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• Malaysian XI 3-6 Liverpool
• Rahim 40, Mohd Sali 79 80; Adam 27pen, Ngog 68 69, Rodríguez 76 90, Kuyt 94

Alberto Aquilani and David Ngog, two Liverpool players who appeared closest to the exit at Anfield, have been given public backing from the club’s owner, John W Henry. Ngog linked up well with Aquilani to score twice in Liverpool’s 6-3 victory over a Malaysian XI in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday and, using his Twitter account, Henry called Aquilani: “Our missing link last year.” He added: “Put the ball near Ngog and the goal, and it’s going in. There is too much talk of them (going) somewhere else.”

Since the arrival of Andy Carroll and Luis Suárez in January, Ngog has become Kenny Dalglish’s fourth-choice striker, while Aquilani – who, in terms of injury and performance, has never justified his £20m fee – spent last season on loan at Juventus. With Dalglish having spent £43m this summer on three midfielders, selling Aquilani appeared an obvious move. Nevertheless, his agent, Franco Zavaglia, said he now expected him to stay on Merseyside. Ngog and Aquilani had both been linked with moves to Sunderland, although reports suggested the former’s salary had been the biggest obstacle to the move. Zavaglia said of Milan’s interest in taking Aquilani back to Serie A, to which his game seems far more suited than the Premier League: “The chances of him playing in Italy are now very low.”

Liverpool will conclude their tour of Asia with an open training session in Singapore on Sunday, which, like Malaysia, represents the bedrock of their Asian fan base. Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Hong Kong began taking broadcasts of English football when Liverpool were in their pomp and that support has never faded. On Friday, 38,700 watched them train and the vast sweeping banks of the Bukit Jalil Stadium, which hold 84,000, were crammed in a way they were not for Arsenal on Wednesday night, and will not be for Chelsea next week.

If selling the brand abroad is about staging entertaining exhibition matches, then Liverpool obliged. Their two matches in Guangzhou and Kuala Lumpur have produced 16 goals. That six of them were conceded against Guangdong Sunray Cave, of the Chinese second division, and Malaysia, who stand 144th in the Fifa rankings — between Turkmenistan and Guinea Bissau — might give Dalglish pause for thought, however unreliable pre-season fixtures are as a guide to the real business of football.

Charlie Adam, who spent last summer preparing for Blackpool’s first season in the Premier League with games at Accrington Stanley and Tiverton Town, where he was not asked to provide palm prints in wet concrete or was screamed at whenever he opened his mouth, scored his first Liverpool goal. It came from a penalty, awarded – to the outrage of the Malaysian players – for a foul on Carroll. Generally, Asian footballers tend to be unquestioning about a referee’s decision, but after Wednesday’s 4-0 defeat by Arsenal – and with a World Cup qualifier against Singapore looming – this was a side under pressure. The hosts pulled the score back to 4-3 before Dirk Kuyt and Maxi Rodríguez walked through defending that presented a similar challenge to the cones at Melwood.

Adam will remember the game for the screams for his twice-taken penalty, the noise and the clinging, draining humidity – something that is unlikely to be a problem when Liverpool next play a friendly, at Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire. There, the home fans will not break into ecstatic applause when they concede a goal and the press conference will not be full of journalists wearing Liverpool tops.

LiverpoolFriendliesTim Richguardian.co.uk

The chaotic situation at Anfield sums up the state of England’s elite league, where penury and prosperity go hand in hand

How proud Richard Scudamore must be when he looks at the certificate, the ink on its citation barely dry, telling him that the Premier League has just won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise, granted to organisations which distinguish themselves in one or more of the fields of “international trade, innovation or sustainable development”. The plight of Portsmouth FC suggests that sustainable development was probably not the relevant category here.

Innovation? Such an award would require firmer evidence than a few fireworks and a hand-shaking ceremony before even the most humdrum match. So, not surprisingly, given the Premier League’s unashamedly mercenary imperatives, international trade turns out to be the heading under which the award was applied for and granted, specifically the generation of hundreds of millions of pounds a year in worldwide broadcasting rights.

Such apparent prosperity, however, flies in the face of the known facts. In Portsmouth, local butchers, bakers and candlestick makers are being forced to queue up behind the super-agents to get their money. Yesterday Hull City faced the prospect of administration after two years at the top. And Burnley’s chairman seems to have begun budgeting for relegation even before his team had kicked a ball in the top flight, a move which is both laudably prudent and a terrible indictment of the system.

Yet somehow it is Liverpool, living in fear neither of administration nor relegation, who most starkly express the strange paradoxes of the Premier League. Here is a giant of English football, the proud winner of 18 league championships, seven FA Cups and five European Cups, flashing its knickers by the kerbside in the hope of persuading someone to meet the imminent repayments on an injudiciously incurred £270m debt.

To make it worse, the club’s shirt is being worn by a disintegrating team holding out for a sniff of glory only in a competition for Europe’s also-rans, and threatened by the loss of the manager and star players this summer. If Rafael Benítez departs, either to Juventus or Real Madrid, then he may be followed out of the door by Fernando Torres and Javier Mascherano, and perhaps even by Steven Gerrard, who would surely exchange the cherished status of a one-club man for a last shot at a league title in the colours of a genuine contender.

The arrival of a certain Portuguese manager would change that situation, and much else besides. But why would José Mourinho want to join Liverpool at this stage in their history? Wherever he goes after Internazionale, he will be looking not for a glorious tradition and a huge fan-base but for the resources to enable him to continue to win trophies at his customary rate.

Short of a miracle, that will not be on offer at Anfield. Having failed to improve the club in any respect since their arrival three years ago, Tom Hicks and George Gillett recently appointed Martin Broughton, the chairman of British Airways, to spend one day a week in the same role at Liverpool, with the sole task of finding a buyer for the club, something that they and their chief executive, Christian Purslow, have failed to achieve.

In this environment, to put up a For Sale sign outside the house is to admit that no realistic buyers have emerged and that there are none on the horizon. And why should there be? It would take the owners of a bottomless purse to meet the sort of terms demanded by Hicks and Gillett, and there is only one of those, currently at the disposal of Manchester City. How clever of the rulers of Abu Dhabi to spot that they could buy a club whose new stadium has already been paid for by the people of its home city rather than having to fork out for such an expensive necessity themselves.

For all the Premier League’s international success, these are the matters that should be uppermost in Scudamore’s thoughts. A league in which shame, humiliation and penury are as prominent as glory, popularity and prosperity is nothing of which to be so proud.

Vinokourov faces long road to regain respect

Sport took a couple of backwards steps at the weekend, when Alexandre Vinokourov won the Liège-Bastogne-Liège one-day classic with a final surge up the last climb to take him clear of his only remaining pursuer. As the 36-year-old Kazakh crossed the line, he was greeted with boos and whistles – a rare sound in cycling, where the effort of a winner is usually respected.

Two summers ago Vinokourov was thrown off the Tour de France and had two stage wins taken from him after a test showed that he had been blood doping. Last August, a few days after the expiry of his statutory two-year ban, he returned to action, declaring: “I didn’t want my career to end in this way. I feel as if I can once again win the big races.” Yesterday he proved it.

It is his right to race again, of course, but the public also have a right to show their distrust. A third place for Alejandro Valverde of Spain, suspended from racing in Italy over allegations linking him to the Operación Puerto investigation, did not help.

Dark overcoats corner attention of Capello

The last time I wrote about the possible significance of Fabio Capello’s fondness for arte povera – an Italian post-war movement in which artists make use of humble or unlikely materials – I ended up in Pseuds Corner. Last week Capello attended the private view at the Ambika P3 gallery in London of a show by his friend Jannis Kounellis, a leader of the movement, some of whose pieces are in the England manager’s collection. One of the new works is a white-walled space, about the size of the average football club dressing room, containing a dozen dark overcoats hanging from pegs.

According to the Observer’s art critic, it evokes “some distant age of dignified men going to their deaths”. I say no more.

IPL was a mess just waiting to happen

Is there any surprise that something as garish, tawdry and financially motivated as the Indian Premier League should become the focal point of the allegations of corruption that emerged at the weekend? Twenty20 cricket offers great entertainment, but now the rest of the world has been given a glimpse of what can happen when it gets out of hand.

Premier LeagueLiverpoolRichard Williamsguardian.co.uk

Television campaign featuring the former footballer and his ex-pop star wife have lifted the tour operator’s bookings in the crucial January booking period

Television advertising featuring ex-Liverpool and Tottenham footballer Jamie Redknapp and his wife Louise, the former pop star, frolicking at a sun-drenched resort was credited with helping generate robust summer bookings for holiday firm Thomas Cook.

The tour operator told the City that the ads had boosted demand during the peak sales spell in late January.

Chief executive Manny Fontenla-Novoa said: “In recent weeks, bookings for the summer 2010 season have improved significantly, marking a positive response to our current marketing campaigns and highlighting the resilience of the summer holiday.”

The surge in bookings is welcome news for the company after poor weather in early January, particularly in the UK, led to a slow start to the traditionally busy trading period. Bookings from British holiday-makers jumped 15% in the last four weeks, when compared with the same period in 2009.

The Redknapp-credited sales fillip may also bolster the celebrity couple’s marketability after it emerged last month that Icon, the glossy magazine for the super-rich which they founded, was in financial difficulty. The loss-making magazine carried features on luxury lifestyles, focusing on topics such as premium property, travel and fine wines. It was reported last month that subscribers had not received the latest edition and that the business was the subject of several court claims brought by creditors. The Redknapps are minority shareholders, and said to be no longer involved with running the magazine.

Thomas Cook and rival tour group Tui Travel — both the product of mega-mergers in 2007 — have both led industry moves to slash the number of package holidays on sale each year. Their actions, combined with the collapse of smaller operators such as XL Leisure and Globespan, have led to a steep reduction in the number of summer holidays on offer to UK consumers in recent years.

This has allowed Thomas Cook and Tui to rapidly rebuild profitability, reducing exposure to low-margin package deals to destinations such as the Spanish Costas, and focusing on more lucrative, higher-priced business where competition from low-cost airlines such as Ryanair and easyJet is less fierce.

Thomas Cook is cutting the number of summer holidays it is selling to UK customers this year by 3%, taking capacity to 17% less than 2007 levels. In Continental Europe the group raised has raised its summer holiday capacity by 8%.

The update on summer booking trends came as Thomas Cook reported first quarter operating loss of £41m, compared with a loss of £27m last year. The company said that operating cash outflow was “broadly in line with last year” despite capacity reductions.

Thomas CookTui TravelTravel & leisureAdvertisingLiverpoolTottenham HotspurSimon Bowersguardian.co.uk