You may have seen several articles over the past few weeks from the likes of Jamie Carragher calling Manchester City vs Liverpool “the greatest rivalry ever in English football”. This oft-repeated piece of recency bias seemed to hinge on the fact that never before had two teams been both at…

Wayne Rooney was blunt. “What I hope is that Marcus Rashford f***ing gets his head out of his a*** and goes and breaks that record. He is a Manchester lad.” Yet the idea that Rashford might stay at Manchester United to take Rooney’s status as record goalscorer is seeming…

Shark attack. The very phrase brings a particular fear. At a silent, malevolent force dragging us to our death. Once calm, azure water frothing and turning crimson. Yet these creatures, older than the dinosaurs and unchanged in over 400 million years, also bring fascination. The seas have been there’s about…

Ancient Egypt: land of pyramids, animal-headed gods, pharaohs’ curses, and mummies. It’s fair to say that, perhaps out of any civilisation in history, it’s Egypt that mesmerises us the most. And it’s possibly mummies and mummification which hold the greatest sway over our fascination. The Egyptian belief that preserving the…

HARRY KANE PRESSES LESS THAN SERGIO AGUERO SON HEUNG-MIN PRESSES MORE THAN ALL OF CITY’S FORWARDS SON IS BETTER THAN KANE AT DISRUPTING OPPONENTS AND RETAINING THE BALL ONLY 1% OF ALL FORWARDS PRESS LESS THAN RONALDO (EVEN ZLATAN PRESSES MORE!) After all that Harry Kane is staying. Never mind…

Success has many parents, failure is an orphan. The England men’s football team which has brought so much joy to a nation the past few weeks fell at the final hurdle. After defeat comes the post-mortem. And while for a few troglodytes this means carte blanche to unleash hatred and…

There is no gambling like politics. Benjamin Disraeli UK Prime Minister 1868 and 1874–1880 The British Government is gambling. Cases of coronavirus are doubling every 10 days in England and hospital admissions have risen over 50% in the past week alone. Yet today the government is set to lift restrictions…

Football, like life, is full of those ‘sliding doors’ moments. What if Ali Bin Nasser had spotted Diego Maradona’s handball against England in 1986 and sent him off with the score kept at 0–0? What if Paul Gascoigne had not checked his run when Alan Shearer played the ball across…

“Give me liberty or give me death” Patrick Henry (1736–1799) American politician A group of influential backbench Conservative MPs calling themselves the ‘COVID Recovery Group’ have put pressure on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to lift lockdown restrictions by April. They argue that if the vaccination programme continues as planned there…