premier league
Everything you need to know about the English professional league; who's on top, who's been traded, and what teams are dropping the ball.
IPL 2021: Team Wise Players’ List To Miss The UAE
With the BCCI announcing that the IPL 2021 will be resuming in the UAE, several franchises are in a fix. Even though the BCCI will make sure that most of the overseas players be available, it looks unlikely that their respective cricketing boards will give the cricketers the NOC. Hence, the franchises will have to brainstorm a lot about their chances in the UAE leg of the competition. The franchises that will most be affected are the ones dependent hugely on their overseas contingent.
Student MattersPublished 3 years ago in CleatsAt Long, Long Last, the Champions League Final
The Champions League final between Manchester City and Chelsea to crown the best soccer team in Europe — even though the two sides both hail from the UK — was always going to be hyped as one of those games where both sides overthink things.
Hamish AlexanderPublished 3 years ago in CleatsAll-Time Premier League: Huddersfield Town
For the ninth instalment in this series, we cross the Pennines to Huddersfield – an unlikely location, one might think, for one of the great football clubs; and based on what has happened in the Premier League era, or indeed since the Second World War, one would be right. This West Yorkshire market and mill town, the birthplace of Rugby League, is a stronghold of egg chasing, and its soccer team has spent only two seasons in the modern Premier League, and only seven in the top division of English football (whatever one wants to call it) since its relegation in 1952. It has not finished as high as second, never mind first, in top-level League or Cup competition since 1938. But its inclusion in the All-Time Premier League is not a mistake. For a few years in the 1920s, Huddersfield could claim to be the centre of soccer in Great Britain, and possibly in the world, thanks to a team that had almost not existed at all.
Robert GregoryPublished 3 years ago in CleatsFootball's Social Media Blackout
This weekend, football clubs, players, athletes and sporting bodies in the United Kingdom will carry out a four-day boycott of social media in an attempt to tackle abuse and discrimination on their platforms.
Christopher DonovanPublished 3 years ago in CleatsBalls! Súper Ridículo!
My friend was annoyed. The English use the word “exorcised,” but that’s a tricky word to use here because folks here might assume you’re talking about a ritual from the ‘70s classic horror flick The Exorcist.
Hamish AlexanderPublished 3 years ago in CleatsHow the Premier League is Trying to Save the Planet
April 2021 was NOT a good month for the leading football clubs in England. Despite the project now being in stasis, the hullabaloo around the proposed European Super League (ESL) has caused irreparable damage to the clubs involved. Not least to the relationships between those teams and their fan base.
Christopher DonovanPublished 3 years ago in CleatsWhat happend to Liverpool FC?
There are six weeks to go yet in the English Premier League, but while no one will say so openly, this strangest of strange seasons is more-or-less decided. Machester City will win the title, likely followed by Manchester United, while Fulham, Sheffield United and West Bromwich Albion will be relegated to the second division.
Hamish AlexanderPublished 3 years ago in CleatsAll-Time Premier League: Everton
Now, our alphabetical journey takes us northwards, from the Blues of Middlesex to the Blues of Merseyside. Today, Bill Shankly’s joke about Everton being Liverpool’s second team seems to become truer every year; but it wasn’t always the case, and it certainly wasn’t true when he told it. In 1966, when Everton won the Cup and Liverpool the League, it was a joke between equals. For the last fifty years, Liverpool have been pulling further and further ahead, in public profile and in the honour roll, almost continuously; and every time Everton have threatened to emerge, the Reds have been present, on or off the pitch, to push the Blues back into their widening shadow.
Robert GregoryPublished 3 years ago in CleatsIn Praise of ‘El Loco’
The stories are legion. Here’s the funny thing, though. Most of them are true! There was the time when Marcelo Bielsa, 65, took over a struggling football club in the UK’s second division and the first question through his mind was: How long does the average fan have to work to be able to pay for a ticket to watch what was then a distinctly ordinary team of under-performers? How many hours does that supporter have to put in on their job to be able to buy that ticket? Using a weird, eccentric, unscientific calculation of metrics, he came up with the answer three.
Hamish AlexanderPublished 3 years ago in CleatsSaying ‘No’ to Racism: Talk is Cheap
Racism in English football is the controversy that just won’t go away, it seems. Even as players throughout the English Premier League take the knee before every kick-off — as they’ve been doing for months now — online abuse keeps being heaped on players-of-color, regardless of how good they are at their chosen calling, no matter how much pride they bring to their adoptive city, or how much joy they bring to followers of their home team.
Hamish AlexanderPublished 3 years ago in CleatsHow Video Review is Wrecking Footy
They call it VAR, and you can be forgiven for wondering what the (heck) that is. Technically, VAR it stands for Video Assistant Referee, which you probably know better as “the guy in charge of video replay.” (And it’s almost always a guy.)
Hamish AlexanderPublished 3 years ago in CleatsLeicester City FC
It was the 4th of April 2015, and the football club from the small city of Leicester, located in the East Midlands of England, was 20th in the English Premier League with just 22 points and only eight matches remaining. Manager Nigel Pearson was at the helm, and he led the Foxes to win six of their remaining matches to finish 14th in the final standings. It was not enough to save Pearson’s job, however, and a new manager was brought in. The choice, Claudio Ranieri, was ridiculed by the press at the time because of his previous reputation of not being able to achieve anything at any club. The rest, as you could say, was history.