This week’s second half of the midwinter break fixtures in the Premier League see some fantastic fixtures, all of which look set to go ahead, as opposed to last week’s postponement of Manchester City vs. West Ham United.

Southampton and Burnley play out what should turn out to be a dead rubber by the end of the season, and Liverpool will likely canter to yet another victory at Carrow Road as the already-doomed Norwich City attempt the greatest escape since Steve McQueen took off on his motorbike. Aston Villa host Tottenham Hotspur in a game that is important for both relegation and Champions League place reasons. Those matches are, however, unlikely, to yield many shocks, but the three we’re previewing in detail very well might.

Wolves vs. Leicester (Friday 14th February, 8:00 pm GMT kick-off)

With these players having returned from their midwinter break, Friday’s night fayre is unlikely to get better than this game all season. We’re not joking – this could be one of the games of the Premier League season. It’s all set up for a classic.

It was a weekend that would decide nothing in terms of silverware, but nevertheless one where the English Premier League table would start to take an end-of-season shape. There was a predictable wins for Liverpool, but the Merseysiders would not be the only team grabbing three precious points.

Southampton saw Burnley beat them at St. Mary’s to give the away side a boost up into the top half of the table at the expense of the South Coast side, while Wolves and Leicester drew 0-0 at Molineux to see both teams keep themselves in the reckoning for the European places.

That was especially true with the news over the weekend that Manchester city will enjoy no European competition for the next two seasons, receiving a £25 million fine in the process. The expulsion of the current EPL champions means that The Citizens could miss out on some of the world’s biggest players, as well as potentially a new contract for Pep Guardiola, who will have just 12 months to run on his current deal when the season ends. It also means, however, that 5th place could well yield a place in next season’s UEFA Champions League, with teams such as Sheffield United, Wolves and Everton all joining Chelsea, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur in pricking up their ears at that news.

Aston Villa 2-3 Tottenham Hotspur

It was a weekend that would decide nothing in terms of silverware, but nevertheless one where the English Premier League table would start to take an end-of-season shape. There was a predictable wins for Liverpool, but the Merseysiders would not be the only team grabbing three precious points.

Southampton saw Burnley beat them at St. Mary’s to give the away side a boost up into the top half of the table at the expense of the South Coast side, while Wolves and Leicester drew 0-0 at Molineux to see both teams keep themselves in the reckoning for the European places.

That was especially true with the news over the weekend that Manchester city will enjoy no European competition for the next two seasons, receiving a £25 million fine in the process. The expulsion of the current EPL champions means that The Citizens could miss out on some of the world’s biggest players, as well as potentially a new contract for Pep Guardiola, who will have just 12 months to run on his current deal when the season ends. It also means, however, that 5th place could well yield a place in next season’s UEFA Champions League, with teams such as Sheffield United, Wolves and Everton all joining Chelsea, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur in pricking up their ears at that news.

Aston Villa 2-3 Tottenham Hotspur

We live in an era where three men – Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic are rewriting tennis history as they dominate the sport in a manner that is completely unprecedented. Between the trio, they have won 56 Grand Slam titles. Yet there was a time where three other men might well have done the same.

Two Americans – Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe – and one Swede, the eponymous Björn Borg, were constantly in the limelight as the 1970’s gave way to the 1980’s. In total, they won 26 Grand Slam titles between them, but it may have been so many more. This week, we look at why Björn Borg walked away from the game when he was at his untouchable best.

We look at the feats of messrs Djokovic, Nadal and Federer so commonly that it would be feasible to imagine that no other records existed before they came along, or still exist despite their recent dominance of the sport. John McEnroe, however, was one man who created history that still resonates on the ATP tour to this day. Winning seven Grand Slam titles, McEnroe also holds more records than you may be aware of.

For 20 years on the professional ATP Tour, John McEnroe carved out a period of success that, even now, seems scarcely believable. In the first ‘golden years’ of tennis, an era that produced such fearsome adversaries as Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors still saw ‘Mack’ win seven Grand Slams, four U.S. Open titles and three Wimbledon Men’s Singles title. They were just the headlines of a stunning career which began in New York City.

Sports betting operator SportPesa has lost two more high-profile sports sponsorships, leading the company’s CEO to blame Kenya for “bringing down” one of their own.

On Sunday, English Premier League club Everton announced that it would end its SportPesa shirt sponsorship at the conclusion of the current season, two years ahead of their deal’s planned expiration. The club said the “difficult” decision had been made following a comprehensive review of the team’s “vision and future growth plans.”

Everton thanked the Kenya-based SportPesa for helping the team “grow our footprint in Africa and further strengthen our special relationship with the continent.” The sponsorship deal Everton signed with SportPesa in 2017 was thought to be the most lucrative deal in the club’s history, worth around £7m per year.

Sunday also saw F1 racing team Racing Point unveil its new car signage, which didn’t contain any SportPesa logos despite the company signing a ‘multi-year’ title sponsorship with Racing Point one year ago.

The knockout phase of the Champions League is always an exciting time to tune in to the best football teams in Europe as they battle to win what is a fabled competition. Since the UEFA Champions League came into being from the old European Cup, only Real Madrid have retained the trophy after winning it, so the battle facing Liverpool this season is huge.

Could Liverpool or the team they beat in the final last season, Tottenham Hotspur win the Champions League this year? We might be about to find out a lot about their chances in the Round of 16, with both teams taking on quality opposition.

Atletico Madrid vs. Liverpool (Tuesday 18th February, 8pm GMT kick-off)

A big match at the scene of Liverpool’s Champions League triumph in 2019 sees Diego Simeone’s side welcome the rampant Reds to the Estadio Metropolitano in Madrid. While Jurgen Klopp’s men have undoubtedly been focused on the English Premier League this season, they will have their eyes on a Premier League and Champions League double which has only been achieved by Manchester United in the modern era.

Back in the early 1990s, Greg Norman – then the biggest star in the sport – tried to create a professional golf tour where only 48 of the top players in the world would be allowed to compete with a limited number of tournaments (as opposed to the too-long PGA Tour season) and huge purses. That failed, but out of that venture came the World Golf Championships.

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

Those events debuted in 1999 and there are now four of them annually, two in the United States, one in China and this week’s WGC-Mexico Championship in Mexico City. WGC tournaments have limited fields via qualification standards, which means no cut, and much bigger purses than regular Tour events. They were created to get top players from around the world together in events other than the four major championships. Like the majors, these tournaments are part of both the PGA Tour and European Tour.

The WGC-Mexico Championship debuted as the WGC-American Express Championship in Spain in 1999 and was won by Tiger Woods. It moved around a bit over the years with different sponsorship names and landed in Mexico City starting in 2017. It is played at altitude at the par-71, 7,345-yard Club de Golf Chapultepec.

No major American sports league starts its season with its biggest event, but NASCAR does and that sport’s Super Bowl is this Sunday at Daytona International Speedway on the east coast of Florida with the 62nd running of the Daytona 500, also known as the “Great American Race.” It’s usually the highest-rated motorsports event in the USA every year as well as the most-wagered.

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

NASCAR’s top circuit is no longer called the Monster Energy Cup Series but simply NASCAR Cup Series in 2020. Instead of having one mega-sponsor take over naming rights, NASCAR has four premier partners: Busch Beer, Coca-Cola, GEICO and Xfinity. This year also will be the last in NASCAR for the Gen-6 car, to be replaced by the Gen-7 in 2021.

Daytona and Talladega were the only two superspeedways on the circuit where drivers had to use restrictor plates. Those were to keep speeds down, but all they usually did was ensure everyone is grouped up and that there’s one monster wreck – always called the Big One in each race. Some drivers thrived in plate races for whatever reason. However, the 2019 Daytona 500 was the last with the plate. Instead, NASCAR switched to tapered spacers at every track to keep speeds in check.

This season’s Midwinter Break must come as something of a relief to 19 of the 20 teams in the Premier League, with only Liverpool surely able to be totally happy with their season so far. But as we find out, there are actually a couple of other teams who can look at their year as one to be proud of as they battle towards possible European football.

Everton 3-1 Crystal Palace

When Carlo Ancelotti took over at Goodison Park, The Toffees were looking more at threat of relegation than they were qualifying for Europe. However, after this weekend’s results, they sit 7th in the table, and just five points behind the Champions League places, thanks to another good win to please the Gladwys Street faithful.

The latest victory, their sixth in succession at home and fifth in all competitions, came at the expense of a Crystal Palace side with which the Evertonians share a special kind of history.

We live in an era where three men – Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic are rewriting tennis history as they dominate the sport in a manner that is completely unprecedented. Between the trio, they have won 56 Grand Slam titles. Yet there was a time where three other men might well have done the same.

Two Americans – Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe – and one Swede, the eponymous Björn Borg, were constantly in the limelight as the 1970’s gave way to the 1980’s. In total, they won 26 Grand Slam titles between them, but it may have been so many more. This week, we look at why Björn Borg walked away from the game when he was at his untouchable best.

We look at the feats of messrs Djokovic, Nadal and Federer so rarely that it would be feasible to imagine that no other records existed before they came along, or still exist despite their recent dominance of the sport. Borg, however, was a one-off. He won the French Open and Wimbledon back-to-back in three consecutive seasons, something no other player has ever got close.

Björn Borg mastered two surfaces that are at opposite points on the spectrum in tennis – clay and grass. In total, he won six French Open titles and five Wimbledons, but what it even more amazing than his 11 Grand Slam titles is the fact that while he failed in nine attempts to win the U.S. Open (losing in the final four times) but also, he only entered the Australian Open once, being absent in the other eight years he might have been a strong contender.

Fox Bet is the latest official gaming partner of the XFL, which claims it’s the only football league “geared to the sports betting future that is coming fast.”

On Friday, the XFL announced that the Fox Bet joint venture of The Stars Group and Fox Sports Network was the upstart football league’s latest authorized gaming operator. Fox Bet joins DraftKings, which signed both sports betting and daily fantasy sports partnerships earlier this week, while FanDuel announced a DFS deal with the XFL on Thursday.

The deal allows Fox Bet to incorporate official league data, team logos, player and coach likenesses and ‘certain league content’ via the Fox Bet sports betting platform and the Fox Sports Super 6 free-play game. The revived XFL, which operated for one extremely flashy but ultimately doomed season at the turn of the century, will kick off its new 10-week season this Saturday with broadcasts on Fox Sports and ABC/ESPN.

These broadcasts will break new ground in the US sports world by incorporating betting odds both onscreen and via the play-by-play commentary. That said, the commentators will likely include caveats that only viewers in states that have authorized legal betting – and only nine of those states have so far authorized XFL betting – should be placing wagers.

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

Conor McGregor might be the most popular fighter in the UFC, but the best one – at least via pound-for-pound rankings by the organization and in the opinion of most MMA experts – is Jon Jones, and he puts his light heavyweight title on the line Saturday night against fellow American Dominick Reyes at UFC 247 in Houston. The Jones-Reyes fight from the Toyota Center, home of the NBA’s Rockets, is likely to start around 11:30 p.m. ET and is on pay-per-view only.

Jones (25-1) frankly has beaten himself with failed drug tests or legal issues outside the Octagon much more often than he actually has lost a fight. That one defeat was way back in December 2009 in “The Ultimate Fighter 10” finale against Matt Hamill. Jones didn’t even technically lose that fight but was disqualified for illegal elbows. He would have likely destroyed Hamill, who had a so-so career, otherwise.

The 32-year-old Jones, considered by many the best MMA fighter of all-time, was last in the Octagon in July 2019 when he was pushed to the limit in a rarity, beating Thiago Santos by split decision. “Bones” has hinted that assuming a victory Saturday, he would be interested in taking on heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic next. That would be the most-hyped UFC fight ever. Jones is -500 for this bout.

On Sunday, Novak Djokovic came from two sets to one down to break Dominic Thiem’s heart as the Serbian captured his eighth Australian Open title in the glittering finale.

While the headlines belonged to Djokovic and his indefatigable nature, the relentlessness of his performance leading to many speculating that he will end his career as the greatest tennis player of all time, the cameras were turned away from Thiem, which is surely the point.

Can Dominic Thiem ever step into the limelight as a winner, or is he destined to miss out on the sport’s top prizes, the Grand Slam victories which so far elude him?

No-one except Rafael Nadal, world number one Djokovic and Roger Federer have won a Grand Slam title in the last three seasons, and while many are speculating that this year will be the year that run ends, they are doing so when talking about the emergence of younger talents such as Daniil Medvedev, Alexander Zverev and Stefanos Tsitsipas who at 23, 22 and 21 respectively, are an exciting trio of youthful protégés waiting to take over from the old guard.

If last week’s Premier League results left a little wonderment and surprise to be desired, then the pay-off for patient fans came this weekend. A smattering of goalless bored draws – at St. James Park, Old Trafford and Turf Moor respectively – might have disappointed but there was so much going on elsewhere that it didn’t matter. Let those teams fuss, frustrate and ultimately fail. We could instead look in other windows for the thrills that the English Premier League provides so wonderfully regularly.

Sure, Liverpool’s latest thrashing – of Southampton, 4-0 – and important wins for Bournemouth, Sheffield United and Everton were fun. But the fixtures at the King Power Stadium, the London Stadium and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium lit up the audience figures and made the crowds bounce out of their seats at the final whistle at each of those grounds, fans just glad to have been there in person.

If you weren’t, and even missed the action on screen, then you missed a real treat.

Leicester 2-2 Chelsea