As we sit on the cusp of another Premier League season, the folks at Google have released figures of all their football related searches from the past month. The team above represents the most-searched for Premier League stars on the web based on their positions.
As you can see, most of them have been involved in transfer deals or speculation. David James’ relatively-surprising spot in the side is probably helped by his occasional newspaper columns, and Steven Gerrard can attribute his first team place to his impossibly persuasive legal team.
The most searched team was Liverpool with 16 million hits, then followed Chelsea (13m), Arsenal (9.1m) and Manchester Utd (9m). Bolton were the least searched for side with 250,000 hits.
Understandably, the most popular WAG was Cheryl Cole, and Howard Webb was the referee who earned the most online enquires.
Keen to create a divide between Cristiano Ronaldo and his current employer, Spanish paper Marca are stirring things up extracting some insinuations from an interview with teammate Ryan Giggs.
The Welshman was asked to pick his Manchester Utd dream team, and he proceeded to wax lyrical about the likes of Paul Scholes, Gary Neville and Wayne Rooney. As you can see from his selection below, however, there is a distinct absence of any lothario Portuguese wingers:
The Giggs Manchester Utd dream team
Schmeichel or Van der Sar (he doesn’t distinguish between them as both are super brill) Gary Neville
Jaap Stam
Rio Ferdinand
Dennis Irwin
David Beckham
Paul Scholes
Roy Keane
Ryan Giggs
Eric Cantona
Wayne Rooney
The Spoiler is concerned that the old guard has shown an apparent lack of appreciation for Ronaldo, but perhaps a little more concerned that Giggsy chose to pick himself in his own dream team…
While The Spoiler danced the summer of 1992 away in a field with a mob of gurning trustafarians, over in Barcelona some of the planet’s finest basketball players were showcasing their sport. Big names like Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson, Scottie Pippen and Sir Michael Jordan bounced and soared their way to an Olympic gold medal, and the whole of the world went basketball crazy. For about a week.