Something light for starters

The new football season is 10 days old and first impressions suggest Man City will have to spend another £200million to have any chance of winning the title. On the other side of Manchester it seems everyone's favourite ginger, Paul Scholes is still the best passer in the country and West Brom have assumed their biennial top flight status of that club who plays 'nice football', but gets regularly pummelled into submission by any team with a half decent striker.

My highlight of the first weekend of the Premier League has to be the intriguing moustache growing on the face of Joey Barton. To be fair to the Newcastle midfielder it does make a nice change for him to be in the news for something other than using his team-mates face as an ashtray. Barton now bears an uncanny resemblance to a WW2 fighter pilot, minus the flying goggles. The one time England international (anyone else remember his 12 minutes of fame against Spain in 2007?) has promised he won't shave his tash until Newcastle win, so we could be seeing this fine piece of facial hair for quite a while.

Lower down the Leagues there are already two managers who will be making a visit to the Job Centre in the near future, well one anyway. Steve Coppell clearly wasn't a fan of West Country life, just two games into his tenure at Bristol City and he got the urge to leave football for good. No such claims from Kevin Blackwell however. His Sheffield United side did so poorly in their opening two fixtures that he was hastily removed and replaced with Gary Speed.

It's also worth noting the three clubs at the top of the Football Leagues. Millwall, Oldham and Torquay are currently kings of their respective castles, the odds on them still being there come May could be quite long.