The Ephemeric

So once again the premierleague campaign is upon us, and indeed it has been an interesting one. Man City making an early bid for europe, man united making an early bid for relegation... not something that would have been predicted, but obviously it is still early days yet and it remains to be seen which teams have it in them to last the full haul of the season.

It comes as no shock, and yet i find it highly bemusing, that Steve mclaren, england manager who decided to mark his entry to the international scene with some major and shocking changes to his squad, has now retreated on all of them, giving us a squad nearly identical to sven's old one. Yes, david james is back, sol is back, becks is back... so glad we went with a fresh and different approach to england management this time... basically hiring a less talented version of sven.

Equally interesting is this fracas thats been in the media all week about styles's blunder in awarding a penalty against liverpool that has seen him receive so much stick. Frankly what's strange about this one is that graham poll never had similar repercussions last year despite being an even worse referee and making even more ridiculous decisions. "the refs cracked" says steve gerrard, whining about the admittedly ridiculous penalty. This is especially ironic when you consider in just the previous match when Liverpool equalised against villa from a dubious free kick, gerrard chastised the villa players for complaining and declared that "these things usually even out over the course of a season". Something tells me he wasn't expecting it to happen so soon! the punchline: rob styles was ref at that game too!