The Times strikes first to kill off NewsNow

As I've mentioned earlier, the increasingly aggressive actions by the national newspapers against news aggregator NewsNow could threaten a lot of independent websites. Squarefootball will have to consider its linking strategy after NewsNow has announced that The Times is now blocking its site ahe...

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Can independent football websites survive after Newsnow caves in to the newspapers?

As I've mentioned previously NewsNow has been under legal pressure from the major British newspapers to stop using links to their articles to generate money. Basically Newsnow subsidises the free links that you see to football stories by selling certain niche aggregations of worthier subjects to co...

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The legal threat to NewsNow and all football websites

I've been using NewsNow for football news since I moved onto the web in the late 1990s - so it is with some disquiet that I read an open letter from the NewsNow CEO asking all the major newspapers to stop threatening his organisation with legal action if NewsNow didn't stop offering links to the new...

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5097 Are James McFadden and Cristia

by : Antony Melvin The BBC sports' personality of the year award is on again this weekend, the annual suited-and-booted homage to a years sport. The actual award is mostly comprised of viewers votes which will be counted on Sunday based on a shortlist of 10 sports people. Despite the seeming domi...

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4694: Squarefootball Zeitgeist- Top

by : Hugh Larkin Sometimes players make career moves that are so obviously wrong that you have conclude that it was either overconfidence or, more cynically, greed to make more money that made them think that everything was going to work out well. Three years ago, Johan Vogel was at the heart of t...

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4682: Squarefootball Zeitgeist - Top

by : Hugh Larkin Liverpool held their position as the most popular club with Squarefootball readers, as their losing Champions League appearance kept the Reds in the spotlight. The really big news though was the onward march of Sunderland. The Black Cats broke into the Top 10 in April and with the...

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4669: Squarefootball- Popular in Mau

by : Hugh Larkin “Koumas was a tremendous team player last season and will be very hard to replace,” said Amanda. “He is a great player and has tremendous vision. He did not do as well with his free kicks last season, but other than that he will do well for Wigan. But how long will they be in the P...

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4575: Squarefootball Zeitgeist: Top

by : Antony Melvin Liverpool held off a concerted effort by Manchester United to stay top. Arsenal were comfortably third, with Spurs just holding off Chelsea in falling to fourth. Everton sixth again, Villa just clear of Newcastle in seventh; West Ham and Sunderland making up the top 10. Sunderla...

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4531: Squarefootball Zeitgeist: Top

by : Antony Melvin April ended with Manchester United firm favourites to land the league and Cristiano Ronaldo set to sweep all before him. United's European dreams ended on the first Wednesday in May but Ronaldo was picking up a series of personal awards and was clear by some distance as the most...

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4433: Squarefootball Zeitgeist - Top

by : Antony Melvin The third and final Zeitgeist for March looks at feature article popularity; 4283 individual feature articles were read in March with about 300,000 reads in total. I'm not including any stats on transfer speculation, betting or inbrief articles in any of these numbers - other si...

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4423: Squarefootball Zeitgeist: Top

by : Antony Melvin The Squarefootball club pages are hit about 50,000 times a month so offer a reasonable guide to the zeitgeist. Liverpool were our clear leaders in March with their club page being hit hundreds of times more than any other. Arsenal, Spurs and Manchester United were separated by ...

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4393: Squarefootball Zeitgeist: Top

by : Antony Melvin Taxi for Niall Quinn at the top of the Squarefootball zeitgeist; the football loving transport philanthropist just held off rising star Cesc Fabregas as the most popular person on Squarefootball. Cristiano Ronaldo was again in the top three. The Fergusons - Alex and Duncan - ma...

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4307: Squarefootball Zeitgeist: Top

by : Antony Melvin Following on from the player zeitgeist we look at which are the most popular club pages on Squarefootball. There was a time when Spurs stuff was the most popular on Squarefootball; but Tottenham have slipped to fourth place - with Liverpool now the firm favourite. Arsenal and M...

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4278: Squarefootball Zeitgeist: Top

by : Antony Melvin Again we look at the people that our visitors spent the most time hitting this month - although with Duncan Ferguson at number eleven, we have to be careful to confirm that the hits weren't literal. The top ten is littered with the usual suspects with only two of last months top...

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4175: Squarefootball Zeitgeist: Most

by : Antony Melvin Looking at the stats on a football site can be mildly diverting. And starting with January we will be sharing with you the players who are attracting the most hits at Squarefootball. Unusually in January a manager topped the poll with Rafa Benitez proving very popular, displaci...

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