By Brian Sears 30 August 2012 They roll from the tongues of Southampton fans like hallucinogenic recollections: three home league wins on the bounce against the mighty Manchester United, between April 1996 and January 1998. And what score lines they were: 3-1, 6-3 (that’s SIX-three) and, errm, 1-0. The point of this being what exactly? […]

By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 28 August 2012 Manchester United’s manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who has been attracting headlines in recent days for his latest episode of banning a reporter for doing his job, is an autocrat on the brink of yet another record in his extraordinary career. Since taking […]

By Micah Hall 26 August 2012 The long saga of Portsmouth football club’s turbulent ownership drama is set to reach a climactic denouement this week, as administrator Trevor Birch chooses between bids from former owner Balram Chainrai and the Pompey Supporters’ Trust. If the Trust succeeds in taking control of their long-suffering club, it will […]

By Brian Sears 23 August 2012 Of the 7,857 Premier League games played since the revamped top division began 20 years ago, 2,109 have ended as draws, or just over a quarter of all games, or 26.8 per cent. The club with most draws Premier League draws (absolute total) is Aston Villa, with 240 from […]

By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 22 August 2012 There were 23 openly gay athletes across all sports at the London 2012 Olympic Games according to observers who monitor such trends closely, notably Outsports.com. Ten of them won medals (43 per cent) and seven of them won gold medals (30.4 per […]

By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 20 August 2012 . The 2012-13 Premier League kicked off at the weekend and this is what it looked like: Each flag on the graphic represents one player involved in one of the nine Premier League games played on Saturday and Sunday, from Arsenal’s Polish […]

By Brian Sears 16 August 2012 In the 20 years of the Premier League, Arsenal have played 386 home league games and lost just 48 of them. Seven clubs in the current Premier League have never won in the PL era at Arsenal, and the first visitors of this season, Sunderland, are among them. They […]

* GAVIN FLEIG is the head of performance analysis at the reigning Premier League champions, Manchester City. He heads up a full-time performance analysis staff of 10 people at City alone, with six focussing on developing players and four on first-team analytics. With ‘soccermetrics’ analysis still in its infancy, City are about the launch a […]

By Brian Sears 16 August 2012 Liverpool and Southampton have the toughest starts in the 2012-13 Premier League season, with Swansea and West Ham having the easiest set of opening fixtures, according to a Sportingintelligence analysis of each clubs’ opening six matches. Within an objective ‘tough rating’ system, the lower the rating, the harder the […]

By Brian Sears 15 August 2012 So the Olympic Games are over and football is facing the inevitable brickbats that will come its way ahead of the new season, which begins in England on Saturday. Of course the beautiful game can learn things from London 2012 and the Olympics as a whole, but let’s not […]