Here are several interesting articles I came across during the past few days which may be of interest to many of you passionate fans:

• “Soccer’s Billion-Dollar Players” — What Credit Crunch? The biggest soccer players and clubs are drowning in money, much of it borrowed (Time Magazine)
• “Premier League Plan To Take English Football To The World” — Here at EPL Talk, we’ve been writing in support of the 39th Game concept ad nauseum, and now the idea is back with a different concept. Problem is will managers let their top teams play and risk the chance of injuries? (The Daily Telegraph)
• “Premier League Plan Five Four-Team Global Tournaments In New Winter Break” — More details about Richard Scudamore’s plan to bring the Premier League to the world (The Daily Mirror)
• “The Beautiful Gane: PFA’s Art Exhibition” — Now we know who bought the LS Lowry football masterpiece we featured a few months ago (Football Shirt Culture)
• “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea” — Well-written article about the birth and history of the Football League (Two Hundred Percent)
• “Fulham Plans Johnny Haynes Memorial Statue” — Johnny Haynes, the footballer that is synonymous with Fulham, is to be remembered with a memorial statue to stand outside Craven Cottage (Fulham FC)
• “Kenyon Urges Chasing Pack To ‘Get Their Houses In Order’” — Peter Kenyon has advice for Everton, Spurs, Villa and the other teams trying to break into the Big Four. Must be easy to give advice when you work for a club that practically has an unlimited amount of money to spend (The Guardian)
• “Most Of Premier League Web Visits Sourced Abroad” — This comes as little surprise to us readers, but it’s still fascinating to read: Most of the traffic to PremierLeague.com and the official club websites for the Big Four come from users outside the UK (euFootball Biz)

This Friday, Christies will auction an original painting from one of the most revered artists in England – L.S. Lowry (1887-1976). The masterpiece is entitled “Manchester City v Sheffield United.”

While his compatriots in England were painting idyllic flowers and landscapes, Lowry was capturing what it was like to live in the north (northern England, that is). The smokestacks, pollution, people, factories and grim conditions that northerners faced. And, most importantly in this instance, the working class going to a football match.

He was famous for painting human figures, which were commonly referred to as “matchstick men.”

Lowry would look on with disdain at the state of football nowadays with the corporate suites, prawn sandwich brigade and expensive seats that are far too expensive for the working class to afford.

Looking at the painting, you can see the line of people walking outside the ground past a man selling, presumably, bets on the match. In the background are the football fans standing on the terraces.

The colors Lowry used in the painting are drab and personify the reality of what the working class wore as well as the hardship of life at the time. The cloth capped men are frozen in time as some of them puff on pipes or smoke a cigarette. Smiles are extinct from the faces of these anonymous people.

In addition to this painting, Lowry also created another football-related painting originally entitled “Football Ground” in 1953. That painting featured fans outside Bolton’s previous ground, Burnden Park.

“Manchester City v Sheffield United” by L.S. Lowry goes on auction at Christies on Friday, June 6.