By Sportingintelligence 17 May 2018 Manchester City’s stunning and record-breaking Premier League title win in Pep Guardiola’s second season as a manager in England earned them almost £150m in prize cash, with official figures released today showing they have pocketed £149,438,654 from central funds alone. The money comes primarily from the PL’s huge TV deals but […]

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 16 October 2015 None of the previous Premier League champions – and 23 of them since the inaugural 1992-93 breakaway season is a fair sized sample – won fewer than 14 points from their first eight games before going on to take the title. And only two managed it after winning as few as 14 points, […]

By Brian Sears 2 October 2015 It was four years, one month and a few days ago that this happened: Arsenal went to Old Trafford on 28 August 2011 and were given an absolute mauling as Manchester United thrashed and embarrassed them, 8-2, with Wayne Rooney scoring a hat-trick, Ashley Young getting two, and Danny Welbeck, Nani […]

By Brian Sears 28 August 2015 This is the 24th season of the Premier League and the previous 23 seasons have involved 466 teams collectively starting campaigns. That’s 22 teams for the first three seasons, then 20 for each of the past 20 seasons. Of those 466 teams, only 18 of them, or 3.9%, began […]

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 7 August 2015 There are many ways to try to predict the winners of the Premier League title, as this site explored in great detail two years ago. The odds on getting even the top 10 in the correct order are 670,442,572,800 to 1. Yes, that’s 670 billion to one. And then to complete the […]

By Brian Sears 10 April 2015 Manchester City have been brilliant at times in recent seasons, thrilling to watch as they’ve scored at will and won two of the past three Premier League titles. But lately they’ve looked old, inconsistent and brittle, as well as costly in more senses than one. The defeat at Crystal […]

By Brian Sears 16 January 2015 Arsenal visit Manchester on Sunday to play Manchester City and then return to Manchester for their last away game of the season in May to play United. Old Trafford has long been hard work for Arsenal, not only in the Premier League era but throughout all the post-war years. In 67 […]

By Brian Sears 31 October 2014 The Manchester derby on Sunday reminds us how the pendulum has swung to the blue side of the city in recent years, and the graphic below charts the dramatic change over time. Manchester City have only been in the same division as United for 17 of the past 22 […]