Last on MOTD: One point is good

THERE are two approaches for a football manager to take when relegation starts to look inevitable. One is to acknowledge the fact, and start planning for next season’s promotion campaign. The other is to keep talking up your team’s chances of survival even as your fans start to wonder aloud if season-ticket prices might be reduced when you drop a division.

Arsenal for real

OK, perhaps the Manchester United programme’s editorial team had a point after all.

Arsenal in disguise

“HAS fate – or have, heaven forbid, the authorities themselves – got it in for us? Why do we always seem to draw top-tier talent?”

The editorial team behind Manchester United’s programme felt like indulging in a little club-approved paranoia about the FA Cup draw ahead of today’s fourth-round tie against Tottenham.

Last on MOTD: Page three of the Beano

STARTLING statement of the week, on Match of the Day, from Les Ferdinand on Nicolas Anelka.

“He’s a great signing for Chelsea,” Ferdinand said. “I’m really surprised that Bolton let him go.”

I imagine the £15m transfer fee and Anelka’s desire to move to a club in the Champions League might have had something to do with it, Les.

Tony does the trick

I KNOW length isn’t everything, but today’s Manchester City press conference with Sven-Goran Eriksson lasted a whopping 19 minutes, well up on last Friday’s 12-minute briefing. And I’m convinced that the man to credit for that was Tony Bugby of the Oldham Evening Chronicle.

Red protest

THERE was almost an air of resignation about David Gill’s comments in today’s Guardian about the attack on his home by vandals.

So good they named it thrice

AS someone who earns his living largely as a newspaper sub-editor, I’m discovering that the well-known African football tournament taking place in Ghana right now is causing a bit of confusion. Just what am I supposed to call it?

Last on MOTD: My very own Emmanuel Adebayor

ANY Premier League manager who has signed an African player over the last few years will have done so expecting to lose them for much of January and February. (Although to listen to some of those bosses, you’d think they had never heard of the African Cup of Nations.)

We’ve only got two stands

EVERYONE has their bogey ground, and mine is Bloomfield Road. Don’t get me wrong: I love Blackpool. I briefly worked for a newspaper there, and have spent many happy days and nights in the town. It’s just that none of them were at the football ground.

Kevin again

THE presenter looks into the camera, and says: “Well, the big news in the football world this week was the return to St James’ Park of Kevin Keegan.”

And who was saying this? Ian St John, on Saint and Greavsie, on February 8, 1992.