YOU’LL have noticed that I wasn’t back for the start of the season.

CALL me cynical, negative, whatever you want, but I don’t consider that this has been anything like a vintage Premier League season.

APART from the occasional overnight blip, the leadership of the Premier League effectively changed hands nine times this season.

A GOOD friend of mine writes for one of Britain’s most popular daily papers.

I STRUGGLE with Manchester City.

SO, for the first time in seven years, England doesn’t have at least one representative in the last four of the Champions League: so what.

IT was 2003 when England last didn’t have at least one representative in the semi-finals of the Champions League. It could easily happen again.

THOUGH I fully appreciate there are others ways to be successful in football, I rather regret that Arsenal are playing Barcelona on Wednesday night.

OPPORTUNITIES to focus attention on matters away from the most glamorous clubs and the biggest competitions come along all too rarely, so they must be grasped.

THOUGH it isn’t any of Dave Whelan’s business, unusually for the Wigan chairman (he is as big a font of bad ideas as Sepp Blatter), what he said about Liverpool is substantially correct: they ARE a mess.