Football

By Nick Harris 6 March 2011 Birmingham’s financial plans for the coming year will be scrutinised by the Premier League at the end of March in the first stage of the process that will determine whether the Carling Cup winners will be allowed to play in Europe next season or not. Uefa’s licensing rules means […]

By Brian Sears 4 March 2011 In this, the 19th season of the Premier League, Manchester United hope to reach another 19 – league titles in English football history. That would take them one past Liverpool’s all-time 18, and that is one reason that this weekend’s game at Anfield between the two old rivals is […]

By Nick Harris 3 March 2011 Manchester City’s Kolo Toure has failed a drugs test for a ‘specified substance’ his club have announced this evening. Depending on the ratification of the finding, he could receive a sanction ranging from a caution to a two-year ban. The length of any ban will be dependent on the […]

By Brian Sears 28 February 2011 Stoke City are on their way to surviving a third consecutive season in the Premier League. They have so far finished 12th and 11th and look on course to be 10th or thereabouts, although things are tight and a mere six points separate the bottom club Wigan (27 points) […]

By Nick Harris in Budapest 23 February 2011 David Howman, the director-general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, has today called for the establishment of a global anti-corruption agency to tackle malpractice ranging from match-fixing to institutional corruption. In a statement released at the European Union Sports Forum, which concluded today in Hungary, Howman says he […]

By Brian Sears 19 February 2011 While Everton and others are relishing the romance and the glory of FA Cup victories, Wigan are possibly not too unhappy they were knocked out the other day, meaning they can focus on their Premier League survival. And goodness how they need to focus, with an unwanted record among […]

By Brian Sears 17 February 2011 With the FA Cup fifth round taking centre stage in English football this weekend, it still remains possible that a record low number of Premier League teams (one) could make it to the sixth round, or a joint-record high number, namely all eight of eight quarter-finalists. For the ‘romantic’ […]

By Pete Wilson 11 February 2011 Manchester United have become the world’s most popular team, as measured by fans on Facebook, the social networking site that has more than 600 million active users across more than 200 countries. United overtook Barcelona in the past few hours, and currently have more than 9.053m ‘fans’ against Barca’s […]

By Brian Sears 10 February 2011 The biggest gap between any two clubs in the current Premier League table is six points – that is the margin separating Tottenham in fifth place (44 points) from Liverpool in sixth (38 points). Liverpool fans will argue with some justification that their ‘natural’ place is higher, but they […]

By Nick Harris 7 February 2011 Manchester United are set to overtake Barcelona as the world’s most popular football club at some point in the next week, according to data analysed by sportingintelligence from Facebook, which is effectively the biggest evolving opinion poll available. Remarkably, United only made their official entry into the land of […]