By Dr Tom Markham 21 August 2015 Manchester United are by far the most valuable football club in England, worth £1.848 billion, and the only other club worth more than £1bn is Arsenal, at £1.118bn. By ‘worth’, the definition is market value, using a fixed set of financial criteria – hard economic data – to look at what they earn and […]

By Brian Sears 17 January 2014 Chelsea host Manchester United on Sunday in the knowledge they have beaten the champions more often in the Premier League era than any other side have beaten them. In 43 meetings that have won 14 times for a win rate of almost 33 per cent. They achieved all those […]

By Brian Sears 11 May 2013 Chelsea’s 2-1 win against Aston Villa on Saturday, which established Frank Lampard as Chelsea’s all-time leading goalscorer, took the Premier League’s total goals tally for the season to 999 goals – but a new scoring record that seemed probable earlier in the season looks unattainable now. Last season, the Premier […]

By Nick Harris 22 April 2013 Manchester United’s 3-0 win against Aston Villa in the Premier League this evening secured them their 20th English title, and takes their all-time haul of ‘major’ trophies to 39, just two behind Liverpool’s all-time haul of 41. For the purposes of this count, the trophies included are the league, […]

By Nick Harris 16 April 2013 Manchester United are England’s most popular football team across social media as well as the most successful on the pitch according to a new table that rates the Premier League’s 20 clubs on followers across three of the biggest digital platforms: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Even though United have […]

By Brian Sears and Nick Harris  SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 28 February 2013 SEVEN clubs have been “ever present” in the Premier League since it began in 1992-93, and as they all prepare to play their 800th league games of the Premier League era this weekend, one club stands heads and shoulders above […]

By Brian Sears 22 February 2013 QPR have 12 Premier League games remaining to try to maintain their top-flight status, hanging in the balance as they lie seven points adrift of safety before the weekend’s action. Two wins in 26 league games this season, away at Fulham and at home to Chelsea, tell their own […]

By Brian Sears 8 February 2013 Winning away from home in the Premier League is not easy. In the entire 21-year-history of revamped top division, only one club has won more than half of their away games, and that is Manchester United, the dominant force of the era. United have played 399 Premier League games […]

By Brian Sears 18 January 2012 The ominous news for Manchester United’s major rivals in the Premier League is United have never had as many points at this stage of a season (22 games) and have rarely  been as far ahead of the pack as they are at this stage. The gap between United and […]

* In the first instalment of a new weekly Monday column, Tell Me Why, the Independent’s brilliant man in the north-west, Ian Herbert, asks why Manchester United needed to unveil a statue of their remarkable manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, even before Fergie has left the building. What does it tell us about Sir Alex, and […]