I HOPE Bolton Council beat Chorley in coming up with a location for Wanderers to build their football academy.

The identity of Wanderers seems to be slipping away from Bolton and it would be a shame if another of the club's facilities goes out of town.

It is not nice for proud Boltonians who are also proud Bolton fans to hear questions on University Challenge like: 'Which Premiership football club moved to its neighbouring town of Horwich."

For while Horwich is within the metropolitan borough of Bolton it is not within a mile of the Bolton town border.

The Wanderers training ground is much further away still in the Chorley area of Euxton and if the new academy - which will cost millions of pounds to build and going on for a million pounds a year to run - goes to Chorley then that neighbouring town's link with Bolton Wanderers will grow and Bolton's will in turn diminish.

Wanderers chairman Phil Gartside says that as far as he is concerned it is a race between Bolton and Chorley councils to offer the club an appropriate location. For the sake of keeping as much of Bolton identity with its football club as possible I hope Bolton wins. Tied for first place TOP TIE: David Beckham THERE'S was little doubt what stole the show at Sunday's BBC Sports Personality of the Year show.

David Beckham's tie.

I've heard of big knots but he must have needed a fork lift truck to get that thing into the studio.

With all the honours going to the usual suspects there was little to liven it up until the England captain, who captured the public's imagination with one important goal and one great performance, emerged with what looked like a huge twisted mouse stuck on his throat.

You can't argue with him winning the top prize. He might not have won anything but a routine Premiership medal but this is about being a personality and Beckham is certainly that.

Now if we were asked to pick Britain's best performing sportsman Beckham wouldn't have got a look in behind Jonathan Edwards and Tony McCoy.

Forgive me if I take the Sports Personality awards with a pinch of salt. The reason is that year after year they fail to honour people who truly deserve recognition.

Sven Goran Eriksson's award as coach of the year and Alex Ferguson's lifetime achievement honour made for good TV and kept the ratings up. But the people who really deserve lifetime achievement and coaching awards are people like the many athletics coaches behind the success of the likes of Denise Lewis, Jonathan Edwards and Linford Christie.

They produce Olympic gold medals for Britain by giving up their time for absolutely no recognition or money. Forget the match - take the money W HO said football fans are daft?

The winner of ITV's Premiership show's goal of the month competition proved they know a good deal when they see one.

The prizes were two tickets for a Premier League game of their choice or two tickets for any European game of their choice or £1,000 in cash.

Now it's a while since I paid to see a Premier League game but I'm sure tickets, even at Chelsea, haven't reached £500 each yet.

Maybe if you have champagne and caviar at half time and buy a box of programmes you can get the bill up to £100.

A better option would be to travel to Rome or Madrid for a top European tie but you could do the same thing under your own steam and still get change out of £500.

So the only long straw had £1,000 written all over it and the lucky winner predictably went for it to prove he knows a good deal as well as a good goal. TI OMORROW the FIA, the world governing body of motor racing, will decide if Britain deserves to stage a Grand Prix at Silverstone next year.

Judging from the actions of the track officials to try to ease its traditional traffic congestion problems I believe the answer is probably no.

Silverstone is renowned for being a hell hole when it comes to getting into and out of its car parks. To try to improve the congestion officials have put up the prices of tickets from an already ridiculously inflated level.