Is it just me who believes that Carlton Cole (baring serious injury) should be one of the first names on Fabio Capello’s squad list for next year’s World Cup?

Yes that Carlton Cole, the man who has been often tagged ‘The Next Emile Heskey’, a player with great physical presence but no real striking instinct.

Oh how time changes, West Ham introduced Gianfranco Zola as manager who in turn introduced the REAL Carlton Cole to the Premiership. A striker who can lead the line by himself, occupying two or three defenders at a time and at last create and score chances….bang goes the Heskey comparisons then.

Surely Mr Capello must now see that Emile Heskey will not get the game time needed to warrant and starting place in the England side, even Heskey has began to think that himself.

The sooner Cole and Wayne Rooney start upfront together, the better. Peter Crouch who always performs when in an England shirt is the other option along with Jermain Defoe but if it’s a straight shoot-out between Cole and Heskey then in my mind there can only be one winner

It has been too long and profound apologies for that…..maybe it was due to THAT beach ball and those defeats *shrugs*

Anyway, I promise I’ll be back over the coming week, I noticed I’m still getting  (a small amount of) page views and I want to keep this going, so expect some more artwork and words very shortly.

Thank you all kindly and drop me a comment if you really have to….NO please do, it’s appreciated

Back after a slight hiatus so let’s get straight into it. Fernando Torres is almost back to his best.

I say almost, mainly due to the fact that you Rafa Benitez can tell he is still maybe one or two games away from his brilliant best of two seasons ago. Without a doubt he is the best striker in the Premiership when he is bang on form and his two goals today proved that.

The first was vintage Torres, a mazy dribble, burst of pace and deadly finish. His second and the all important winner for Liverpool was clinical and showed how good he can be in the air when given the right service (well done Ryan Babel by the way, I know there is a helluva player there, heres hoping he can put a run together now).

Another 3-2 away from home and more importantly 3 Premiership wins on the bounce proves Liverpool are on the up, and despite one or two mistakes defensive lapses, things are looking good for Torres and for Liverpool.

Jermain Defoe is the new ‘Super-Sub’ of English football. In all honesty that’s a crime, because the form he’s in should see him as a first choice striker alongside Wayne Rooney.

Unfortunately Mr Capello has a system and that system requires Emile Heskey to play upfront despite playing from the sub’s bench so far this season with Aston Villa.

It now seems the new ‘buzz word’ this month will be ‘Impact Player’, basically meaning a player who doesn’t perform consistently good enough over 90 minutes (Heskey!), so has to make do with appearing for the last 15-20 minutes of a game from the bench (Defoe).

For Defoe it looks like that’s his immediate future at international level and maybe he’ll be happy with that for now or at least until next year’s World Cup.

I do find it amazing that players can perform so well as substitutes, yet put them in the starting line-up and they disappear. A case in point would be Shaun Wright-Philips on Saturday, whose place is well and truly under threat from Aaron Lennon.

Lennon was the standout performer for England, offering pace, width and a genuine threat. No doubt now he will get his chance on Wednesday and hopefully for him he’ll take it and progress after an excellent start to the season with Spurs. If not Wright-Philips, James Milner or even David Beckham will be waiting in the wings as the possible ‘Impact Player’ and the mantle of ‘Super-Sub’ will be passed on yet again for the umpteenth time.

Spurs have a better squad than Liverpool….FACT. I knew that, not this year but last year when they splashed out on what seemed like ten players all of whom cost over £10 million each.

Yes last year Liverpool’s squad was pretty small and in my opinion had no chance of winning the league, maybe a top 3 finish was the best we could have hoped for. Yet I was proved wrong, Rafa failed to rotate as often as he was known for, sold his one major summer signing and with that managed to produce Liverpool’s best season in 18 years.

Football is certainly a squad game but Manchester United had to rely on a Italian youngster to help them virtually win the league last year against Aston Villa, no one had heard of him yet it turned out he was pretty useful.

You see Glenn Hoddle wasn’t saying anything new, Spurs’ squad depth is better than Liverpool’s and attacking wise maybe even better than the other members of the ‘Top Four’, yet as long as your first 13-14 players are up to scratch you won’t find yourself worrying about who is on the bench too much.

That was the mentality that saw Liverpool become the best team ever in the Premiership not to win the league last year, admittedly Alonso is a big void to fill but as long as Alberto Aquilani regains his full match fitness then the void should be filled adequately.

What Benitez needs to do is to make sure his squad players such as Babel, Riera, Vorinin, Insua et al are all ready to perform when their team needs them (something which currently is happening as it should), you don’t need £80 million of talent sitting on the bench to win a league. FACT

I knew it, not to sound like a footballing Nostradamus or anything but I had a feeling Emmanuel Adebayor would turn out to be a very important player for Manchester City.

Arsenal fans fell out of love with him and so did some of the players but when he is on form he is near unplayable, similar to Didier Drogba with a hint of Kanu, treat him with TLC and you have a potent weapon.

Watching him today and hearing him talk at the end of the match it seems he is back in love with football after a very poor and half hearted season with Arsenal last year.

So while Arsenal players, fans and maybe the manager believe that they are better off without him, I get the feeling if he carries on playing the way he is at the moment they might just wish that he was back plying his trade at the Emirates rather than Eastlands.

They came, they destroyed, they went and watched some football and then destoryed some more. Football took at step back in time last night and unfortunately everyone within football knew it was going to happen.

West Ham and Millwall two East -End rivals thrown together by the luck of the draw. That draw was made just under two week ago and the talking and no doubt fight arranging began.

Now baring in mind that there has been trouble when these sides have played previously, this was a quote given by Millwall Managing Director Andy Ambler the day after the draw

We have a very experienced security team who are used to staging these sorts of games and we will make sure [with West Ham] the match passes off with as little disruption to fans and the community as possible.

Bravo Mr Ambler, sterling job you did there last night and if you want to see your work in closer detail here you go

You see there is no measure against this type of thing, even if Millwall fans were banned from the ground, like some critics were saying they should, they would have still bumped heads with the West Ham fans. It was a game that the FA should not have let taken place, toss a coin to find a winner, anything but having them play each other.

What makes things worse is that it was the West Ham fans who seem to be coming out of this with the greater deal of shame. The goading of the Millwall fans and players was a disgrace and for a fairly respectable set of Premiership fans to behave in that manor brings great shame to the world of football and strikes another Black mark against thoughts of hosting a another big football tournament in this country.

What should the punishment be? Well I’d let the FA decide on that……..it’s bound to be stern enough isn’t it?

So it seems after months of talk Manchester City will finally land ‘The Poor Man’s John Terry’ in the form of Joleon Lescott for a fee of around £22 million.

It is a deal that David Moyes should have accepted three weeks ago. Lescott wanted to leave before the start of the season, only Moyes knows why he started with him in the opening day hammering against Arsenal, in fact maybe he didn’t because he was dropped just five days later for a Europa league tie with Moyes mentioning a poor attitude.

It is a shame that things of turned so sour with Moyes blaming Mark Hughes and Manchester City for the way they have handled the pursuit of Lescott.

In my mind I don’t think they have done much wrong on the surface, declaring your interest in a player to the press is now part and parcel of the game and happens at press conference almost on a weekly basis. I think the fact is that Lescott sees Manchester City offering so much more than Everton can over the next five years and that is what has riled Moyes. Added to the fact that Lescott’s wages will be ‘mighty healthy’  it would be obvious his head his elsewhere.

Everton & David Moyes, take the money, bed young Jack Rodwell in at centre half, and then use that money to buy another striker, a top class winger/midfielder and another centre back.

Lescott is a player who I don’t see improving his level of play, he had his best season two years ago and from then on his form has dipped. Manchester City will be happy to have in their ranks, a goal scoring defender and England international. Deep down I feel Everton (if they use the money right that is) may now feel the deal is the right one for all involved.

Well wasn’t that exciting? Not in a million years could you have predicted that little old Burnley would turnover the champions Manchester United in what was there first top flight game at Turf Moor for 33 years. So would it be wrong of me to now tell you I thought they would get a result last night?

I thought Birmingham would get a draw at Old Trafford last Sunday, it wasn’t to be despite a less than impressive performance from United. To be honest I didn’t expect Burnley to win last night, no I had them down for a score draw, mainly due to the amazing backing their fans would give and that United always usually score away from home no matter the performance. As it was the crowd did win the game, the atmosphere looked amazing and to be a part of that would have been very special indeed.

Despite the Burnley performance, the reaction was always going to come back to Manchester United and the reason why they lost. Similar to the aftermath of Liverpool’s defeat at Spurs, the main conclusion was they missed players who were no longer at the club, and in particular one Christiano Ronaldo.

The talk is justified to a point, yes these were the type of games he excelled in, he was ruthless against the smaller teams. Last night there wouldn’t be to much doubting that he would have dispatched that penalty with ease, or scored with a free kick or make an assist, but the plain truth of it is that he is not there and United will have to play better as a team to accomdate that fact.

Other players need to step up to the plate now, Anderson, Carrick, Owen, Berbatov, Fletcher & Valencia all have to make it count,  if all those players can’t contribute together what Ronaldo did as individual then maybe the £80million pounds gained from his sale will be no more than money in the bank

Yes I know its still very very earlier and that there is still 10 months of football to be played, but I have this strange feeling that Chelsea’s season is going to be almost a replica of last years.

I have to admit I was very impressed with their performance last night, especially the way they just steamrolled Sunderland in the second half. There is no bones about it, Chelsea now have the best squad in the league, Deco, Kalou, Ivanovic & Ballack all started last night and gave able performances and there was a noted difference from Saturdays game.

Here’s my problem though, I remember having these exact same thoughts at the start of last season when Chelsea made Portsmouth look frankly pathetic on the opening day. Big Phil was hyped in the press as the man to lead Chelsea to glory in every competition they entered, while playing the type of football Mr Abramovich had been longing to see, with a formation not to dissimilar to the one they are playing with now.

You see like last year, the Chelsea fullbacks are intgeral to their new ‘Diamond System‘, Ashley Cole & Jose Bosingwa were both excellent last night, they got forward at every opportunity and stretched the game leaving space for the likes of Lampard, Ballack and Drogba, Sunderland had no answers *Memo to Steve Bruce, Darren Bent is not a defensive left midfielder*. Last year Liverpool went to Stamford Bridge and negated any threat from the Chelsea full backs and won the game, and from there on teams began to figure out how to play Chelsea up to a point which eventually led to Big Phil’s sacking.

Now I am not saying Carlo Ancelotti will be sacked, I highly doubt that because Chelsea are being primed for Champions League success this year, I just feel that once a team successfully shows how to dampen Chelsea attacking instincts in the full back areas then they will become unstuck. Ancelotti has no plan B for want of a better term, the Diamond System has led him to success at Milan albeit not as glorious as his reputation would have you think, so he will not change it.

The players will be the key for him regarding this system, Essien has to be the defensive rock, with Ballack & Lampard ahead of him and I have a feeling that Deco will be an important part of the system this year despite his critics last season, if he is fully fit then he is a match winner, then there is Joe Cole to come back sometime in the future as well.

So just a note of caution Mr Ancelotti, the curse of Big Phil may still be lurking in some dark corner of Stamford Bridge waiting to rear its ugly head in a few months time if the results are not flowing