An interesting new presentation just came out from Harvard Project on International Climate
Agreements. It deals with a roadmap to the post Kyoto world. A very interesting piece of research
and thinking. See presentation
It is interesting to look how the big clubs did against each other last season while disregarding
the other 16 clubs that make the season such a marathon. This is just another look at trying to
understand the strength of each club. Overall, Arsenal got the most points against the others in
the "Big 4" and in this view went from 4th in the league table to 1st in its record against the
others in
There will be a lot of analysis on this topic but logically it does seem to make sense for every
side involved (Henry, Arsenal, and Barcelona). Arsenal needs cash and has stayed out of the
transfer market. Arsenal could not even compete for Franck Ribery, a long time target, even though
Bayern managed to secure him for £17m. So Arsenal sold Henry for a transfer fee of £12m because:
1) Henry
The release of season ending statistics gives a new light of how to evaluate Shevchenko's
performance for Chelsea this season. Although under a lot of pressure and with terribly
unproductive stretches – Sheva was fairly active and successful at times. Not many players do
well in their first season in the premiership (ex. Drogba) and Sheva can potentially give a great
next season, especially with
The season began with an indecisive victory by the national Italian squad in the World Cup and
ended with an indecisive and underwhelming victory by an Italian club team in the Champions League.
The premiership chase was exciting to the end and Chelsea just could not get over the dropping of
so many points during Christmas batch of games. Chelsea is set up very well for next season and
should
Business magazines (even American ones) have been obsessively covering the recent rush to buy up
English teams. One of the clearest analyses of the situation comes from the newly launched
Portfolio magazine. It outlines the strategy and reasoning of American billionaires that have been
looking to England for the next major investment: 1) Lack of teams to purchase in the U.
The 4-trophy season for Chelsea may actually end up a 1-trophy season very quickly. Just as Arsenal
found out in one week that it had lost its chances for silverware, Chelsea may go through a very
similar thing. The premiership title looks very unlikely at this point, going to Anfield without
Carvalho and without a rested squad leaves no room for error, and the FA final is a 50/50 game.
This is extremely worrisome for United as the starting back 4 of G. Neville, Ferdinand, Vidic, and
Evra are all out and Ferguson will have to improvise as Richardson may also be out. John O'Shea,
Wes Brown, and Heinze will have to fill in. Chelsea went through a very similar spell and in late
December through January and because of its defensive injuries, only got 6 points from 5 games.
The other contenders in the final running were Italy and another joint bid by Hungary and Croatia.
Italy, although having the infrastructure, truly did not deserve to host the event with all the
recent on and off the field problems (scandals, violence, etc....) Croatian fans recently
embarrassed the country by forming a Nazi swastika in the stands during a game.
The NFL (National Football League) just announced that it is cancelling an exhibition game in China
originally scheduled for August 2007. Apparently, the NFL could not handle 2 overseas games and a
regular season game will take place in London in October 2007. The China game is now being
rescheduled for 2009. 2009 may already be too late in NFL's strategy for entering China.
The Economist recently published data for the actual costs of staging Olympic games and it is
something that all event bidders should see. In the case of London 2012 - the original bid budgeted
the costs of staging the games at £2.4B. The more realistic estimate several years later is now at
£6B (original estimate off by 150%). So therefore, the public subsidy of this event will stand at
80% of
From the chart created below from available data, it is very clear of how little movement there has
been in this "competition" for the last 4 years. The rich clubs are simply changing places in the
top 10.No club in the last 2 years has been able to move more than 2 spots in either direction. The
top 2 have remained in the same positions in the last 4 years.
The big moves to sign Schevchenko and Ballack not only have been of limited significance on the
pitch but now are threatening to tear the team apart. Both Schevchenko and Ballack earn £130,000 a
week – Chelsea should have anticipated that the established team stars and players who are more
valuable to the team would want to be at par with that. This conflict would happen in any workplace
