Football club in bugging mystery

SECURITY GUARDS at Crystal Palace Football Club have thwarted an attempt to bug the offices of senior management.

The Independent has learnt that two intruders were apprehended in a night raid, but there is a dispute among directors and the outgoing chairman, Mark Goldberg, over whose office was the target.

According to a board-level source, two men were caught in the offices of Phil Alexander, the club's managing director, in the early hours of the morning a month ago with what security men described as electronic listening equipment. When challenged, the men claimed to be there on instruction from Mr Goldberg, a claim he denied.

"I was called at 2am by a security guard to say somebody had broken in under my authority and I told him ... he was not there on my authority," Mr Goldberg said. He said it was "absolute nonsense" to suggest that the intruders were trying to bug Mr Alexander's office: "It was an attack on me, not the MD. And I said `I don't care if my office is bugged or not, I don't want you in there and I don't want to get involved'."

Asked whether he was surprised that the men claimed to be electronically sweeping his office in the early hours, Mr Goldberg replied: "Those are the hours these people work."

Mr Goldberg resigned as chairman of Crystal Palace yesterday after a disastrous year which saw the club go into administration and his fortune almost wiped out.

Goldberg resigns,

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