Football

By Nick Harris 7 March 2010 Aston Villa’s transfer spending since the start of last summer has been bigger than assumed and has probably been close to £50m in that period. A note in the most recent accounts of Villa’s parent company, Reform Acquisitions Limited, which were released just before the weekend, says the “net […]

By John Roberts 4 March 2010 Michael Foot, the former leader of the Labour Party who died yesterday at the age of 96, was famously a lifelong fan of Plymouth Argyle, but perhaps less well known is the affection he developed for Everton when he was a resident of Liverpool in the early 1930s. Foot […]

By Nick Harris 3 March 2010 The global publicity attracted by yesterday’s news that the Red Knight group have started exploratory talks to raise money to try to buy Manchester United has helped membership of the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust (MUST) to more than double, and has now smashed through the 100,000 barrier. A month […]

By Nick Harris EXCLUSIVE 2 March 2010 Key details of a fledgling plan by a group of super-rich “Red Knights” to buy Manchester United can be revealed today by sportingintelligence, which has also been told by a source at the heart of the scheme: “This is the very early stages of something. There won’t be […]

By Nick Harris 28 February 2010 Arsenal’s ongoing elevation within the ranks of European football’s financial superpowers will be underlined this week when they are named as one of the top five clubs in Deloitte’s annual ‘Rich List’ of the world’s biggest 20 clubs by revenue. The report is due out on Tuesday. Arsenal, whose win […]

By Nick Harris 25 February 2010 Portsmouth will tomorrow become the first Premier League football club ever to enter administration after talks with four groups of potential buyers for the ailing south-coast club failed to make material progress ahead of a 3.30pm deadline this afternoon. The administration process is already underway and will be completed […]

By Nick Harris 25 February 2010 One of Britain’s leading psychologists has told sportingintelligence that Wayne Bridge’s decision to quit England and rule himself out of World Cup contention was “presumably made for the good of the team” and as such it is a “laudable” course of action. Cary Cooper, Professor of Organisational Psychology and […]

* JOHN ROBERTS wrote for the Daily Express, The Guardian, the Daily Mail and The Independent, where he was the tennis correspondent for 20 years. He collaborated with Bill Shankly on the Liverpool manager’s autobiography, ghosted Kevin Keegan’s first book, and has written books on George Best, Manchester United’s Busby Babes (The Team That Wouldn’t Die) and Everton (The Official […]

By Nick Harris 22 February 2010 (with 23 Feb update at the bottom) Portsmouth are bracing themselves for imminent administration as a means to stop them going out of business altogether, and sportingintelligence understands that insolvency practitioners from the chartered accountancy firm Hacker Young are on standby to handle the administration process. Pompey’s owner Balram […]

By Nick Harris 20 February 2010 The Premier League has made a U-turn on a decision to allow Portsmouth to sell players because of fears the south-coast club might manage to avoid administration and avoid relegation party because of a measure initially intended to ensure their very survival. Fifa, football’s world governing body, had already […]