Arsenal’s game against Aston Villa today might not be make or break but, such has been the ratcheting up of the pressure on Arsene Wenger in recent weeks, it feels like it is.

The dark hair, the chiselled cheekbones, the lean build — Keith Gillespie could still pass for the kid who wowed ’em on the wing at Old Trafford and St James’ Park back in the day.

The news that Frank Lampard has signed a contract to write children’s books seemed the perfect hook for a quip-happy column until I learned that Frankie had beaten us all to pun, as it were, by naming the second in his series — about a young boy with a magic football — Frankie Versus The Rowdy Romans.

Given the feverish intensity of the media build-up to last night in the Santiago Bernabeu, it would have taken something of the order of Brazil beating Italy in the 1970 World Cup final for this match to have fully lived up to its extravagant billing.

Not for the first time in recent Irish-Polish relations, the home consumers in the Aviva on Wednesday night were entitled to ask: where’s the beef?

It’s an increasingly familiar scenario: another transfer window comes and, once again, James McCarthy finds himself linked in the media with a move one of the big Premier League clubs.

There are some who call the ’70s the decade that taste forgot, all too conveniently overlooking the fact that it gave us David Bowie in his prime, Horslips in their pomp and, from glam rock to punk rock, a feast of plenty to bookend the decade on Top Of The Pops.

After a light morning’s training at Norwich yesterday, Anthony Pilkington was looking forward to going home, putting his feet up and watching all the comings and goings of transfer deadline day, secure in the knowledge of his own immediate future at Carrow Road and knowing also that, with his Irish documentation finalised, he is now on the brink of a potentially long and rewarding career in the green shirt.

Favourite line on Ballboygate?

How Reading reject Carl McHugh went from also-ran to Wembley with giantkillers Bradford City. By Liam Mackey