Finally, Newcastle United land Alan Shearer as manager and has 8 games to help avoid them slipping into the Championship. Newcastle fans are of course ecstatic, as the Geordie Messiah takes his rightful place in charge of this massive, troubled club. Till the end of the season anyway! Shearer has been given 1 target : avoid relegation! Something, even the great Alan Shearer doesn’t want to see happen, as Shearer said, “It’s a club I love and I don’t want them to go down. I’ll do everything I can to stop that.” Newcastle’s destiny now lies in the hand of a BBC pundit, with no managerial experience and a big heart.

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I feel for Liverpool manager, Rafa Benitez, I really do. It seems he is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He has brought some clever and genuine gifted players to Liverpool, has the side playing some decent quality week-in-week-out and pushed them into a top 3 position in the Premiership. Tonight, The Reds face Real Madrid in the 2nd leg of the last 16 in the Champions League. Liverpool have the advantage of an away goal ahead of the tie as they lead 1-0 from the first leg. Yet, he still gets stick!

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With only 10 games to go in the Premiership it seems as though any 3 from 11 teams may get relegated come the end of the season. Big name teams such as Newcastle, Tottenham, Middlesbrough & Blackburn are caught up in the relegation dogfight. Points mean survival and every game now till the end of the season is crucial. Looking at the league table as it stands currently, West Brom are the team that looks the most doomed being 6pts adrift from the safety zone. As for the rest, Blackburn (18th) are 7pts behind Fulham (10th) – the pair meet next Wednesday the 11th March and a victory for Fulham would go a long way in securing their Premiership existence while defeat would drag them even closer to an unwanted end-of-season scrap for survival.

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Have all we sports betting enthusiasts done it before or is it just me? Scrutinised a couple of teams or players in a forthcoming tournament or match and weighed-up the pros and cons of each with regard to recent performance, big-picture strengths and any other snippets of information we can lay our hands on. Having made the selection, we turn to our favourite online betting site and check out the odds. Hmmm . . . our selection is 1/3 and their opponent an attractive 4/1 – perhaps I’ve been overly harsh in my judgement and the longer shot hasn’t been playing so badly just lately and there could be a bit of an upset, come to think of it, so perhaps I’d be better off going for the 4/1 chance – after all, if they win I’ll get a much better return on my money. And then, as originally predicted, your first choice thrashes the newly favoured choice and you walk away with nothing.

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The UEFA Champions League returns this week with sixteen teams left and the knockout round about to begin. Reigning champions, Manchester United plus Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool represent the English contingent and football betting fans will be scrutinising the form of their opponents in their efforts to decide the chances of another final between two Premiership clubs. Last year it went to the wire for Chelsea and Man U when the Blues were defeated on Russian ground in a nail-biting final.

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In this age of celebrity, a small number of sportsmen grapple with the conflict between the love of their sport and the glittering temptations and adoration offered by the world of celebrity. There is surely no better example of this than David Beckham, the biggest of them all. His crossroads came a couple of years ago when he took football betting fans by surprise and forsook the premier ground of his sport by leaving Europe and joining LA Galaxy, a stratospheric drop in footballing finesse but presumably compensated for by the potential rewards of A list status in the home of popular culture.

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Any English football betting fan watching the Spain v. England match on Wednesday night would have every excuse to come away with deep concern about the inadequacy of our team after taking-in the footballing masterclass provided by their hosts in Andalucía that night. It was so good I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before. Without doubt, the Spanish are European champions for good reason but just how good was jaw droppingly revealed in this game.

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It’s crunch time in Glasgow, once again, as Celtic and Rangers get ready to go head-to-head in this latest SPL slug fest. Home advantage goes with Celtic although this season home advantage has counted for nothing as the last two encounters have seen the away team leave victorious. With just two points seperating both teams it is bound to an intense affair with Rangers insisting in the press they are not interested in going to Celtic Park to defend.

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The ruthless sacking of Luiz Felipe Scolari, yesterday by Chelsea, smacks of a club unprepared to settle for top 4 finishes in the Premiership and the odd cup win here-and-there. But it also shows another side, that Chelsea still are not over the split between themselves and the ‘Special One’ : Jose Mourinho. The sacking of Scolari may meet with the approval of those Chelsea legions who pack into Stamford Bridge each match day. Dissapointed by the decline in home form and an overall lack of self-belief by the players seen shouts for Scolari to go. And go he did, forced from his job, 7 months in, Chelsea gave Scolari the old, ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ routine.

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David Beckam last night expressed his desire to remain in Milan and by making his feelings public knowledge you can bet the talks between AC Milan and LA Galaxy are already in deep conversation. Certainly, the loan move to Italy has reinvigorated Beckam and his need to be part of England’s quest to win the World Cup in 2010.

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