Manchester City's identity crisis

Manchester City's two Premier League
games this season have been ... workmanlike.

The new signings ... underwhelming.

The manager ... apparently unsettled.




In spite of this, Manchester City
remain the smart choice for this year's Premiership title. Even
after managing a victory and a draw after falling behind against
promoted Southampton and an inspired Liverpool, City have yet to

Read More

Three Things: Is Wayne Rooney overrated?

Three talking points from the English
Premier League this weekend:


Wayne Rooney may be overrated




Rooney's injury is an early litmus testcourtesy: bbc.co.uk


For much of his United tenure, Rooney
has been the club's focal point. Even during the Cristiano years
(2006-2009), the club looked to Scouse leadership rather than
Portuguese when needing a lift. In the only sport to use the

Read More

Liverpool, not Arsenal, right for Sahin

Nuri Sahin appears close to signing
on loan for Brendan Rodgers' new Liverpool. The temporary (?)
transfer promises to add to a midfield that didn't convincingly
implement a new pass 'n' press gameplan in an opening day loss to
West Bromwich Albion.


Turkish playmaker Sahin conducted
the exquisite Borussia Dortmund midfield for several seasons before
moving to current club Real Madrid before

Read More

Book review: Tip Off, by Filip Bondy

Tip Off isn't a bad book, but it's hard to get excited about.
 In fact, a one-word review would simply be "meh".  Filip Bondy presents
us with the equivalent of watching a player take a 17' jump shot when
he could have dunked on three guys - it's just as effective and may even
be the right play, but leaves the audience slightly underwhelmed.

This is a shame, because Bondy chose a fascinating

Read More

Graphic: The Football League heat map

This is a concept I've been playing around with for the past week.  It's basically a year-by-year standings of the English Football League tree made to look pretty by colour-coding specific finishes.  That is, red represents a league finish in the top 15 of the 92 Football League teams, a year highlighted in orange denotes a club finishing in position 16-30 and so on.

Clubs are arranged

Read More

Short pitch: Fixing the Pro Bowl

With the popularity of the Pro Bowl waning dramatically, it's time for the NFL to either put the game out to pasture or to expand the weekend's festivities to include more than American Football's least important annual encounter.

The NFL could take a lesson from their younger antipodean brother, the Australian AFL.

The AFL Grand Final pre-game and half-time entertainment probably peaked in

Read More

What Robin van Persie could mean to Manchester United

With Arsenal captain Robin van Persie
certain to sign for Manchester United, the balance of power in the
English Premier League shifts again towards the country's northwest.
Despite Arsenal's best efforts to provide him with support in the
form of the
deepest squad of his tenure at the Emirates, van Persie's quest
for self-actualisation through silverware now continues at Old
Trafford.

Read More

Expanded EPL survival rates now available

On Monday we published the survival rates of every team promoted to the English Premier League from the League Championship since the start of the year.

Because I like to be thorough and because we're about to enter the Premiership's 21st season, I expanded the diagram (and hopefully made it somewhat clearer) to take in every promoted team since the inception of the league in 1992-93.

As usual,

Read More

Graphic: Premier League survival rates

The graphic below shows the survival rates since the start of the millennium of teams promoted from The Championship.  It's a direct extension of a similar post authored at about this time last year.


Years continuously in the top division are indicated in azure, while seasons spent outside the Premiership are indicated by burnt red; green indicates years spent in the Premier League after being

Read More

Some regeneration advice for Chelsea from Doctor Who

Courtesy: bandbent.wordpress.com


“Life depends on change, renewal”.



These were some of the first words
spoken by the second Doctor Who, all the way back in 1966. They were
needed because the original actor who played the Doctor, William
Hartnell, had left the series and moved on to a retirement home for
the terminally crotchety; he was replaced by a younger, fitter,
happier – at least

Read More

Graphic: US arena naming rights

The following graphic shows the startling range of companies that have the naming rights for North American major league sports arenas, broken down by company market.  That is, each company is categorised according to its primary industry.



The category "other" includes all companies which sponsored only one arena, eg. Petco Park in San Diego is the only stadium sponsored by a pet service

Read More

Arsenal finally swimming in the deep end

courtesy: guardian.co.uk/football

With
their acquisition
of Málaga's
Santi Cazorla,
Arsenal have for the third time this summer acquired a
potential Premier League star.
At worst, the twenty-seven year old will consign the
somewhat-resurgent Tomas Rosicky and a turgid Andrei Arshavin to the
North London scrapheap. At an unlikely best, his signature may even
convince Robin van Persie to stay

Read More

Book review: Sixty years on the back foot, by Clyde Walcott

The Caribbean has produced several of
the greatest batsmen of all time. However, many of these players
seem to rail against faceless figures of authority. Currently,
talisman Chris Gayle swats boundaries at whim – more often for
lucrative T20 sides than for the West Indies. The chain which leads
back through the likes of Brian
Lara and Sir Vivian Richards – who was rather partisanly
profiled

Read More

Scottish Premier League philosophy

On today's Guardian website, their
football page is headed by the redoubtable Ewan Murray's preview
of the Scottish Premier League. In it, the Guardian's main
football guy north of Hadrian's Wall suggests that Celtic are a
shoo-in for their 8th SPL title in 15 years. With Rangers out of
sight – and lucky to be alive – the SPL looks like being the most
boring league in Europe.




Barring an

Read More

AC Milan: Ch-ch-ch-changes

Silvio Berlusconi doesn't do anything by half measures.



Two seasons ago, his club was perhaps the oldest elite team in Europe.  Although football's Peter Pan, Paolo Maldini, had retired, the Rossoneri claimed the Serie A title featuring almost an entire XI of thirtysomethings (Alessandro Nesta,  Mark van Bommel, Massimo Ambrosini, Clarence Seedorf, Gianluca Zambrotta, Pippo Inzaghi, Massimo

Read More