By Sportingintelligence 16 September 2016 Brian Sears, the in-house statistician for Sportingintelligence who was a founding partner in this website and a weekly contributor for almost seven since years since our launch in late 2009, passed away suddenly last night. Brian, 73, was a retired school teacher whose abiding passions were, in order, his family, Watford FC, and his […]

 By Brian Sears  19 August 2016 It was this time a year ago that we wrote that Chelsea’s title hopes were as good as gone after two games – purely from a statistical history point of view. Jose Mourinho’s team (as they were then) had lost both their opening games, and in the piece linked here we […]

By Brian Sears  12 August 2016 So the 25th Premier League season is about to start and we reckon that Hull and Watford have the trickiest starts. West Brom have it easiest, followed by Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United. By the end of August each club will have played three league games before the international break. One ‘objective’ […]

By Brian Sears  14 May 2016 Winning away from home is now officially a ‘thing’ in the Premier League. The trend has been inching towards better away performances for a few seasons now but the amount of points won on the road in 2015-16 is guaranteed to be at record levels no matter what happens on […]

By Brian Sears  6 May April 2016 Only three goalkeepers of the 45 who have played in the Premier League this season have played for every minute of every match and it seems appropriate that title-winner Kasper Schmeichel of Leicester City has the best record of those three. The 29-year-old Dane has appeared for every second of […]

By Brian Sears  29 April 2016 Leicester need three points from their remaining three games, at most, to be crowned Premier League champions. That is astonishing enough given they were 5,000-1 outsiders last August. But the manner in which they have put themselves in this position is also jaw-dropping. Even with three games to play they have […]

By Brian Sears  15 April 2016 Barring victory for Aston Villa this weekend combined with defeat for Norwich, then Villa’s relegation to the Championship will be confirmed as mathematical fact on Saturday. The seven ‘ever present’ clubs of the Premier League era will be six and we dealt with Villa’s demise here. You don’t need to go […]

By Brian Sears  1 April 2016 Leicester’s next assignment en route to a possible extraordinary coronation as champions of England is at home to Southampton on Sunday. It often seems as if flagging up a particular stat jinxes it*, but the Foxes have played 39 different opponents during their Premier League years and they have won more points […]

By Brian Sears  18 March 2016 St James’ Park hosts a north-east derby of particular significance this weekend as the outcome will swing the relegation scrap. Newcastle and Sunderland are both in the bottom four, respectively nine and eight points adrift of Swansea heading into the weekend. If Rafa Benitez can guide his charges to victory then they and […]

By Brian Sears  11 March 2016 The Premier League is in its 24th season since the 1992-93 breakaway in English football. Forty-seven different clubs have played in it since then. That’s more than half of the 92 clubs in the four professional divisions. It’s become a majority experience. Mobility continues to be a feature of England’s […]