Wickham was a risk, highly thought off in the Championship but unproven, amazing when they come off, but look foolish when they dont. Its fine when your a Chelsea or Man City and you have bags of money, if it doesnt work you can just stick him the reserves and forget about him, for most other sides its a big lay out.

In all honesty, I doubt we bought Wickham for any other reason than to sell him for a huge profit a year or two down the line, he just hasn't developed at the speed the club would have probably hoped for. The daft thing is, while Bruce stuck two injury prone over-30s (O'Shea and Brown) on five-year contracts at roughly the same time, he only signed Wickham up for three. Which means that if he actually does start to look like a player at some point in the next year or so (and there were encouraging signs when he came on against Norwich at the weekend), there'll be big clubs sniffing round him faster than you can say 'can we at least have our money back?'

(to the tuneful dirge known as Blue Moon) - altogether now!

Blue Moon,

You saw me standing alone

In the elimination zone

Even got battered by Ajax

Blue Moon,

You know we're forth out of four

You heard me saying a prayer for

Someone Italian hired by Sheikh Mansour.

^

I can appreciate that the post-Van Persie/Fabregas/Nasri Arsenal are a seemingly constant source of frustration these days, but I believe their detractors got it rather skew-whiff after the Olympiakos game. Looking at the teams who are now safely through to the Champions League knock outs, there appears to be no real advantage in finishing first or second in your group this year, apart from the obvious benefit of raking a few extra quid in. Finish first and there's a strong possibility of drawing Madrid or Juventus. Finish second, you could end up with Dortmund or Barcelona. Equally daunting either way.

Luck of the draw

Cue every phone-in on earth being solely devoted to toddlers with rashes banging on about how bad Aaron Ramsey is, how Wenger's "lost it", how they'll finish "no where near" the top four, blah blah zzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

Cue every phone-in on earth being solely devoted to toddlers with rashes banging on about how bad Aaron Ramsey is, how Wenger's "lost it", how they'll finish "no where near" the top four, blah blah zzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

Why do Manchester City have three stars on their badge?

To mark how many Champions League games they've won in their history.

Not sure which club is happy with their manager at the moment, cant be many, maybe Clarke at WBA i guess.

Chelsea back amongst the goals, I see. I wouldn't want to be their next opponents... D'OH!

Chelsea back amongst the goals, I see. I wouldn't want to be their next opponents... D'OH!

So that was pretty much what I expected. A spirited effort, a few decent chances created and the odd goal scored, but only after all was lost. Must, must, must beat Reading on Tuesday evening now. If Martin can somehow manage to convince the players that we're 2-0 down before the match starts, we might actually be in with a chance.

Sunderland could have a 8-2-0 formation, lose 32-0 against Reading on Tuesday and Oliver Holt would still find a way to churn out a few hundred words about how brilliant Martin O'Neill is doing "under the circumstances".

True story: Martin O'Neill once signed Emile Heskey ahead of Radamel Falcao.

Wow, that Messi chap is a bit good, isn't he?

Or maybe not, if you believe many an English football fan on many an online forum at the moment. It seems little Leo is playing in an inferior league in foreignland and would find it much harder to achieve such incredible things in the mighty English Premier League.

So naturally, I'd now be very interested to see what would happen if a player from La Liga tested that theory by coming over and giving this Premier League lark a try. He wouldn't necessarily need to be a star from one of the perennial Spanish giants, a mid-level side like Rayo Vallecano would do, and he could join a so-called 'unfashionable' club like Swansea (we don't want to make things too easy for him) for a modest fee.

I bet he'd be bloody rubbish.

Transfer window approaching, who would you like to see your club sign in January?

Transfer window approaching, who would you like to see your club sign in January?

Anyone have a time machine?

Mission accomplished against Reading. My heart says that the opposition looked as crap as they did because of the way we played (bearing in mind that they were able to test Man United recently) but my head remains sceptical. Still, you can only beat what’s in front of you and for once in our miserable lives, we did that very effectively.

Still in need of reinforcements, hoping against hope that our position doesn’t deteriorate too much in the meantime.

Bearing in mind that we're no prize ourselves, I was pretty stunned at just how poor Reading were against us a few weeks ago. I mean, Jason Roberts, seriously? What year am I living in? I was half expecting Steve Chettle and Neil Redfearn to appear from the bench just to completely solidify in my mind how doomed to relegation they are.

Transfer window approaching, who would you like to see your club sign in January?

A physically commanding central midfielder, a quick centre half, a decent right full back and probably our best player of the season so far, 'Broadway' Danny Rose on a permanent deal. Come on Martin/Ellis/Santa, I've been ever so good this year.

Bearing in mind that we're no prize ourselves, I was pretty stunned at just how poor Reading were against us a few weeks ago. I mean, Jason Roberts, seriously? What year am I living in? I was half expecting Steve Chettle and Neil Redfearn to appear from the bench just to completely solidify in my mind how doomed to relegation they are.

Judging by their showing on Tuesday, they do indeed look nailed on to go down. You know you've got problems when even a non-entity like Danny Guthrie deems himself too good to play for you.