By Brian Sears 20 September 2010 The three teams promoted to the Premier League this season – Newcastle, Blackpool and West Bromwich Albion – have made the most successful start to a top-flight season of any group of newcomers, collectively, since the League’s first season in 1992-93, analysis by sportingintelligence shows. (See table below). That […]

By Nick Harris 20 September 2010 Snooker players will be banned for life for any infringement of “Draconian” new betting rules intended to make the sport “cleaner than clean, whiter then white”, according Barry Hearn, the chairman of World Snooker. Hearn was speaking as he launched a new integrity unit, to be overseen by the […]

By Nick Harris 19 September 2010 Dimitar Berbatov today became the first Manchester United player in 64 years to score a league hat-trick against Liverpool when he scored all three goals in United’s 3-2 win at Old Trafford. The second of the goals was an instant classic, involving a long pass from Darren Fletcher, a […]

By Brian Sears 18 September 2010 The “big four” in the Premier League contest 12 League games against each in total each season. The first of 2010-11 was the 1-1 draw between Liverpool and Arsenal on the opening day and the second is tomorrow, when Liverpool play at Old Trafford looking for an upswing in […]

By Nick Harris 17 September 2010 Tom Hicks, the co-owner of Liverpool who is desperate to cling to ownership and control of the club despite being unwilling or unable to invest major resources in its future, is hoping he will find funding to refinance the club’s debt from the global investment firm Blackstone, and specifically […]

By Alexandra Willis 17 September 2010 . Rafael Nadal may be on his way to becoming the most marketable tennis player in the world, striking a chord for Spanish tennis by completing a career Grand Slam at the US Open in New York, but it appears that all is not rosy in the Spanish game. […]

By Brian Sears 16 September 2010 West Ham and Fulham have an unwanted statistic in common, one that both hope to ditch this weekend. It concerns away days, bad ones, lots of bad ones. On the very first day of last season, Fulham went to Fratton Park and a Zamora goal allowed them to return with all […]

By Nick Harris 16 September 2010 The coach of the Middlesbrough Ladies team who departed today on an historic tour to the ‘closed’ nation of North Korea has been so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of international media interest in the trip that she told sportingintelligence just before departure this morning: “I can’t wait for the […]

By Alexandra Willis 16 September 2010 . Rafael Nadal is set to surpass Roger Federer as the top-earning tennis player after becoming the youngest player to complete the career Grand Slam since tennis turned professional in 1968. The Spaniard, who defeated Novak Djokovic in a bruising rain-delayed encounter to lift the US Open trophy for […]

By Nick Harris 16 September 2010 The biggest standing terrace in the whole of European football – and possibly the world, email us if you know different – is the ‘Yellow Wall’ at the home ground of Borussia Dortmund. It holds 25,000. Elsewhere on sportingintelligence today we carry a feature about the Bundesliga. Here are […]