. In their “Freakonomics for sports” book, Scorecasting, Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim challenge conventional wisdom, uncover the hidden influences in sports and uses reams of data to investigate questions that tug at every fan. Are there really make-up calls in sports? Is there, in fact, a home field advantage? Is there really […]

By Alex Miller 21 June 2011 The Football Association’s concerns over gambling-related corruption has prompted the governing body to hire external expert advisers to deal with the threat. Sportingintelligence can reveal the FA has already started a tender process that will end with a contract for an independent private-sector firm to run an education programme for […]

By Brian Sears 20 June 2011 The 2011-12 Premier League season kicks off on 13 August and in the seven rounds of games up to the first international break, Aston Villa have the easiest start, followed by Chelsea and Manchester City, according to the combined strength (or lack of strength) of their opponents. By ‘strength’, […]

By Sportingintelligence 17 June 2011 Premier League champions Manchester United will begin the 2011-12 league season against West Bromwich Albion at The Hawthorns on 13 August. The fixtures were released at 9am on Friday. Chelsea, runners-up in 2010-11, start at Stoke, while Arsenal begin next season on the road too, at Newcastle. Manchester City will […]

By Steve Menary 16 June 2011 The Premier League’s clubs have cleared their entire backlog of tax debts to Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC), a well-timed development ahead of a government report into the governance of football that could pose difficult questions over the financial affairs of clubs in the world’s richest club competition. […]

16 June 2011 World Snooker, the company that runs the commercial arm of the game, is considering a redundancy programme that could see many staff lose their jobs, according to The Snooker Blog today. The in-the-know baize website reproduces the following letter from World Snooker to employees. .. 6 June 2011 To all staff Potential Redundancies and Company reorganisation […]

. Disclaimer: only most of the events and people in this narrative are based on reality . By Smokey Baloney Special investigations editor 14 June 2011 . This a story about the day they knifed The Boyler. It’s a bloody tale and it ain’t easy to explain, even now. The Boyler ran a racket, okay, […]

By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 12 June 2011 Prompted by a ‘hardball’ attitude from Blackburn Rovers owners and a late £22m bid on Saturday from Liverpool for Rovers’ England under-21 defender Phil Jones , Manchester United have agreed to pay £20.5m for the player and the deal is expected to […]

By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 4 June 2011 . The winner of this afternoon’s Derby was Pour Moi, ridden home by Mickael Barzalona, aged just 19 and the youngest jockey to have won the race since Walter Swinburn. In 1981, Swinburn, also 19, was aboard Shergar as the Aga Khan’s star horse […]

By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 31 May 2011 . When Sepp Blatter took to the stage in Zurich on Monday, Fifa’s president declared: ‘Crisis, what is a crisis?’ In a display widely reported as “arrogant” and “contemptuous” (and which can be viewed in full here), the 75-year-old Swiss, the head […]