Features

By Brian Sears 3 February 2011 For a variety of reasons – Ole, ole – Chelsea fans will welcome Liverpool to Stamford Bridge this weekend. Not least of them will be that in the Premier League, they’ve seen their team win a dozen times at home against Liverpool in 18 attempts. Chelsea’s record is the same […]

. Football will thrive if the purist’s desire for a meritocracy is wedded with a business approach that heeds the principles of economics, argues Oscar Howie, who contends that Uefa’s Financial Fair Play is a step in the right direction – and that Fernando Torres (left) can’t be value for money. .. . . By […]

* By Nick Harris 31 January 2011 . Chelsea have this evening announced their latest massive financial losses, £70.9m for the year to June 2010. This year’s comical headline on the official announcement was ‘Chelsea becomes cash positive’, above an article about Chelsea’s confidence at meeting Uefa’s financial fair play criteria. Here is a summary […]

* THE SPORTS LAWYER is actually a posse of Britain’s brightest lawyers, from the Sport & Media team at the UK law firm, Thomas Eggar, who will be contributing features, analysis and insight on a regular basis on the key sports law issues of the day. In TSL’s latest column, Paul Gaff and Andrew Nixon […]

By Brian Sears 28 January 2011 Ahh, the FA Cup and the scent of blood. Already this season Sunderland, Blackpool, Newcastle and West Brom from the Premier League have been taken down a peg or four by opponents from lower divisions. Those four scalps bring the total number of Premier League clubs humbled in the […]

* . THE SPORTS LAWYER is actually a posse of Britain’s brightest lawyers, from the Sport & Media team at the UK law firm, Thomas Eggar, who will be contributing features, analysis and insight on a regular basis on the key sports law issues of the day. In TSL’s latest column, Andrew Nixon considers the […]

By Brian Sears 21 January 2011 Can Wolverhampton Wanderers inflict on Liverpool only their 22nd ‘double’ defeat of the Premier League era? They’ve already managed the harder part of the double, winning 1-0 at Anfield just over three weeks ago in what turned out to be one of Roy Hodgson’s final games in charge. Just […]

By Nick Harris 20 January 2011 A special series about the new Indian owners of Blackburn Rovers is running on sportingintelligence this week. The main feature is at the link in the last sentence. This is one of several sets of related photographs, annotated. Here are some shots of posters that adorn the walls on one of […]

By Nick Harris 17 January 2011 Blackburn Rovers became the first Premier League club to be owned by an Indian company when Venky’s, part of the poultry conglomerate the VH Group, finalised their takeover in November. The Rao family – brothers Venkatesh and Balaji, and their sister Anuradha Desai – have been accused of knowing […]

By Brian Sears 6 January 2011 Regular readers will know I am a Watford fan. No, no, it’s okay, I don’t need your sympathy today. Not at all. I mean, have you seen the Championship table? Have you seen it? SIXTH! And not only that, sixth on the back of a handful of wins on […]