Further to this story about Wembley , my understanding is that the situation is much worse than today's reports indicate.

A few weeks ago, an acquaintance who is involved at a very senior level with the construction told me that there would be an announcement at the end of March that the stadium would not be ready in 2006. I mentioned this to a few people at the time, but it was not written up as I could not corroborate it.

Today's announcement, however, is exactly as he told me it would be, and because everything I was told has now come to pass, I am exclusively revealing the rest of the story here.

He went on to say that there is no chance whatsoever that the stadium will be ready until the summer of 2007, and that in his opinion there is almost no chance of the stadium being ready until 2008 - and possibly late in 2008.

The announcement of the delays would, he said, be staggered for PR reasons, so that each delay seemed incremental, rather than having to reveal that the stadium would be at least a further 2 years behind schedule.

You read it here first.