BOOK REVIEW By Daniel Storey 16 November 2015 I Believe In Miracles, Daniel Taylor’s account of Nottingham Forest’s European Cup-winning team, could not differ more greatly from the stereotype of non-fiction books accompanying films. So often they act as an extended advert for the cinematic production, DVD sales where profits are typically made. They adhere […]

By Brian Sears 4 August 2011 With a new campaign in the Football League set to start on Friday as Hull host Blackpool, the  season of guessing football league table outcomes is upon us. And according to a sportingintelligence ‘pedigree’ analysis of clubs in the Championship, history says West Ham are favourites to go up, […]

By Brian Sears 31 December 2010 Nowich City won more matches in the league in 2010 than any other club in English professional football, and those 27 victories put them in No1 place in our composite table of Football League clubs for the calendar year. (See below). The table does not distinguish between divisions, counting […]

* JOHN ROBERTS wrote for the Daily Express, The Guardian, the Daily Mail and The Independent, where he was the tennis correspondent for 20 years. He collaborated with Bill Shankly on the Liverpool manager’s autobiography, ghosted Kevin Keegan’s first book, and has written books on George Best, Manchester United’s Busby Babes (The Team That Wouldn’t Die) and Everton (The Official […]

Brought to you in association with the UK Concrete Show (“The whole of the concrete industry under one roof!“) . By Martin Kelner 8 August 2016 London has a lot to answer for. After the spectacular triumph of the 2012 opening ceremony, the minimum requirement for such occasions now seems to be some sort of historical narrative, buffed […]

. Norwegian sports writer Andreas Selliaas grew up in a village south of Oslo in the 1970s, watching English football from afar and playing make believe in the street. His friends would quarrel over who would be Kevin Keegan and who would be Kenny Dalglish. Selliaas wanted to be neither. He wanted to be Bob […]

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  12 February 2016 Leicester’s extraordinary Premier League season is a breath of fresh air especially to fans of ‘smaller’ clubs who dream it might be possible, one day, for their club to copy. The scale of achievement, being widely discussed, can be put in further context by some figures that show a) the margin by […]

By Brian Sears 24 December 2015 Christmas is a time for reflection and a time to look forward and neither offers any merriment for Aston Villa. Ten points away from safety as things stand, they can look to no precedent in the Premier League era (the ‘monied’ era, since 1992) for a club with single-digit points at Christmas […]

By Brian Sears 4 December 2015 In Arsene Wenger’s reign as the manager of Arsenal they have gained as many as 36 Premier League points from the first 14 games of a season (in 2007-08) and as few as 21 (in 2012-13) but the average for the Wenger era is 27. That’s the amount they’ve got so far this […]