premier-league

By the very nature of stadium capacities, there is a limit on the number of people that can watch a Premier League game in-person. But the sky is the limit as far as TV audiences are concerned, and Premier League chiefs were left celebrating some strong numbers at the conclusion of the 2023/24 season. The […]

It’s a thankless job, and one that isn’t paid particularly well either. We’re not talking about traffic wardens, by the way, but football referees – who find themselves under the harshest of professional scrutiny….and open to malicious abuse and vitriol every week at the mercy of tens of thousands of fans. When you look at […]

A seven-goal thriller, read the headlines as Arsenal struck a 97th minute winner to break Luton Town hearts in December. Once upon a time, seven goals in a single Premier League game would have raised many an eyebrow, but these days the Gunners’ 4-3 victory over the Hatters was just another day at the office […]

With 115 alleged Financial Fair Play breaches hanging over them, Manchester City continue to operate free of punishment – for reasons known only to the Premier League and UEFA. As for Everton, well, their scoresheet in the 2023/24 season looks rather more punitive: one FFP charge, one set of sanctions. The Toffees have been deducted […]

If you could bottle the optimism of football fans during the summer, the world would be a brighter, happier place. Of course, it doesn’t take long for that positivity to dissipate in the face of a wretched start to the campaign – just ask Chelsea fans, who after witnessing owner Todd Boehly empty his bank […]

Forget getting the 17:00 train home from your team’s next match – new refereeing directives in the Premier League and the EFL are ensuring that games could take 100 minutes or more to be completed. In a trend that started at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, match officials are now being asked to record […]

When you’ve been betting on sport for a while, you realise just how sharp the bookmakers are when it comes to pricing up their markets. Forget odds, margins and all the rest of it, and instead focus on the frequency with which their favourites win in the major markets. Now, we’re not talking about a […]

Of all the reasons for a Premier League game to be postponed, an unsafe stadium is a new one after more than 30 years of the rebranding of the top English division. But that’s the case at Luton Town, whose start to their first ever Premier League season has been severely disrupted by improvement work […]

Poor old Jamie Vardy. In a year in which his wife was dragged through the courts in a rather embarrassing dust-up with Colleen Rooney, Vardy also suffered the indignity of relegation from the Premier League with Leicester City. In doing so, the striker joins an exclusive club of players that have won the Premier League […]

It’s almost taken as read that teams that get relegated from the Premier League will do very well in the Championship the following season. That pattern could continue in 2023/24 according to the bookmakers, with Leicester City, Leeds United and Southampton installed as the early favourites to secure an immediate promotion from the second tier […]

De La Soul once rapped that three is the magic number, but for relegation-threatened teams in the Premier League that hit song has been remixed as 40 is the magic number – it’s commonly held that that’s the points total required to guarantee survival. But how true is such a notion? The truth is that […]

You have to hand it to them: Fortuna Dusseldorf are making a bold, contrarian play. The German football club is planning to make tickets to all its home games free of charge within five years via its ‘Fortuna for All’ scheme, and will get the ball rolling by handing fans three free tickets during the […]

Football’s financial ecosystem is so unique compared to the rest of the business world that we no longer raise an eyebrow when a club forks out £100 million on a transfer for a new player or £100,000 a week on wages for a star. Those are preposterous numbers, but ones that are considered par for […]

While many of us attempted to break our own record for the number of chocolate eggs eaten in a single sitting over the Easter weekend, in the Premier League a pair of players were reaching rather more athletic milestones of their own. Son Heung-min became the latest inductee into the Premier League’s 100-goal club. The […]

Given that he laid his hands on the referee, Fulham’s Aleksandr Mitrovic can perhaps thank his lucky stars that he hasn’t been banned for more than eight games. That was the punishment metered out to the Serbian following his dismissal against Manchester United in March, although the Football Association has claimed that the suspension is […]

Football’s appetite for self-destruction has reached new heights during the 2022/23 campaign. The Premier League had (as of April 3) witnessed 12 managerial sackings – the record for the most top-flight dismissals within a single season. Two of those came on a Bloody Sunday, April 2, with Brendan Rodgers and then Graham Potter shown the […]

Not long after Premier League chiefs agreed a record-equalling £5.1 billion deal with Sky Sports for the competition’s TV rights in England, the Football League are eyeing a similarly lucrative agreement. Bids to show Championship, League One and League Two football are expected to be received from a number of firms – potentially bringing an […]

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when, in late February, Gareth Ainsworth announced to his Wycombe Wanderers players he was leaving to take up the managerial reins of his former club QPR. Ainsworth, with his shoulder length hair and leather jackets, is something of a unicorn in football management circles anyway, but his […]

As winter starts, slowly but surely, to turn to spring, the English football season begins to creak towards its business end. As of February 2023, the Championship table is shaping up with just 12 points separating Middlesbrough in third and Swansea City in twelfth. And very much in the promotion hunt is Luton Town, a […]

Having been the sixth favourites, at 40/1 no less, to win the Premier League title in 2022/23 before a ball had been kicked, it’s fair to say that Arsenal are proving the doubters wrong. They have accumulated 50 points at the halfway stage of the campaign, which in theory gives them a chance of finishing […]

When the Premier League was launched in 1992 as a rebrand of the old Division One, the 22 founding members had dreams of the glory and riches they expected to follow. Premier League chiefs had signed an exclusive TV rights deal with Sky worth more than £300 million, and that’s a partnership that continues to […]

It was the technology brought in to end officiating errors on the football pitch. And yet Premier League chiefs have admitted that bungling video assistant referees incorrectly intervened on six occasions in games played between August and November – and that they should have intervened, but didn’t, in six other decisions. It’s further evidence to […]

Good luck and Godspeed to Slaven Bilic, who has been appointed as Watford’s sixteenth permanent manager in the past decade. He replaces Rob Edwards, a bright and progressive young head coach who Hornets chief executive Scott Duxbury claimed would be supported ‘come hell or high water’ in the club’s quest for a return to the […]

If goalscorers are worth their weight in gold, then some strikers could be considered priceless and others would barely scrape a mention on Cash In the Attic. At £54 million, you get the feeling that Manchester City have scored an absolute coup in bringing Erling Haaland to the club. Aged just 22, the Norwegian has […]

Have football owners and decision-makers lost their minds!? The 2022/23 Premier League campaign is just six games old at the time of writing, and already 10% (okay, so that’s two of twenty) of top-flight clubs have already sacked their managers. Scott Parker was the first to fall on his sword at Bournemouth, with ill-advised complaints […]

It’s official: the 2022 summer transfer window has been the biggest spending in Premier League history. The previous record of £1.49 billion was smashed with weeks to spare, and even now – at the time of writing – a whopping £1.68 billion has been spent with around six days left to go until the window […]

As football-related disorder and bad behaviour continues to rise around the world, the Football Association, Premier League and the EFL have got together to decide that enough is enough. The UK’s police chiefs responsible for ensuring law and order at English football games have confirmed that fan behaviour is the worst it has been in […]

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has led many companies and organisations considering whether they want to do business with Vladimir Putin now and in the future. The sporting world has also been shaken from its slumber, and is beginning to realise that perhaps Russian money isn’t good money. Both Poland and Sweden have refused […]

February 27, 1999. It’s a date that probably means very little to most, but it boasts of a remarkable time in Premier League history – the last occasion on which a full English starting eleven was named. Aston Villa was the club responsible, with manager John Gregory deciding to name an eleven stocked solely of […]

Another Premier League season, another campaign in which at least two of the three promoted teams have struggled. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for those that ascend from the Championship to compete on a level footing with the top-flight’s giants, and even established Premier League sides with smaller budgets are feeling the pinch – Burnley and […]

It’s a sentiment as old as time: the team that sits top of the Premier League at Christmas goes on to win the title. And there’s bad news for the team that sits bottom of the pile during the festive period: they are doomed for relegation. But is this theory true, or is it one […]

When should a football match be postponed, and when should it be played? Those are topical questions every winter when the weather takes a turn for the worse, and with the global health crisis complicating matters further the 2021/22 season has been hampered by an apparent lack of transparency as to when games should and […]

There are plenty of global markets in which the love for football is growing, and few can boast the power of the USA. Should you need any convincing, the Premier League has signed a contract extension with the American broadcaster NBC for exclusive TV rights, and they will have to fork out a cool £2 […]

For the first time in the history of the Premier League era, football fans in England and Wales will legally be able to stand at matches as of January as part of a ‘safe standing’ trial. Both Manchester clubs, Chelsea and Tottenham have been chosen for the pilot, alongside Welsh outfit Cardiff City, which will […]

Is Pep Guardiola a better manager than Jurgen Klopp? Is Ole Gunnar Solskjaer really that bad? Will Antonio Conte bring success to Tottenham? These are questions that can only be answered in the fullness of time, but a deep dive into their managerial stats does offer some insight that can’t be learned purely from the […]

The takeover of Newcastle United by Mohammad bin Salman and the Saudi Public Investment Fund now takes the tally of Premier League clubs owned or part-owned by international investors to 13. Yep, that’s right, 65% of the biggest football clubs in England are owned by foreign millionaires or, indeed, billionaires. In some cases, the remaining […]

It’s been more than 25 years since fans of top-flight teams in England have been able to stand at games, but change could be afoot after it was revealed that the UK government and the Premier League are to trial safe standing areas. Any of the 20 clubs are now able to apply to the […]

It’s fair to say that Premier League new boys Watford have clambered aboard the cryptocurrency hype train. Not only did they allow their new shirt sponsor, the online betting firm Stake, to pay for the deal in crypto, in August they also revealed their new shirt sleeve sponsor – Dogecoin. That’s right, the Hornets will […]

It’s fair to say that the landscape has shifted somewhat in football sponsorship, ever since Coventry City became the first club in the English game to bear a commercial logo on the front of their shirts – the British vehicle manufacturer Talbot – almost 50 years ago. Since then, it has become a free-for-all with […]

For many, the dream is to retire from full time work as early in life as possible – not an ambition shared by Roy Hodgson. At the sprightly age of 73, the Crystal Palace manager has all but retired from the game after confirming that he will leave Selhurst Park at the end of his […]

The idea of a European Super League may have been almost universally unpopular with fans but it did indicate the Premier League’s ‘Big 6’ viewed themselves as the division’s major players both on and off the pitch. Leicester City, Everton, West Ham United and Newcastle United amongst others would have won the league in recent […]

It’s fair to say that the decision by the Premier League’s Big 6 – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur – to join a breakaway European Super League has rocked the sporting world. Fans of the beautiful game have come out in force to voice their opposition to the plans with […]

It’s the nightmare scenario that the elite of club football on the continent had been dreading. And yet, rumours of a breakaway league in Europe have been circling for years – finally, it seems, they could be realised. In April it was confirmed that 12 teams – including England’s ‘big six’ of Manchester United and […]

On a packed weekend of quality sport, Sunderland’s 4-1 win over Doncaster Rovers will have gone largely unnoticed outside of Wearside and South Yorkshire. But it was a game that delivered a very unusual set of circumstances. Firstly, Charlie Wyke netted all four goals for the Black Cats – a quad remains an rare feat […]

It’s a long way down from the top of the mountain, as the old saying goes, and when you are crowned as a champion you are there to be shot at – another cliché, but one of relevance to the Premier League. A lot of elite level sportsmen and women say that successfully defending a […]

Oh, Ralph. What a unique slice of history for Ralph Hasenhuttl, the Southampton boss who has now overseen two 0-9 defeats in his tenure at the club. There have only been three of those since the Premier League began! When you’re 0-4 down at half-time, the attitude is towards damage limitation rather than trying to […]