Posts created by admin

By Brian Sears 13 March 2015 So here’s the thing: Tottenham Hotspur have been playing league football against Manchester United on and off since the 1909-10 season, when they first met in the old, old First Division. Spurs drew 2-2 at home that year and got thumped 5-0 away. In more than a century since, […]

By Roger Pielke Jr 12 March 2015 Sport, it is often said, is a mirror to society. That is no more true than in the revelations found in the report of the Cycling Independent Reform Commission (downloadable as a PDF on this website), which earlier this week released its report on doping in professional cycling. […]

By Brian Sears 27 February 2015 Sunday’s two big games in the Premier League throw up contrasting challenges for the two Merseyside clubs, with Liverpool outsiders at home against a team they have a brilliant home record against (Manchester City), and Everton outsiders away against a team that history says will thump them. The history […]

By Brian Sears 20 February 2015 Aston Villa are enduring another horrible season, one from which new manager Tim Sherwood is expected to salvage Premier League survival. Villa remain for now one of just seven ‘ever present’ Premier League clubs, constant members of England’s top division since it revamped and rebranded from the 1992-1993 season. […]

By Brian Sears 6 February 2015 Saturday’s matches in the Premier League begin with a major derby (Tottenham v Arsenal at lunchtime) and end with a major derby (Everton v Liverpool at tea-time). Both home sides have found it tough against the neighbours over the course of the Premier League era as a whole. And […]

. Another football transfer window has just shut and again the most commonly traded global commodity has been the Brazilian player. Official data shows players with Brazilian nationality were involved in 1,493 transfers in the calendar year of 2014 (more than any other nation) and they moved clubs for a collective total of $468m (the […]

By Brian Sears 30 January 2015 West Ham are above Liverpool in the Premier League table and go to Anfield this weekend looking for a result that will keep them there and still in contention for a top-four finish. But it’s been a long time since West Ham won a league match at Anfield. A […]

. By Roger Pielke Jr 28 January 2015 In 2011, at the Play the Game conference in Germany, I heard Dick Pound, a member of the International Olympic Committee since 1978 and the founding President of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), make some remarkable claims about the unwillingness of sports officials to police doping. Then at […]

By Brian Sears 23 January 2015 The formation of the Premier League from the 1992-93 season marked a major change in English football as the gap between the new top division and the rest of football quickly became a gulf. At a glance the first graphic below pretty much sums up what happened in financial […]

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 […]