* During the Capital One Cup match between Swansea and Chelsea last week, the achievement of the Welsh side in beating the reigning European champions was significantly overlooked the next morning by the incident in which a 17-year-old ballboy, Charlie Morgan, smothered the ball, and Chelsea’s Eden Hazard retrieved it. Ian Herbert asks why we are […]

By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year  23 January 2013 Bradford City’s remarkable run to the final of the 2013 English League Cup gives them the chance to become the first club in football history from any European country to win a national cup competition while playing in the fourth tier. A win […]

  By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 21 January 2013 The number of non-native players in the football leagues of Europe has climbed to record levels, with 36.1 per cent of all players being ‘foreign’ in the leagues in which they play, according to research released today. The CIES Football Observatory […]

* After the week in which we learned that Michael Johnson, the player hailed as the next Colin Bell, has been released by Manchester City, Ian Herbert asks why we don’t appreciate the mental challenge that football presents to some individuals who are lauded and loaded when they’re barely into their teens. . By Ian […]

. 31 DECEMBER 2012 A Sportingintelligence survey of almost 1,000 fans from more than 60 different clubs has been published on this website today (link here), with those taking part voting SWANSEA CITY as the club in English football with the best owners, and BLACKBURN ROVERS as the club with the worst owners. These are […]

By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 31 December 2012 Swansea City have the best owners of any club playing within English football according to a wide-ranging survey conducted by Sportingintelligence over the past month. Dave Whelan at Wigan has been voted the second best owner, followed by Sheikh Mansour of Manchester […]

* By Steve Menary 17 December 2012 There was little Christmas cheer from FIFA’s executive committee (ExCo) in Tokyo for Kosovo. Kosovo’s declaration of independence in February 2008 has been recognised by more than half of the United Nations’ members but the former Yugoslav Republic’s footballers are in limbo because the UN itself will not […]

By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 12 November 2012 Since the stunning success of the London 2012 Olympic Games, English football has faced an inevitable backlash. The Olympics united large swathes of the country to the extent that Londoners were even speaking to each other on the Tube. Freaky. British Olympians […]

By Brian Sears and Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 31 October 2012 Premier League attendances are more than four per cent up on the same time last year, and on course to be the highest total in England’s top division for 40 years, according to Sportingintelligence analysis. The growth is all […]

By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 5 September 2012 While the Premier League continues to be the most cosmopolitan football league in the world with players from dozens of countries, the most popular names across the whole of English football continue to have a familiar sound. The word cloud graphic below […]