By Nick Harris 16 May 2010 The financial rewards simply for being a member of the Premier League are highlighted today with the release of official figures showing payments from central League funds to each club for the season just finished. The bottom team, Portsmouth, picked up £31.8m from the League in TV cash and […]

By Andy Cole 14 May 2010 Seven players from Fabio Capello’s 30-man provisional World Cup squad will miss out and I know how it feels to come close but not go. I’ve been there, done that, twice, more of which in a moment. Some of Capello’s 30 are certain to get the nod: all three […]

14 May 2010 Can you identify the sporting arena? We take an aerial view of a topical ball park, football stadium, marathon course, golf course, Games venue, race track, iconic arena, athletic theatre (some literally theatres), pitch, park, stretch of water or wherever else sport takes place. And we ask you to identify it with the […]

By Brian Sears 14 May 2010 Portsmouth are not unique in having been the champions of England as well as inhabitants of the bottom division in English professional football during the period since WWII. Burnley and Wolves have also achieved that “feat”, and all three clubs came together in the same Premier League season in […]

By Nick Harris 14 May 2010 England’s bid for the right to stage the 2018 World Cup was blessed with the stardust that is David Beckham in Zurich today as the nine bid teams seeking the 2018 and/or 2022 events began the push in earnest to win the game’s biggest prize from Fifa. Beckham, who […]

By Nick Harris 13 May 2010 The Football Association will review how the Gambling Commission handled and dropped a suspected case of match-fixing before deciding whether to proceed with its own action after both bodies were lambasted as “inept” and labelled a “total disgrace” by a senior official from one of the clubs involved. The […]

By Nick Harris 12 May 2010 As the Spirit of Shankly group of Liverpool fans confirmed today that they will meet with Premier League officials on Friday to discuss ownership and governance issues at their club, sportingintelligence can reveal the historic rift between Tom Hicks and George Gillett was fueled by their contrasting views on […]

By Nick Harris 11 May 2010 A book to be published this summer will lay out the despair that George Best felt, including in his owns words and writing, as his career hit the buffers in 1972, when on the cusp of his 26th birthday he sensationally announced he was quitting Manchester United. The book […]

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) […]

* By Pete Wilson 11 May 2010 A Chinese multi-millionaire internet tycoon has held provisional talks about buying Liverpool in the past two weeks and sportingintelligence publishes the first photograph of him in the British media today (below). Zhu Jun, 44, is the founder, chairman and chief executive of The9 Ltd – one of China’s […]