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. Football will thrive if the purist’s desire for a meritocracy is wedded with a business approach that heeds the principles of economics, argues Oscar Howie, who contends that Uefa’s Financial Fair Play is a step in the right direction – and that Fernando Torres (left) can’t be value for money. .. . . By […]

* . . . which accompanies this piece. NB: this article has been amended on 5 Feb to reflect an earlier error in calculations. Season 2011-12: Club X loses £101m. Season 2012-13: Club X loses £39m. Club X is monitored for first Uefa FFP monitoring period, 2011-12 and 2012-13. All other things are equal and […]

By Nick Harris 1 February 2011 Chelsea’s bullishness that they won’t immediately fall foul of Uefa’s imminent Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules is because they will be able to ‘write off’ a huge chunk of their wage bill in the scheme’s early years, sportingintelligence can reveal. [NB: to clarify ‘early years’, this means written-off wages […]

By Brian Sears 1 February 2011 Arsenal host Everton on Tuesday evening for the 19th time in the Premier League era and statisically-minded Gunners will be licking their lips. Arsenal have won more home points against Everton since 1992 – 45 points from 18 games for a whacking 2.5 points per game on average – […]

* By Nick Harris 31 January 2011 . Chelsea have this evening announced their latest massive financial losses, £70.9m for the year to June 2010. This year’s comical headline on the official announcement was ‘Chelsea becomes cash positive’, above an article about Chelsea’s confidence at meeting Uefa’s financial fair play criteria. Here is a summary […]

By Nick Harris 31 January 2011 Spending by the 20 clubs of the Premier League has hit a record level for a January transfer window, with sportingintelligence calculating that they will have spent £223.47m collectively on the signings of permanent deals for players. This will rise slightly depending on add-ons in some deals. This smashes the […]

By Brian Sears 31 January 2011 It’s been one of the more ‘romantic’ FA Cups of recent seasons, what with giants being slain hither and thither and Crawley getting the dream draw at Manchester United in the fifth round. But the magic it once had is wearing off in general and we can show it […]

* THE SPORTS LAWYER is actually a posse of Britain’s brightest lawyers, from the Sport & Media team at the UK law firm, Thomas Eggar, who will be contributing features, analysis and insight on a regular basis on the key sports law issues of the day. In TSL’s latest column, Paul Gaff and Andrew Nixon […]

By Brian Sears 28 January 2011 It was in January last year that Liverpool became the 100th Premier League club to lose in the FA Cup to a team from a lower division, in their case to Reading. That made them the most ‘slain’ giants of the Premier League era, having lost seven times in […]

By Brian Sears 28 January 2011 Ahh, the FA Cup and the scent of blood. Already this season Sunderland, Blackpool, Newcastle and West Brom from the Premier League have been taken down a peg or four by opponents from lower divisions. Those four scalps bring the total number of Premier League clubs humbled in the […]