In this paper we look at statistical models for predicting the outcome of football matches in a league. That is, our aim is to find a statistical model which, based on the game-history so far in a season, can predict the outcome of next round’s matches. Many such models exist, but we are not aware of a thorough comparison of the models’ merits as betting models. In this paper we look at some cl...

The purpose of this article is to develop models that can help team selectors build talented teams with minimum possible spending. In this study, we build several predictive models for predicting the selection of a player in the Indian Premier League, a cricket league, based on each player’s past performance. The models are developed using SAS® Enterprise MinerTM 7.1. The best-performing model ...

OBJECTIVE To compare injury risk in elite football played on artificial turf compared with natural grass. DESIGN Prospective two-cohort study. SETTING Male European elite football leagues. PARTICIPANTS 290 players from 10 elite European clubs that had installed third-generation artificial turf surfaces in 2003-4, and 202 players from the Swedish Premier League acting as a control group. ...

The recent point-counter-point exchange arising from the article by Mendez-Villanueva and Buchheit (2013) (Football-specific fitness testing: Adding value or confirming the evidence? Journal of Sports Sciences, 31, 1503-1508) has generated an interesting debate on the real-world utility of fitness testing in professional association football (soccer). In the present authors' opinion, this excha...

OBJECTIVE To assess the outcome of athletes returning to contact sport with indwelling fracture implants. METHOD A retrospective analysis of professional rugby union players competing in the South Wales premier league. RESULTS Fifteen athletes were identified who had returned to competitive rugby union with retained fracture implants during the period 1990-97. After fracture fixation, the p...

The recent point-counter-point exchange arising from the article by Mendez-Villanueva and Buchheit (Mendez-Villanueva A, & Buchheit M. (2013) Football-specific fitness testing: adding value or confirming the evidence? Journal of Sports Sciences, 31, 1503-1508) generated an interesting debate on the real world utility of fitness testing in professional association football (soccer). In the prese...

This research project looks at professional football sponsorship from three different perspectives: the clubs' perspective (sponsorship as an income stream for professional football clubs), the sponsors' perspective (sponsorship as a marketing tool for companies), and a joint perspective (sponsorship as an inter-organisational relationship between professional football clubs and their sponsors)...