The EPL run home "analyzed"

As the Premier League season rampages towards the Manchester
derby which will (probably) decide the ultimate route and destination
of this season's victory parade, we've got enough data from the
season in progress to suggest how results for the rest of the season
plays out.  The season is now thirty games old for each club,
with the last eight enough to determine who raises the cup this
season,

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My Favourite Cricketer: Graham Dilley, by James Morgan of The Full Toss

Last year, the cricket world mourned the loss of Graham Dilley, who passed away after a short battle with cancer. James Morgan, co-editor of The Full Toss, penned the following piece which he has been kind enough to submit for our series "My Favourite Cricketer".



As a lifelong
Worcestershire fan, Graham Dilley is a cricketer who has always been
close to my heart. He joined Worcs in 1987, at

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Don't judge a league by its elite

As football has become more and more
corporate, the existence of elite cliques of teams in almost all the
major four Europeans leagues have become an accepted part of the
European football culture. While from time to time over the last
fifteen years these subsections have been occasionally disrupted,
it's not worth arguing against the balance of European football power
being held by a maximum

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Graphic: England's most efficient goalscorers

The chart below displays the efficiency of forwards and midfielders playing in the English Premier League.  It plots each player's shooting accuracy, in goals per shot, against their scoring rate in goals per game.  The further to the top right corner of the graph the player is, the more efficient they are.  All players in the EPL who have scored five or more goals are considered.
It is obviously

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Be very proud, Spurs fans

Football fans get a bad rap. It’s often deserved.



I first understood the full scary nature of a football mob mentality when at my first La Liga match.  At the Barcelona derby in December 2003, I was amused to find Parakeet ultras lighting fires, fighting police in running battles and frisbee-ing seats dangerously close to players on the pitch – until they came into my section of Montjuïc

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Short Pitch - The Revenge of "Peter Who?"

Revenge of the “Peter Who?”
It must've been a great week for Peter Nevill. Only a few days ago, he was selected as the wicket-keeper for this season's Australian Cricketers' Association All-Star team. Today, he was called up to cover the dauphin, Matthew Wade, in the West Indies, after Brad Haddin returned to Australia to attend some personal matters.
Nevill, a Victorian who had a fantastic

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What do Chelsea and Dwight Howard have in common?

Wednesday provided the sporting consciousness with an almost – but not quite – final irresolution. Both the world's most public roundball sports suffered from the implacable inevitablity of more uncertainty.
In the NBA, the Orlando Magic's Dwight Howard opted into the final eighteen months of his contract, depriving the free-agent market of it's best big man since Shaquille O'Neal in 1996.
And

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My Favourite Cricketer: Michael Vaughan, by Max Benson of Test Match Sofa

Max Benson, of Test Match Sofa, explains why Michael Vaughan is his favourite cricketer.  Max tweetst at @sofa_maxb.

Northern batsmen aren’t stylish. Northern batsmen are Geoffrey Boycott, Michael Atherton and Paul Collingwood. They are grafters and men of toil, hell-bent on building an innings by any grim means necessary.
All stereotypes are rooted in truth, but my favourite cricketer goes

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Redknapp's logical successor

Let's just assume, despite apparent misgivings, that Harry Redknapp will manage England at this year's European Championships. The common-sense logic is that England will likely qualify for the second round and then be eliminated. Such things were written in stone, long ago.
Were he to go, however, who would replace him at Spurs? Noises have been made about summoning Jose Mourinho from Real

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Book review: More than a Game - John Major

by columnist Ben Roberts
I really do need to admit that although being a born and bred Australian I am spending more and more time putting my head above the neighbouring fence and enjoying the delights of sport as enjoyed by the English. This is quite the admission, and flies in the face of everything I learned from the likes of Dean Jones, Allan Border, and Steve Waugh. English cricket to them

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The A-League: spread too thin

The furore surrounding Clive Palmer and Gold Coast United has cast more unwanted focus on soccer's position in the Australian sporting hierarchy. The club failing is bad enough, but for component on-field parts to auction themselves to prospective employers is like your soon-to-be ex auditioning potential replacements in front of your eyes.
Most galling of all is for this failure to occur in

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What I learned this Summer

As part of a series on The Sledge, several online columnists were invited to submit what this past cricket season has taught them.  Featured contributors included cricket blogosphere stalwarts Ant Sims of Wicket Maiden, Dave Siddall of World Cricket Watch and Subash Jayaraman of The Sight Screen.  The following was Balanced Sports' contribution.

What I learned this summer:

Andrew Hilditch was

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Villas-Boas fired for breaking coaching's golden rule

And so Andre Villas-Boas is gone, cast to the recycling pile like a dapper cardboard cut-out in a suit that's slightly too small.
Roman Abramovich may as well have employed a cardboard cut-out, as he almost certainly would have performed better in the job with the highest expectations in England.
It's not that Villas-Boas is a bad manager – that's not even close to the truth. He's an excellent

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Shocker: Billionaire football club owner is mental

The Australian A-League, a competition set up to minimise infighting and partisanship while maximising club longevity, has again slid inexorably into disarray. And this time, it's one man's madness rather than hyper-optimistic expansion or Kevin Muscat perpetual battle with the red-mist.
The lone figure isn't even Harry Kewell.
Although the league is markedly strengthened from it's nascence,

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My Favourite Cricketer: Stuart MacGill, by Kristian Gough of The Wrong 'Un

Snoop Doggy Nott my favourite...
As both a legspin fetishist and amateur practitioner, I would more likely pick Snoop Doggy Dogg as my favourite cricketer than a batsman or seamer and to me MacGill represents the leggie's leggie and my personal favorite.  
Warne was too freakishly accurate to be considered a 'real' leg spinner, real ones dish up at least one four-ball every few overs.  And he

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