April 16 – Arsene Wenger, the longest-serving manager in the English Premier League, says the decision not to implement video assistant referees next season is a serious retrograde step that flies in the face of progress.
April 13 – Premier League Crystal Palace are edging towards a £100 million redevelopment of the main stand of the Selhurst Park stadium with local planning officers recommending the build should be allowed.
April 11 – It has hard to know who Arsenal are trying to fool, but reporting an official crowd attendance of 59,374 when there were more like 45,000 in the stadium smacks of the vain kind of hope that Arsene Wenger is suddenly going to get it all right and they are going to win the Premier League.
April 4 – The return from the international break saw Premier League crowds match the ground capacity levels of the opening day of the season at 97.76% across the league, the joint second highest of the season.
April 2 – The big just keep on getting bigger, with the gap to the minnows ever increasing, is the obvious conclusion from research looking at the percentage of matches with a gap of three or more goals across 29 European competitions.
April 2 – Manchester United are returning to the US for their pre-season tour for the second consecutive year. Their two-week tour, presented by sponsor AON, will include matches against Mexico’s Club America and MLS side San Jose Earthquakes.
March 22 – Troubled English Premier League club West Ham United have meted out lifetime bans to five supporters who invaded the pitch during a recent 3-0 defeat by Burnley.
By Paul Nicholson
March 19 – Runaway English Championship leaders Wolverhampton Wanderers look certain to be headed back to the Premier League but they will need to head off growing concerns about their ownership and the influence of super agent Jorge Mendes in the club’s signings, an influence that will concern Premier League club owners, many of whom rely on Mendes for key foreign players.
March 13 – West Ham’s London Stadium bubble has well and truly burst after the scenes last weekend where pitch invasions and a toxic atmosphere from an increasingly disaffected supporter base is turning the Premier League’s newest venue into its ugliest. Even so, the stadium was still packed to its 57,000 capacity.
March 12 – English Premier League club West Ham United face serious sanctions after a number of fans invaded the pitch during Saturday’s crushing home defeat by Burnley that sent the London club closer towards the relegation zone.
March 8 – The snow and cold weather that gripped England last week and into the weekend failed to have much impact in premier League attendances for Round 29 of the season.
March 1 – Last night’s FA Cup replay at Wembley’s 90,000 capacity stadium drew just 24,627 spectators for Tottenhams 6-1 thrashing of Rotherham in the snow. A far cry from the full house Wembley saw last Sunday for the Football League’s Carabao Cup final that saw Manchester City beat Arsenal 3-1.
February 14 – Tottenham Hotspur broke the Premier League attendance record for the third time this season with 83,222 at Wembley Stadium watching their 1-0 win over fierce local rivals Arsenal.
February 6 – It’s been a source of debate for years and years. Should English football copy much of Continental Europe and introduce a Winter break? So far the idea has been resisted both for commercial and traditional reasons, but now the Premier League has revealed it is looking at ways of going down that road.
February 6 – Crystal Palace’s resurgence from bottom of the league to mid-table competitiveness may have slowed in recent weeks, but the clubs’ fans still manage to find more seats to fill at Selhurst Park than the ground’s official capacity. Roy Hodgson is clearly working some kind of magic with fans in south-east London that deserted him in his last job with England.