Trevor Steven: Strike pair can give Arsenal edge over Chelsea in Baku May 28, 2019 There is very little in the way of form to go on when teams have a 17-day gap from their last fixture to their next, as is the case for Chelsea and Arsenal in Wednesday’s Europa League final. Instead, a match like this is usually decided by fine margins and small advantages. I have a slight [...]
Football Betting Tips: Defences on top as Pep seeks to claim another league title May 9, 2019 IT SEEMS a long time ago since Vincent Kompany scored one of the goals of the season to secure Manchester City victory against Leicester on Monday night. Since then we have witnessed two of the Champions Leagues’ greatest comebacks, with Liverpool and Tottenham booking their places in the final. At the start of the season, [...]
Football Betting Tips: Fresher Liverpool to extend Spurs’ poor away run March 28, 2019 WHILE it’s been less than two weeks, for many it seems an eternity since we’ve had any Premier League action. Yes, England got their Euro 2020 qualifying campaign off to the best possible start, but the league is what most are concerned with and it’s back with a bang this weekend. The standout fixture is [...]
Tottenham face a fading force in Bayern Munich in the Champions League October 1, 2019 When Bayern Munich were knocked out of the Champions League at the quarter-final stage three seasons ago it appeared to mark the beginning of their decline. A 6-3 aggregate defeat to Real Madrid saw them exit the competition at the earliest stage since 2011. They rebounded with a sixth semi-final appearance in seven seasons in [...]
Home affairs: All five British Isles teams can still reach Euro 2020 and lend tournament a distinctly British flavour September 5, 2019 For a tournament that is supposed to be pan-continental there is already a distinctly British flavour to next summer’s European Championship. Of 51 matches, 10 will be staged in London or Glasgow, with Wembley hosting both semi-finals and the final. But the Britishness could yet go up several notches, with all five British Isles teams [...]
Football Betting Tips: Wilder’s Blades could struggle to make the cut August 8, 2019 SO, HERE we are again at the start of another Premier League season and, if the 2018/19 campaign is anything to go by, we should be in for another thrilling nine months. The title race looks set to be a battle between Manchester City and Liverpool again, with a 25-point gap surely too much for [...]
Sheffield United preview: Blades bringing overlapping centre-backs to the Premier League August 8, 2019 Overlapping centre-backs. To those well versed in the basics of football tactics it sounds incongruous, like something experimentally toyed with on Football Manager, or conjured up by an over-ambitious Sunday league side. But this season it is a legitimate approach which will be seen in Premier League grounds all across the country. That’s because Sheffield [...]
Frank Lampard and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s first meeting could be the beginning of a lesson in the value of nostalgia August 8, 2019 When Chelsea visit Old Trafford on Sunday, a combination of nostalgia and muted expectations will be the makings of an unfamiliar atmosphere between the two giants. From Jose Mourinho’s arrival in summer 2004 until Sergio Aguero’s last-gasp winner at Loftus Road in 2012, Chelsea and Manchester United were the only two teams to taste Premier [...]
The rise of the ASMR-tists: The online phenomenon touted as an antidote to anxiety and insomnia July 25, 2019 The slurp of a woman eating soup; the abrupt snip of scissors through hair; the crinkle of tinfoil being scrunched into a ball. For some people, these everyday sounds ignite a mysterious, near-ecstatic sensation known as Auto Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR). This reaction is characterised by a kind of low-level euphoria, similar to the prickly [...]
London venture capital firm Beringea heads up north with £9m fintech injection January 13, 2019 London-based venture capital firm Beringea has expanded its UK presence with an office based in Manchester, the firm will announce today. It has also led a £9m fundraising round in Mancunian fintech firm Accesspay, which it said was one of the region’s largest fintech rounds to date. Based in the northern city centre's St Peter's [...]