Football

Welcome to the home page of Sportingintelligence‘s guide to the 2016 FIFA presidential election. JAMES CORBETT explains the rationale for it below. The vote is scheduled for 26 February and as it approaches this regularly updated guide will be brought to you by seasoned FIFA-watchers, expert observers, reform advocates and multiple contributors including Corbett, Roger Pielke Jnr, […]

By Brian Sears 6 November 2015 There is a strong relationship in the Premier League between goals scored and points accrued. It’s not always the case that a goal is worth a point, and certainly there will be outlier teams who score more goals than they amass points, and vice versa. But across the league as a […]

By Brian Sears 23 October 2015 Three derbies in the Premier League this weekend have seen recent trends that highlight a turning of the tide between the teams involved. One team in each of the three pairings was clearly a better or stronger or competitive side in their first tranche of meetings in the Premier […]

By Brian Sears 16 October 2015 None of the previous Premier League champions – and 23 of them since the inaugural 1992-93 breakaway season is a fair sized sample – won fewer than 14 points from their first eight games before going on to take the title. And only two managed it after winning as few as 14 points, […]

By Brian Sears 2 October 2015 It was four years, one month and a few days ago that this happened: Arsenal went to Old Trafford on 28 August 2011 and were given an absolute mauling as Manchester United thrashed and embarrassed them, 8-2, with Wayne Rooney scoring a hat-trick, Ashley Young getting two, and Danny Welbeck, Nani […]

By Brian Sears 25 September 2015 Newcastle have represented the north-east of England in the Premier League in 22 of the 24 seasons since the 1992-93 revamp, this season included. Sunderland have been in the PL for 15 of the 24 years and Middlesbrough, currently in an automatic promotion spot in the Championship, for 14 of 24. Newcastle have by any […]

By Brian Sears 18 September 2015 Almost a month ago, we highlighted how the statistical evidence suggested Chelsea had blown their title hopes after two games. Now, five games into the season, or more than an eighth of it gone already, they’ll have to do something unprecedented to retain their crown. No Premier League title […]

By Brian Sears 11 September 2015 Tottenham have the youngest starting XIs in the Premier League this season at 25.2 years, followed by Liverpool, while Newcastle are the only other team with an average under 26. Tim Howard (age 36) is the oldest player and Oxford Reece (age 16, turns 17 in December) is the […]

By Brian Sears 28 August 2015 This is the 24th season of the Premier League and the previous 23 seasons have involved 466 teams collectively starting campaigns. That’s 22 teams for the first three seasons, then 20 for each of the past 20 seasons. Of those 466 teams, only 18 of them, or 3.9%, began […]

By Dr Tom Markham 21 August 2015 Manchester United are by far the most valuable football club in England, worth £1.848 billion, and the only other club worth more than £1bn is Arsenal, at £1.118bn. By ‘worth’, the definition is market value, using a fixed set of financial criteria – hard economic data – to look at what they earn and […]