Analysis

Premier League Matchday 7 features a full slate of matches, including Aston Villa vs. Manchester United, Chelsea vs. Nottingham Forest, and Brighton vs. Tottenham. To help you get ready for all the action, here are our EPL predictions for these big matches. Aston Villa vs. Manchester United  After beating Bayern Munich in the Champions League on Wednesday, Aston Villa are flying. Unai Emery has brought the club to a level many Villa fans probably thought they would never see again.  Things couldn’t be more different at Manchester United. The Red Devils were embarrassed by Tottenham last week. They are in 13th place and have won just one of their last five Premier League matches.  Despite this poor run, Erik ten Hag told Sky Sports that there’s nothing to worry about at Man Utd. I c...

Who are the best strikers in world football right now? With two months of action in the books in the 2024/25 league seasons, let's take an updated look at the best No. 9's on the planet, ranking them from tenth to first. Where did Robert Lewandowski and Harry Kane land? How does Ollie Watkins stack up with the elites? 10. Andrej Kramaric, Hoffenheim For years, Andrej Kramaric has been one of the best strikers in the Bundesliga, setting records as a goal-scorer for Hoffenheim without showing any desire to leave the German side. Kramaric makes this list over bigger names like Alvaro Morata and Dusan Vlahovic, because he honestly outplayed both of those guys significantly last season and has already been better to start the 2023/24 season. The problem with world football these days is...

10. Liverpool RB Trent Alexander-Arnold Honestly, I can't comprehend why there are so many amateur pundits who spend their days disparaging Trent Alexander-Arnold's defending as if he were on the level of a backup at Lecce when, in fact, he's an excellent one-on-one defender as a fullback. It's just that people can't seem to understand that an attacking fullback who actually tries to add value to his team going forward is going to inevitably get caught out defensively on occasion, with the frequency of those occurrences unduly distorted by an army of fail comp "artists" who clearly need a job. Alexander-Arnold is a better one-on-one defender than Reece James, who apparently earned a reputation as a superior defensive right back on the grounds of being physically bigger and having on...

Ranking the best wingers in the Premier League is a task so onerous that it may seem foolhardy, because even restricting the time span to the last five years doesn't make the task even easier. How do you rank, for example, a new breakout star like Anthony Gordon against a fallen superstar like Sadio Mane? Where does a gifted footballer like Riyad Mahrez stand against a former goal-scoring machine like Raheem Sterling? I tried my best to be fair and account for the unique merits each player brought to the table and avoid any club-based bias. I also decided to discard players who mostly offered value at non-winger positions, specifically Bernardo Silva, mostly to make my own job easier. (Don't worry, I'll have plenty of nice things to say about Silva in other pieces.) Finally, I did...

From a trio of Liverpool superstars and a duo of Manchester City icons to Tottenham forward Son Heung-min, here is a look at the best XI of impending free agents in the summer 2025 transfer window. The formation utilized will be a 4-3-3 without a playmaker, as this remains the most common formation utilize by the top teams in European football. Contract expiry is based on data from Transfermarkt. GK Alex Meret, Napoli Alex Meret is capable of producing fabulous saves and is one of the best goalkeepers in Serie A, which just might have the most goalkeeping talent of any league in world football. Although Napoli's poor 2023/24 season has caused Meret to fall by the wayside in discussions of the better keepers in Europe, the 27-year-old is a top player in his prime who is capable of t...

Significant developments have come to light in the ongoing investigation into FC Barcelona's payments to José María Enríquez Negreira, the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA). In case you have forgotten, here is a quick recap of the FC Barcelona-Negreira scandal: Barcelona made payments totaling €7 million to José María Enríquez Negreira between 2001 and 2018 while he was the vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA). Barcelona stopped paying Negreira immediately after he left his position within the CTA. Joan Laporta quadrupled the payments to Negreira in 2009 during his first term as Barcelona president. In a testimony to tax administrators, Negreira stated that Barcelona hired him to ensure that refereeing was "neutral" and t...