sport and yet the sporting institutions we love are routinely bought and sold from under us.

An innocent pleasure has been made into a marginal business. The drive for corporate sponsorship and investment has been intense but what concrete benefits have supporters seen? Maybe players are better trained? Maybe skill levels are higher? But, if we hadn’t seen those higher skills, we wouldn’t miss them. We would have enjoyed watching the committed amateurs try their best – they’d have looked pretty good to us.

LiverpoolPremier LeagueBusinessDavid Mitchellguardian.co.uk