ANALYSE THIS – Champions League Group of Death?

FOOTBALL – The Euro Club Index (www.euroclubindex.com) rates all teams in top flight football in Europe and today has proved a guide to assess the 2015/2016 Champions League group stage draw. It points out the Group of Death, the teams facing strongest/weakest opposition and also the teams that were most fortunate/unfortunate in the draw.

ANALYSE THIS: Parity like never before in swimming

SWIMMING – With only one day of competition left at the 2015 Swimming World Championships in Kazan, the United States have reclaimed their leading position in the Market Share (metric that weights all ranks) table, but only by a very small margin. Like we reported earlier this week, their position is being challenged by traditional rivals Australia, China and France, but also the strong emerging force that is Great Britain. For comparison, the US had a market share of nearly 50% only eight years ago, now that has been reduced to 20%.

ANALYSE THIS: US domination in swimming challenged

SWIMMING – At the 2015 World Swimming Championships in Kazan, Russia, Australia and Great Britain have shown their intent to knock the United States off their perch as the world’s leading nation in swimming. After three days of competition they have a greater market share, a metric that weights all ranks, than the US.

ANALYSE THIS: The Foreign Influx™

FOOTBALL – FA Chairman Greg Dyke has made a lot of news headlines in the past week because of his plan to impose restrictions on non-EU players. Our colleague at Infostrada Sports, Murray Innes, looked at the numbers surrounding this proposal and wrote an article on his blog ‘Football Mythbusters’. Click on ‘continue reading’ to read more.

ANALYSE THIS: A Statistical Breakdown Of El Clásico (update)

FOOTBALL – On Sunday 22 March Real Madrid and FC Barcelona will go head-to-head in the 230th edition of El Clásico. In the week before the last clash between these archrivals (25 October) we posted a statistical analysis discussing several numbers on this match. We have updated this analysis with the performances of the teams in current season and added a brand new piece of analysis at the end.

ANALYSE THIS: Is Experience a Denominator for Success?

FOOTBALL – How important is experience for a team’s success? Do teams with more experienced players perform better in the league or do they benefit more from fresh, new players? While ‘experience’ is a difficult concept to actually capture in numbers, we came up with a simple way of trying to compare experience with success, taking the 2014/15 Premier League as an example.

ANALYSE THIS: A Clean Sheet vs 1 Goal

FOOTBALL – Former Scottish football player Paul Dalglish made a statement on twitter claiming a clean sheet earns more points than a single goal. Based on this tweet, our colleague at Infostrada Sports, Murray Innes, has written an article on the importance of a clean sheet in the English top flight.

ANALYSE THIS: Eurocup qualifying odds based on first leg

FOOTBALL – We have updated our table showing the odds of progress in a European cup competition given the first leg result. Which odds does your team face for the return leg matches in the Champions League and Europa League?

THE WAVE: Manchester United v Burnley

FOOTBALL – We look back at the waves United, or should we say, Chris Smalling made against Burnley. Smalling came on as a substitute in the 5th minute and needed only 22 seconds to rattle in his first goal. Burnley then took the initiative, but when Smalling became the first player in Premier League history to score twice off the bench before halftime (41st minute) it was the advent of a dominant second half by United.

ANALYSE THIS: Current men’s tennis generation features major dominators

TENNIS – When looking at games (the ones that make up sets in tennis, not to be confused with matches) won at Majors in men’s singles in the Open era (1968-present) three active players rank in the top six all-time. Below we list the 20 most dominant men in the Open era, by these criteria.