Deepak Chopra — still waiting for his Premier League chance — calls it past conditioning. “A new experience enters the mind, but instead of being evaluated for itself, is shunted down a well-worn track.”

DID you hear the one about the manager who got the Christmas sack with his team sixth in the table, in the semi-finals of the Carling Cup, beaten only twice all season and just coming off the back of having scored four goals at home to secure three Premier League points?

IT was not quite a shot that could be heard around the world, but the ripples created by Glenn Whelan’s fine winning goal here were almost certainly felt in France.

AFTER the first 60 minutes at Middle Eastlands I had mentally crafted this column as a thesis on which set of supporters this weekend looked the biggest set of plums — the Manchester City fans swathed in tea-towels and Brazil shirts or those braying Geordies with their paranoid banners about “the Cockney Mafia.”

WELL, what a week that was! I bet no one saw that one coming out of the Middle Eastlands did they?