Ollie Phillips: Don’t expect a shock – Saracens and Exeter are streets ahead of their Premiership play-off rivals May 23, 2019 The Premiership semi-finals are upon us this weekend and it is very much a case of challengers taking on heavy favourites. Saracens and Exeter have been dominant over the past few seasons and it will take a mammoth effort from Gloucester or Northampton to reach the final. Saracens have won three of the last four [...]
Football’s most lucrative match stagnates in value amid Premier League rights growth slowdown May 22, 2019 The Championship play-off final, which takes place on Monday at Wembley and pits Aston Villa against Derby County for the last remaining spot in next season’s Premier League, is well established as the most lucrative one-off match in the world of club football. Worth an estimated minimum of £170m to the victors – 10 times [...]
Formula One taking cues from the Premier League on increasing competition and wants to add African race to calendar May 20, 2019 Since Liberty Media took over Formula One in 2017, the company has been insistent on the sport’s potential for commercial growth. How to achieve that has posed challenges, though, highlighting a need to improve the product on the track as well as expanding its reach. The first of those hurdles has proved difficult to jump, with [...]
Manchester City: Treble winners, record breakers, untouchable – and too good? May 19, 2019 In the wake of a domestic treble unprecedented in English men’s football, there should be no sparing of praise for the brilliance of Manchester City. Saturday’s FA Cup final against Watford was a devastating showcase: a 6-0 dismantling of a good team, the most emphatic margin of victory in the fixture for more than a [...]
How Watford’s digital overhaul has helped the FA Cup finalists to keep punching above their weight May 16, 2019 Nestled among the replica kits and Javi Gracia T-shirts at Watford’s club shop is a version of “Guess Who?” in which the board game’s usual cast of characters is replaced with current Hornets players. Rival supporters might quip it’s an apt product for a team whose revolving door policy to recruitment can make it difficult [...]
Chris Tremlett: With Bairstow and Buttler firing England have the best ODI batting line-up in the world May 15, 2019 If the last two games have shown us anything it’s that the sky is the limit for England’s batsmen. Twice in the past week they’ve scored over 350 in One-Day International victories against Pakistan. It’s happening so frequently now that it’s really no longer a surprise. England have the best 50-over batting line-up in the [...]
Best of the Rest XI: The Premier League’s top performers this season outside of the Big Six May 15, 2019 This season’s individual accolades have been awarded and, unsurprisingly, the vast majority went to players at Liverpool and Manchester City, with the leftovers for players at other Big Six clubs. But the Premier League is home to another 14 teams who have shown an array of talent this year. Here is City A.M’s Best of [...]
From ticket prices to stellar salaries, you can’t take the economics out of football May 15, 2019 The appearance of Liverpool and Spurs in the Champions League final and Arsenal and Chelsea in the Europa Cup one has generated massive interest. But the official ticket prices for the games are surprisingly reasonable. Liverpool and Spurs have been offered 16,613 tickets each. Five per cent of these are expensive, at £513 each. A further [...]
Trevor Steven: My manager and players of the year from a vintage Premier League season May 13, 2019 Manchester City are champions again but they will never win a tougher Premier League title than this year’s. They and Liverpool have played at such a high level for the duration of the top-flight campaign that I can’t imagine we’ll see anything like it again for a long while. That is reflected in my choices [...]
Tottenham 2-2 Everton: Mauricio Pochettino aiming to make history after securing fourth place in the Premier League May 12, 2019 These are heady days for Mauricio Pochettino. After a dismal run of seven defeats in 11 Premier League games threatened to derail all Tottenham’s good work in the first half of the season, one game in midweek changed everything. Lucas Moura’s hat-trick in Amsterdam on Wednesday turned the normally reserved Argentinian into an overwhelmed, passionate [...]