Sporting Madness

This weekend sees yet another interesting early match in the English Premier League, with Manchester United taking on local rivals Manchester City. It could be a great derby; United are four points back of Chelsea in the chase for the EPL title with only a few games to play, so they absolutely need full points here if they want to put pressure on the leaders. Chelsea will have their own tough match later in the day against Tottenham, but the importance of that one will be diminished if United can't get it done against City. Tensions are perhaps even higher than normal for a Manchester derby, especially considering the role that Carlos Tevez 's defection to City may wind up playing in the demise of United's title ambitions. If United can't pull off a title comeback, the decision to let Tevez go will likely be debated all summer long regardless of Sir Alex Ferguson 's comments , so a crucial win here over him and his current club would go a long way towards stifli...

Welcome to today's edition of Premier League Punditry! The EPL got back into full swing this week, so there's lots to talk about. Manchester United pulled off a 2-1 win over a very impressive Blackburn Rovers side Saturday to go eight points clear at the top of the league, and Liverpool could only close the gap by one point today with a draw against Manchester City . The classic line from that story is "United will have relished this performance by their neighbours, which could have given the crown to the Old Trafford club." I bet a lot of City fans are happy about that one;). Andrei Arshavin made his Arsenal debut Saturday, but couldn't help his team past Sunderland, and they only came away with one point from a 0-0 draw . Meanwhile, Chelsea recorded their first win under Guus Hiddink with a 1-0 victory over Aston Villa. For plenty of other EPL news and commentary, as well as perhaps some stuff on MLS expansion and my 24th Minute piece on Vancouver's bi...

Note to headline writers : there are two English Premier League teams that play in Manchester. Darius Vassell plays for Manchester City, not Manchester United, so a story about him being robbed should not be entitled "Manchester United striker robbed." It's particularly bad when the article itself mentions that he plays for City. Please don't confuse the two teams, or myself and Duane might have to form an unholy alliance and gang up on you. That is all.

Photo: Former Sunderland manager Roy Keane [Getty Images via The Independent ] It was rather surprising to see Manchester United legend Roy Keane step down [ ESPN Soccernet ] from managing Sunderland last week. Keane achieved some outstanding success with the Black Cats, even though many don't seem to acknowledge that at the moment. When he took the team over in August 2006, they were sitting in the relegation zone of the Championship (for non-English football fans, that's the level below the Premier League). In that season, he took them from the bottom to the top, and earned not only promotion to the Premiership, but also the Championship title. He was named Manager of the Year at the Championship level, and deservingly so. Keane also had success with Sunderland in the Premier League last season and managed to keep them out of the relegation zone for much of the year. They pulled off a 15th-place finish, which is rather good for a just-promoted side (see County, Derby fo...

Things aren't going so well for Mark Cuban , owner of the Dallas Mavericks. First, it's reported that he's out of the running [ Matt Snyder , FanHouse ] to buy the Chicago Cubs [ Al Yellon , Bleed Cubbie Blue ], and now it comes out that the SEC has filed charges of insider trading against him [former Journal editor-in-chief Matt Hartley , The Globe and Mail ]. As Hartley details, the crucial charge relates to a massive stock sale in Internet search engine company Mamma.com (now Copernic Inc.): "The SEC alleged in [a] document that Mr. Cuban sold 600,000 shares of Mamma.com Inc. - now known as Copernic Inc. - after learning from executives that the Internet search engine company planned to make a public stock offering. The documents allege Mr. Cuban, a shareholder in the Canadian company at the time, was invited to participate in the offering provided he kept the information confidential. The complaint, filed by the U.S. regulator in the U.S. District Court for the...