By our football reporter Howard ‘Ace’ Elston

An astonishing claim surfaced today that the Libdems caused Blues to crash out of the FA quarter finals.

The allegations surfaced as Birmingham City narrowly lost to Bolton 3-2 on Saturday and failed to go through the semi finals.

Nick Clegg, the former Mr Niceguy of the party, said at the party’s spring conference in Sheffield: ‘The Blues had to lose. We made them lose. We told the management we would force a sale back to David Sullivan if they won.’

And he added: ‘New Labour are like The Blues. The coalition is like The Villa. We back middle class winners.’

He was immediately rebutted by party grande dame Baroness Shirley ‘I didn’t leave the Labour Party- it left me’  Williams. She briefed reporters in Sheffield and said: ‘Nicky is a nice boy but wouldn’t know a football match if it came up and bit him on his manifesto.’

She continued: ‘He wants to be one of the lads and like footie. But he’s a Bullingdon Club man at the end of the day who didn’t make it into the Bullingdon Club.’

Delegates backed the Williams’ stance. It passed a motion supporting The Blues and denying that Mr Clegg has the backroom power to force a BCFC defeat. It read: ‘This conference wishes to support any second rate football club that has aspirations to join the big boys and used to be run by a porn dealer.’

Blues are currently riding high despite the Bolton defeat. It won the Mr Softee Cup late last month after beating Arsenal’s under-14 team. Ally McLeish, club manager, said through the gauze of a Clydeside accent: ‘As a life long Labour backer, anything the Coalition says is  not nice. But if wee Nick says it’s so..you gotta believe the man.’

‘After all he has a serious look on his face and jabs his finger at the audience just like David Cameron.’