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By Roger Pielke Jr 30 September 2014  Sport is in the news for a lot of the wrong reasons, from the scandal over the NFL’s response to cases of alleged domestic abuse to FIFA’s latest farce – the global football body ordering executives to return $27,000 watches given as gifts during this year’s World Cup […]

By Brian Sears 26 September 2014 The Premier League season is already 50 games old (of 380), or 13.2 per cent the way through. Early days, yes, but one statistic that already looks odd is the amount of away wins so far, 18 of them against only 14 so far at home. Eighteen games have […]

By Brian Sears 19 September 2014 Chelsea’s four wins from four Premier League games so far give them the only 100 per cent record this season. In winning their first four games, they become only the 16th team in 23 PL seasons to do so. On four of the 15 previous occasions, it has been […]

. Match-fixing at the highest level in Turkish football has eroded all trust in the Turkish domestic game. As a report on this website detailed in March (click here to read), Fenerbahçe and others have been proved to be involved in the systematic fixing of games, with those involved including club presidents, senior officials, coaches and […]

By Ian Herbert 12 September 2014 One of the main panel events at the Soccerex global convention in Manchester this week was headlined: ‘How to run a club successfully.’ We heard all of the usual stuff about what the game has become: Liverpool selling £50,000 of Mario Balotelli shirts in a day, reaching 10 million […]

By Roger Pielke Jr 12 September 2014  It is a favorite debating topic among football fans in the United States: has soccer arrived in the United States? On one level the question simply reflects the fundamental insecurities of the American soccer supporter of a certain vintage. But those insecurities are based on experience. If you […]

By Brian Sears 12 September 2014 It may all change when Louis Van Gaal finally unleashes his new-look starting XI against QPR at Old Trafford on Sunday but his starting XIs so far in this nascent Premier League season have been among the youngest in the division and among those with the most English players […]

* By Ian Herbert 5 September 2014 Why didn’t Manchester City buy Radamel Falcao? It’s one of the unexplained mysteries of the transfer market. They admire him. They would have leapt at the chance of buying him last summer. And now they go into the season with only three strikers, after letting Alvaro Negredo leave […]

* In his latest book, ‘Taking Our Ball Back: English Football’s Culture Wars‘, MARTIN CLOAKE quotes political philosopher Michael Sandel’s statement that “The pleasure of sports has been diminished by its commerciality.” One of the central questions running through the collection of articles that make up the book is how the thing that makes sport so […]

By Brian Sears 29 August 2014 Played two, won two, scored five, conceded none, and both games in challenging London derbies. Tottenham’s start to the Premier League season under new manager Mauricio Pochettino could not have gone better. Wins over West Ham then QPR leave them top of the table before the third round of […]