9/1 The Sunday Papers

An Taoiseach faces disquiet and abandonment, Bertie gets a nasty letter in the post and Roy Hodgson gets his P45 as King Kenny returns to the Kop.

The Front Pages

“’Stay away Cowen’ say FF as Ned joins rebels” is the curious headline across the front of the Sunday Independent. It relates to the fact that many Fianna Fail candidates in the forthcoming general election plan to tell an Taoiseach to keep his distance when the go on the campaign trail.

The Ned in question is Fianna Fail TD Ned O’Keefe – until now seen as loyal to Cowen, but not anymore. He’d previously called for the head of Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan, but has shifted attention onto the man in charge.

He’s now calling for Cowen to resign – a move seen by his critics as his way of keeping the leadership of his party at arms length. Either that or he’s decided that he really doesn’t like the name Brian.

The Sunday Indo also points out that yesterday saw the twelfth sitting FF TD say that they wouldn’t be contesting the next general election.

Mary Wallace is the latest to decide that it’s much nicer to draw on a nice pension rather than face the inevitable abuse that is bound to come the way of any government representative  who dares to go door to door in the months to come.

The Sunday Tribune focuses its wrath on Mary Harney who has been holidaying at a five-star hotel in Thailand and who issued statements from there regarding VHI fee hikes, patients in hospitals being left on trolleys and the fact that more than 5,000 have been diagnosed with swine flu.

The Tribune also reports that “Gardaí investigate ‘anthrax’ attack on ministers and Ahern”. Seven ministers and Bertie were targeted before Christmas and sent envelopes containing a white flake-like substance as part of a hoax attack.

The Sunday Times have landed the scoop of the year so far (granted, we're only a few days in) by bagging an interview with the former head of Anglo Irish Bank Sean FitzPatrick, who reveals that he played golf with Brian Cowen as the bank headed towards oblivion.

FitzPatrick played golf and had dinner with the then newly installed Taoiseach in July 2008 just months before the government introduced the bank guarantee scheme.

It has also emerged that Cowen spoke over the phone to FitzPatrick in March 2008, at which point he was still Minister for Finance. In that conversation Cowen was informed that there was an issue with the bank shares held by Seán Quinn.

The Sports Pages

The Sunday Tribune says that while Roy Hodgson’s departure from Liverpool wasn’t a shock, the timing of his exit was, as was the fact that Liverpool’s owners “did what they had been apparently reluctant to and appointed Kenny Dalglish as caretaker manager until the end of the season.

As you’d expect, the Tribune reports on Saturday’s FA Cup third round games, saying that the only big shock was Notts County’s defeat of Sunderland.

The Sunday Independent feature a big picture of Shane Long about to score the winning goal for Reading against West Brom at the Madejski Stadium under the heading “Are You Watching Giovanni?”

The Indo heralds the return of King Kenny to the Kop and claims that the reason that Alex Ferguson has not raided the Old Trafford coffers during the January transfer window  is because he believes that the prices being demanded are overinflated.