By Brian Sears 17 May 2010 Chelsea have just completed the Double but Manchester United were the team of the Noughties in English football, comfortably topping a new table that takes into account average league finishes for the past 10 years. With five Premier League title wins in the past 10 years, as well as […]

By Nick Harris 16 May 2010 The financial rewards simply for being a member of the Premier League are highlighted today with the release of official figures showing payments from central League funds to each club for the season just finished. The bottom team, Portsmouth, picked up £31.8m from the League in TV cash and […]

By Andy Cole 7 May 2010 Peter Crouch capped a fantastic season for Tottenham on Wednesday with the goal that takes Spurs into the Champions League for the first time. We can assume Crouch is a certainty for Fabio Capello’s England squad for the World Cup, a subject to which we’ll return shortly. First, though, […]

By Pete Wilson 6 May 2010 Motherwell came back from 6-2 down to draw 6-6 against Hibernian in the Scottish Premier League on Wednesday evening to equal the highest scoring draw in any top division in the history of world football. As far as we can ascertain within a short time period, it appears to […]

By Nick Harris 4 May 2010 Stoke City’s manager Tony Pulis tops a new league table that ranks “over achieving” managers in English football when teams’ results are compared to the resources at their managers’ disposal. Steve McClaren, the much maligned former England manager is at No2, while Sam Allardyce is at No3 on the […]

* ELEANOR PRESTON spent 10 years travelling the world as a tennis journalist for national newspapers, notably the Guardian. She continues to work as a broadcaster and is also a media consultant and advisor to tennis players and organisations within tennis, as well as athletes and organisations across a range of sports. She is also […]

By Nick Harris 22 April 2010 Britain will hold a general election on Thursday 6 May. The current Labour government under PM Gordon Brown will either retain power or be replaced by David Cameron’s Conservative Party or Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. Another scenario is a hung parliament and a power-sharing regime; key posts could be […]

By Brian Sears 9 April 2010 A top six finish in this season’s Premier League is probably beyond Birmingham despite their fine campaign under Alex McLeish. But another kind of top six finish is realistically within their grasp: they remain on course to achieve one of the best ever seasonal performances for a club in […]

By Lionel Page 8 April 2010 As an academic with an interest in economic analysis, the downfall of the English teams in the Champions League this season did not surprise me, even while it disappointed me as a Manchester United fan. Earlier this season, I was actually expecting that the English teams would “under-perform” in the competition, when set […]

By Nick Harris 2 April 2010 Average pay across America’s NFL differs less between its richest and poorest teams than in any other major sports league in the world, according to sportingintelligence’s Annual Review of Global Sports Salaries, published today. The study calculates pay at more than 200 teams across 10 leagues including in the […]