I Love England

NBC managed to outbid FOX and BeIn Sports as they secured a new 6 year-long deal with the rights to show 380 live Premier League games each year. This deal is believed to be worth close to $1 billion as NBC retain the rights but it came at a hefty cost.

Richard Scudamore is an executive of the Premier League and he revealed why they decided to select NBC as their main American broadcaster. The 56 year old English executive told the media: "Obviously we had to do the best job by the clubs and club owners," he said.

Sir Alex Ferguson has revealed in his new autobiography that England manager Roy Hodgson was hugely responsible in convincing defender Chris Smalling to move to Old Trafford.

Southampton defender Nathaniel Clyne failed to make his recent call up to the national team count after being utilised only for five minutes in the back-to-back games.

Clyne comes on the back of a very successful campaign with Southampton where he was part of the defence that had the second-best record in the league. This performance earned him a call up to the senior team. He was hoping to maximise his opportunities by featuring a lot of in the match is against the Republic of Ireland and Slovenia. However, Hodgson selected him for only five minutes in these matches.

England manager Roy Hodgson says that the door is always open for midfielder Raheem Sterling to have talked about his contractual situation with Liverpool.

It is widely believed that the 20-year-old will place an official transfer request to the club. Since he has only two years left on his contract, Liverpool would rather consider selling him now rather than risk losing him for a free.

Roy Hodgson is being ripped apart at the moment for his wrong tactics in the last friendly game that England played versus Italy and every bit of that criticism is valid.

But, Hodgson must be having his own point behind what he did.

He would undoubtedly admit that his tactics hurt England’s chances, but, you will have to give Hodgson the benefit of the doubt considering that it’s just a friendly game and the England boss did not have his best set of players available to him.

Earlier in February, Sky and BT Sport agreed on making a deal involving the broadcasting TV rights of the Premier League which was reported to be worth £5.14. This cash injection has allowed all the clubs in the top tier English League on entering the top 30 richest clubs in the world thanks to their revenue and this can also help out the clubs on signing foreign talent with this extra cash.

Roy Hodgson says that he is hopeful that 2015 will turn out to be a successful year for the England national team, as he rates 2014 as a mixed year.

The first half of 2014 was highly disappointing for England after they were knocked out of the World Cup 2014 at the group stages. They have put behind this disappointment to win six straight matches in the second half of the year.

During these past few months there have been certain players performing in a number of different tournaments including: Champions League, 2016 Euro’s qualifying matches, their domestic league and friendly matches for their respective countries.

This is a huge amount of matches that players have had to play recently and this has caused a series of criticism towards the schedule that FIFA has implemented as there are more and more injuries being picked up by important players for their respective clubs but this is especially evident in the Premier League club Arsenal.

With England struggling to come up with much in terms of competition at the higher end of the international game, we look just how important money is in the domestic game, and I guess you'd have to say we're not exactly shocked with the results!

Believe it or not, if you spend an absolute fortune on players (like City have) you end up at the top of the pile, whilst if you are a selling club then you probably won't get too far - though Arsenal have proved that getting to the top four can be done effectively on a budget.

When Steven Gerrard announced his retirement from playing football at the international scene, the English midfielder said that he wanted to focus the remaining years of his career by spending it with Liverpool and not having distractions along the way.