By Sportingintelligence 16 September 2016 Brian Sears, the in-house statistician for Sportingintelligence who was a founding partner in this website and a weekly contributor for almost seven since years since our launch in late 2009, passed away suddenly last night. Brian, 73, was a retired school teacher whose abiding passions were, in order, his family, Watford FC, and his […]

 By Brian Sears  19 August 2016 It was this time a year ago that we wrote that Chelsea’s title hopes were as good as gone after two games – purely from a statistical history point of view. Jose Mourinho’s team (as they were then) had lost both their opening games, and in the piece linked here we […]

By Joel Oberstone 18 August 2016 Arsenal began the season with a home defeat. Some fans already have their annual revolt against Arsene Wenger underway. It’s business as usual, this growing disquiet that club and manager will make a mess of hiring good new players. With the next fixture on Saturday away at champions Leicester, now is perhaps […]

By Brian Sears  12 August 2016 So the 25th Premier League season is about to start and we reckon that Hull and Watford have the trickiest starts. West Brom have it easiest, followed by Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United. By the end of August each club will have played three league games before the international break. One ‘objective’ […]

By Alex Miller and Nick Harris 31 July 2016 Premier League clubs have set a record for combined shirt sponsorship deals, with the 20 clubs generating £226.5 million for the 2016-17 season, a rise of £3.6m on last year. The increase underlines the commercial strength of the League with shirt sponsorships more than doubling in six years. The […]

By Andy Carpenter 10 June 2016 If England’s squad were a single footballer and you compared his goal-scoring record for the 2015-16 season with his Euro 2016 rivals in a Golden Shoe-style contest, then he would be starting the tournament as the continent’s hottest striker. England would be top of the table ahead of Germany in second place, then Russia, […]

By Nick Harris 10 June 2016 Two interesting and credible studies published this week have attempted to quantify the cost (and separately, the value) of the 24 squads that will contest Euro 2016, which begins this evening in Paris when hosts France face Romania at the Stade de France. The first was conducted by Profit […]

By James Corbett 4 June 2016 In September 1997, when Britain was still intoxicated by the biggest general election landslide in the country’s history, the Labour Party spin doctor Derek Draper published a book, entitled ‘Blair’s 100 Days.’ A self-styled insider’s account, Draper’s book was supposed to capture the mood of elation and change after […]

By Sportingintelligence 24 May 2016 Leicester’s miraculous 5000-1 Premier League title win in 2015-16 made them globally famous but the prize money table for the season was topped by Arsenal, with official figures released today showing they have pocketed £100,952,257 from central funds alone. The money comes primarily from the PL’s huge TV deals but also includes Arsenal’s share […]

By Brian Sears  14 May 2016 Winning away from home is now officially a ‘thing’ in the Premier League. The trend has been inching towards better away performances for a few seasons now but the amount of points won on the road in 2015-16 is guaranteed to be at record levels no matter what happens on […]