Dan's Football Blog

NOT since Lazarus, has a man made such a remarkable comeback as Nani.

Committing the equivalent of sticking your head into a red hot oven, he made the cardinal sin of slagging off Sir Alex back in November.

Against Arsenal he tore them to shreds, in a performance which can only be described as Ronaldo-esque.

The question is, can this turn around in fortunes be applied to John Terry.

WHAT IS sadder than the thought of Garry Cook crying into his cornflakes this morning?

Well probably nothing to be fair, has a Carling Cup game ever put the Premiership into the back seat like last night?

Away from the top flight action, and to Crystal Palace, where starlet Victor Moses was banned from playing.

Why? Because he was suspended? No, because he is too good and Palace are too poor, literally, broke.

WHO is the manager of the season so far? Arsene Wenger for guiding Arsenal to the brink of the top of the league?

Alex McLeish for building Birmingham up to be just one point behind Liverpool in January?

Well obviously it's not Rafa Benitez, but my vote would be for neither of those two, and worth looking outside of the Premiership for...

GARY Cook, the next Peter Kenyon.

The sad thing is, he will probably see that as a compliment.

Any lover of football, will know that Man City's treatment of Mark Hughes was rotten to the core.

'Win at all costs' was the mantra adopted by France last night, with Henry's handball sending France to South Africa next summer.

But now, his reputation is in tatters, there is one thing worse than a dirty player, and that is a cheat.

WHY there are no winners in the World Cup Playoff draw...

Well technically speaking there will be four, but whatever happens in the Ireland/France and Portugal/Bosnia games tomorrow night, the World Cup will be poorer.

Ireland's three most previous World Cup adventures, in 1990,1994 and 2002 were full of action, on and off the pitch.

LIVERPOOL'S season unravelling- well I hate to say I told you so...

I said before the season kicked off that they would struggle, surely it was clear from the moment they sold Robbie Keane in January, they were so dependent on Torres it was untrue. Failure to replace him in the summer was stupid and arrogant and now their frailties are really being exposed...

THE International break gives us a chance to reflect on the season so far, and it has been a cracker, with each of the top sides experiencing defeat already, and a real threat emerging in the shape of Man City. The bottom end is no more predictable- even Portsmouth won a game this weekend.

It is therefore time for me to dish out the early season awards, is your team mentioned? Who has been the best player, and who was the biggest letdown?

WHEN I first heard the weekend's England game would be broadcast on the internet, I thought it was a novel way of attracting extra viewers to the television audience, then I realised it was exclusively online- which is a joke.

First of all it should never have been given to Setanta in the first place- England's finest hour of the qualification campaign was the 4-1 win in Croatia, but most of Britain never saw it- "Did Theo Walcott really score a hat trick?" has one of lifes most commonly asked questions...

MUCH has been mentioned about the big four- and Man City's chance of breaking into the Champions League cartel, but this season it occurs to me that we now have a big EIGHT emerging, which I can't see anybody breaking into.

Take your big four of Man United, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Arsenal, and add Man City, Villa, Spurs, and Everton, it may be October, but I just cannot see any other teams occupying the top eight spots come May...