By Alexandra Willis 1 September 2010 . Roger Federer is winning back fans alienated by his bitter demeanour at Wimbledon after producing another thrilling between-the-legs trick shot during his first round victory over Brian Dabul at the US Open in New York. The shot, which Federer pulled off against Novak Djokovic on the same court […]

By Nick Harris 1 September 2010 The Premier League’s official fantasy football game has registered more than two million users in more than 200 countries already this season to cement its place as most popular fantasy football (soccer) game in history, according to an analysis of users of the League’s website. The country with the […]

By Alex Miller 31 August 2010 Manchester United and Liverpool sell more official replica football shirts, for Nike and Adidas respectively, than any other teams in the English Premier League, and both are at or close to the top of the global merchandise sales tables according to multi-year research by a leading German consultancy, released […]

By Alex Miller 31 August 2010 As sportingintelligence reports elsewhere today, a leading German sports market research company has provided us with the findings of its detailed multi-year survey into the popularity of club football shirts. The most consistent top 10 sellers, over numerous seasons, as discovered by Dr Peter Rohlmann, are as depicted below. […]

By Nick Harris 31 August 2010 The News of the World’s front page headline on 9 May (below) said ‘Higgins bet on himself to LOSE’ (NotW’s capitals), which might have suggested to some readers that the Higgins in question – John Higgins, the world No1 snooker player – had bet on himself to lose. In […]

28 August 2010 The most amusing read in any of today’s English sports pages is Fabio Capello weighing up the pros and cons of recruiting Everton’s Spanish midfielder, Mikel Arteta, for his England team, as imagined by Chrus McGrath of The Independent, whose capturing of Fabio is spot on, and hilariously paced. It begins: When […]

By Brian Sears 27 August 2010 Ideas, ideas. Where do they come from? Sometimes they are obvious, having six six six appeal. Other times they arise in the strangest of places, like on the exercise bike at the gym. A fellow pedaller, also a football follower, was on the bike next to mine at the […]

By Brian Sears 27 August 2010 Hitting opponents for six has been a topic of the season, with four 6-0 scorelines already, two of them by Chelsea. And according to sportingintelligence analysis of high-scoring games in the Premier League since 1992, those two 6-0s mean Chelsea have overtaken Manchester United at the head of the […]

27 August 2010 Kenny Huang is now coming under scrutiny in the US for the way in which Chinese interest last year in buying a share of the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA team came to nothing. “It never materialized, as far as completing the application process with the league,” said Cavs President Len Komoroski in an […]

By Nick Harris 26 August 2010 Fifa’s inspection of England’s proposed facilities for the 2018 World Cup ended today in praise, and with reassurance that not seeing a Premier League game and not getting to meet the Prime Minister would not harm England’s chances of staging the event. David Cameron is on holiday, and his […]