Columnists

By Nick Harris 5 May 2014 It was self-evident in the 2012-13 Premier League that Queens Park Rangers provided their owner with the worst value for money. He spent many tens of millions on buying players and many tens of millions more on paying their wages. And they were ignominiously relegated anyway. But precisely how […]

By Nick Harris 21 January 2014 Barcelona produce more first-team footballers across Europe’s elite ‘Big 5′ divisions than any other club in the world, according to new analysis by the CIES Football Observatory and published today by Sportingintelligence. The Spanish giants have developed 44 players currently with top-flight clubs in Spain’s La Liga, England’s Premier […]

By Alexandra Willis in Melbourne “Does Wimbledon have an extreme heat policy?” It was a perfectly innocent question. But if you’ve ever been to Wimbledon, you will understand why it was an amusing one. Rain delays, rather than heat delays, are a fact of SW19 life. The skies darken, the clouds let rip, the court […]

* By Ian Herbert 22 December 2013 The sign on the exterior wall of the building where I started out in this business, on a September morning 24 years ago, has not kept up with the sad diminution of the paper which became a rich part of my life for a decade. “Liverpool Daily Post […]

By Ian Herbert 12 December 2013 There won’t be any great sentiment for footballers who are banned for illegal betting but the small details of the case of what we might call the “Accrington Five” does reveal why one of the root causes of match fixing – the players need for some ready cash – […]

  * By Jonnie Baker 6 December 2013 Anticipation is obviously reaching fever pitch over the unspeakably complicated group-stage draw for the 2014 Fifa World Cup (TM), which hasn’t been obsessing too many people at all. Certainly not to the extent that anyone would come up with a draw simulator, like the one linked here, […]

* “I may have to take a few more blows, definitely. Maybe even more than that. Maybe all season I have to take a few blows but I knew this was going to be the case…”  David Moyes, September 22, 2013 . By Ian Herbert 5 December 2013 Press conferences can be so self-serving that […]

* By Jonnie Baker 28 November 2013 Andre Villas-Boas is fighting to keep his job. I know this is the case because everyone says so. It’s everywhere you look, and, according to the DM, failed Roma manager Luis Enrique is already in the box seat to replace him. And replace him Tottenham surely must. After last season’s […]

* EUROPE’S major leagues delivered a string of titles by procession in Spring 2013 as a group of the biggest, richest clubs across the continent romped to runaway victories. Most leagues have always had one or two dominant clubs but is there something else afoot now? And what if anything does that say about the […]

ALEXANDRA WILLIS is a multimedia sports journalist who flits between Wimbledon, SportingIntelligence, the TennisSpace and a few other outlets, while tweeting copiously and trying to improve her (terrible) backhand in her spare time. Follow @alex_willis on twitter On first viewing, American Football is pretty baffling. It looks very much like a lot of helmeted people running around crashing into […]