Monthly Archives: April 2020

Teams of the Century: Chelsea (2009/10)

To say that the 2009/10 English Premier League season was entertaining would be to understate to a huge degree. Chelsea’s victorious campaign under newly-appointed Carlo Ancelotti was to be one of the watershed seasons in the Premier League as the West London side denied Manchester united a fourth Premier League title in a row with a record-breaking display of attacking football.

The season began with a nice run of fixtures for Ancelotti’s side, who beat Hull City, Sunderland, Fulham, Burnley and Stoke City in their first five fixtures, as they eased in new signings such as Yuri Zhirkov, Nemanja Matic and Daniel Sturridge, who as it would transpire, would hardly feature at all other than in substitute appearances.

After that opening run of comfortable wins against lower-half opposition, Chelsea showed in their next four fixtures displays that would come to define their league season. After beating Tottenham Hotspur 3-0 at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea then lost away to Wigan. Right back at it in the next game, The Blues beat Liverpool at home, before again losing on their travels at Aston Villa. A frailty on the road to teams who were prepared to try to open Chelsea up was emerging, but Ancelotti persevered with an outrageously attacking formation. Flair players such as Florent Malouda and Joe Cole had a field day, wing-backs like Ashley Cole flew forward in cavalier fashion.

During a season in which they scored a record 103 Premier League goals, Chelsea didn’t just beat teams, they beat them up. The Blues smashed seven goals past Sunderland, Aston Villa and Stoke City during the second half of the season. They would win their final game at home to Wigan, a game that they had to win to seal the title, 8-0.

Will profit outweigh politics as Vegas embraces Esports betting?

The advent of online gaming as a sportsbetting franchise is one that isn’t new and, in many ways, has always been there. From virtual gaming to pre-game betting, much of the money that has been staked on sporting events over the course of the last century has been done so in a world of imagined sporting acts, before the first horse has broken the tape or the first football has been kicked.

In modern society, Esports bettors were, for years, having to push for sportsbetting on their particular favourite game to be acceptable within the traditional hubs of sportsbetting. They don’t get bigger in that sense than Las Vegas, which has been something of a ghost town recently rather than the neon-lit gamblers’ paradise that it has been known for over many years.

Last week’s manic demand that casinos need to reopen because the COVID-19 restrictions are ‘killing’ the industry by the Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman sparked much discussion and comes at a time when many Americans are making similar demands for the country to reopen, despite rapidly rising numbers of the population Stateside being infected with Coronavirus and almost a quarter of the current death toll falling victim to the disease in the U.S.A.

While casinos look destined to remain closed for the foreseeable future, throwing the idea of the World Series of Poker and other forthcoming festivals into extreme doubt at the very least, Las Vegas has approved four new Esports games for sportsbetting. Overwatch League, League of Legends European Championship and the North America League of Legends Championship will all be able to be wagered on in Nevada over forthcoming weeks, and as a recent look at Esports betting in the Washington Post surmises, the Nevada Gaming Commission can often “act as a barometer for much of the sportsbetting world”.