When new owners take over a football club, you always get the impression that the incumbent manager is living on borrowed time no matter how popular he is with players and fans, and in some cases however impressive the results he achieves. I think a number of people were surprised when the takeover at West Ham was completed that the new owners didn’t immediately replace Gianfranco Zola with their own choice, but it seems that recent results have now given them just the excuse they need to make a change and bring in their own man. Interviews with Zola after his team’s damaging defeat to Wolves showed him to be a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders who has run out of inspiration and seems resigned to his inevitable fate. If his side are relegated, the better players will inevitably be offered positions at other Premier League clubs, which offers little comfort to the fans who confronted some of their underperforming team following Tuesday’s match...

There can be no better time to get a winning accumulator up than on the weekend just prior to the Cheltenham Festival, and that’s exactly what has happened as all four of last week’s selections obliged to provide a healthy payout without even conceding a goal between them. I’ll try and keep a small portion of the winnings back from my usually hefty Cheltenham losses to have another crack at the football for the coming weekend, as there are a few teams that take the eye, but more of that later.

I’m struggling to get excited this week, I really am (apologies for any disturbing images that might conjure up for you). Routine victories for Arsenal, United and Everton in the League, four relatively nondescript FA Cup quarter-finals with no surprise outcomes, no Sam Allardyce besmirching our TV screens, Johan Elmander once again displaying his lethal, predatory skills to maintain his pathetic record of two League goals all season, and Aruna Dindane didn’t even play on Saturday. So, there wasn’t much at all to raise my hackles (wherever they are) last weekend, but I’m hoping that with a full League programme to look forward to, normal service can be resumed in due course.

The new season is about to start and we can expect lots of fun. Michael Schumacher will be back in the F1 driving seat to try and add more titles and records to an already incredible career. It will take some time to disassociate him with the Ferrari team, but we all know he is still a great Ferrari fan especially if we look at the colours of his new crash helmet!

Quite often I find myself driving home from football on a Saturday afternoon listening to descriptions of the day's events on the field at various matches, including the inevitable rants against referees by the managers involved, or long-winded whinges from fans who it turns out haven't even been to the games they are complaining about. On a surprisingly high number of occasions, when I have the chance to watch the highlights of the matches in question, they bear little or no relation to the biased descriptions I have heard earlier, and that was certainly the case on Saturday with the incident that resulted in terrible injury for Aaron Ramsey.