The Great Lancashire Sack Race.

Tonight’s match between struggling Bolton Wanderers and the bemusing Blackburn Rovers is already being dubbed a relegation 6-pointer. Whoever loses is given the dreaded accolade of being bottom at Christmas.

Bolton have lost 13 out of 16 games this season and Blackburn? Well they’re a bit of a clueless embarrassment this year, mostly off the pitch. On it their performance isn’t actually that bad, in fact I reckon even if they were winning games the fans would be on the manager’s shoulder week in week out.

Wham Bam Big Sam.

Well it’s been a week since Chris Hughton was sacked by Newcastle now it’s Blackburn’s turn to needlessly sack their manager. Yes, that’s right Big Sam Allardyce is the latest Premier League boss to receive his P45.

It’s been nearly two months since Blackburn were taken over by foreign investors, and for some reason they have chosen to relieve him of his duties now, as part of what they call “a wider plan.” He has simply been thanked for his services, handed his coat and shown the door.

But why now? After giving him your backing only a few weeks ago? Was it the 7-1 drumming by Manchester United? That could have happened to anyone. It was only in November when the Rao family gave Allardyce their backing saying:

“We want results and Sam has taken up the challenge. He deserves a chance.”

Maybe he's had his chance, since the owners have taken over Blackburn have won two (Villa and Wolves) and lost two (Manchester United and Bolton) and perhaps that isn’t good enough for them. Though it could be possible that the new owners have been courting a new manager since they took over, and have chosen now to make the change official. Chris Hughton may well be a candidate. It certainly won’t be Alan Pardew.

Ah Alan Pardew, the ninth Newcastle United manager in as many years, what a decision that was. A man who has been relegated more times than Julien Flaubert (soon to be heading to the Championship with West Ham) has been chosen to lead a newly promoted club.

I honestly don’t understand why, after the success they’ve been having with Hughton, they chose to give Alan Pardew, a manager who couldn’t cut it at Southampton, a five year deal. Mind you Harry Redknapp couldn’t hack it at Southampton and now he’s managing a Champions League outfit. Don’t get your hopes up too much Toon fans, I know he‘s had a good start but I don‘t think Champions League football will be heading North East anytime soon! Then again Sunderland aren’t doing too bad.

Elsewhere this weekend that man Carlos Tevez has handed in a transfer request over at Eastlands. Oh dear, suddenly the City fans who were quite jubilant about Wayne Rooney’s want away slip, are all sat down with their chin on their hands. Funny how things change. Welcome to Buenos Aires.

It never ceases to amaze me how Sir Alex Ferguson manages to look like a genius over his transfer policy. Alright, so he signed Eric Djemba’Djemba and David Bellion but United could have wasted thirty-odd million on the little Argentinean. Good work Fergie, Michael Owen was much better value for money after all.

Tevez has revealed that his relationship with “certain executives” has broken down beyond repair and that he wants to leave for family reasons. Or his agent, Kia Joorabchian, wants even more money out of him and has advised a transfer. Tevez strenuously denies this, saying he wanted to leave in the summer but Joorabchian insisted he stayed at Eastlands. I’m not so sure, Tevez has spent the majority of his life saying yes to Joorabchian so if he says jump Tevez will ask how high.

I always thought Fergie’s reasoning behind not signing Tevez permanently was to do with his agent. There’s something not quite right about paying an individual a transfer fee to sign a player. To be frank it feels like slavery. City say they will force Tevez to stay, which sounds even more like slavery, but I don’t see how they can. I mean, what’s the point? He won’t perform for you, just sell him and be done with it.

Who knows, there has been talk of Tevez wanting to quit football altogether saying that he is fed up of the game and fed up of people within the game. He isn’t technically owned by Joorabchian anymore, although he takes his advice very seriously, but this freedom may be behind his motives for leaving.

It’s a little bit like the Robinho situation, a big money star on a large contract wanting to leave the club, although this time it is made harder on City as Tevez is a player who actually makes a difference to their side. He’s got 10 of their 23 league goals this season, he‘s the captain (not really sure why) and he has a lot of drive going forward. On the plus side, City have the cash to replace him, so in the short term this may look bad for them but I doubt it will have many long-term implications.

On the other side of Manchester, the Chilean miners will be watching United play in the Premier League tonight for the first time since their 7-1 thumping of Big Sam’s Blackburn. I wouldn’t expect the same scoreline tonight however as it’s table-topping Arsenal who have made the journey to the Theatre of Dreams today.

Of course the mind games have been going on, but it’s been through a different Frenchman this time. Step forward, Samir Nasri, a player who for some reason this season will not shut up. Okay so you’re pretty much Arsenal's best performing player of late, but please sit down.

Nasri reckons Old Trafford has lost its ‘fear factor’ and that Arsenal will not be scared of United tonight: 

“Manchester United is not the same team as before, with Cristiano Ronaldo and Tevez it was a little bit scary to play at Old Trafford. Now I don't think offensively they are the same as before.” 

To be fair, I’d be scared of any team with Tevez in it, the only thing scarier than him are those bloody angels from Doctor Who!

His comments confuse me though, as Arsenal’s home form has been nothing short of disastrous this season, with losses already to West Brom, Newcastle and most notably local rivals Tottenham. United have lost a grand total of zero at home this season. So if we’re talking about the ‘fear factor’ Samir, if Manchester United are let’s say Alton Tower’s famous ride, Nemesis, then the Emirates is one of those 20p a ride machines you find outside Asda.

I wish these mind games would get a bit more interesting, I remember when they used to throw pizza at each other, them were the days.

Knock-off Nigel.

Remember the summertime? The warm weather, the bright nights, the pollen, the lack of rain. Well there’s a certain theme in the 2010/11 football season that seems to have followed on from the summertime. No, I’m not talking about the vuvuzelas. Thank Christ. I am of course talking about evil footballers and their murderous vengeance seeking tackles.

Yes, it’s been the talk of the town. Pundits moaning, managers whining, journalists clapping with glee. And just over a week ago Fulham captain Danny Murphy, who looks like a burly used carpet salesman when he wears a suit, thought he’d let people know what he thought.

I can imagine the journalists sat at that conference. Bored to death, traipsing into the press conference, boggle eyed, cursing their editors for sending them to Stamford Bridge, usually a good job, but not today. Today it‘s the Leaders in Football conference, about as inspiring as a ripped binliner floating down the River Severn. Out comes the carpet fitter and everyone groans. Not him again, anyone but him; Jody Morris, anyone. They reluctantly get out their pens and writing pads already starting to jot down the usual drivel he comes out with. “We deserved to win the Europa league.” “Bobby Zamora is a good player.” “I miss Roy.” And then all of a sudden, from nowhere, Murphy gives them a bite. After all these years they finally got a bite!

“Managers are sending out their players so pumped up there are inevitably going to be problems. Your manager dictates what your players do and how you behave. Every ship has a captain and that's the manager who is in charge. You get managers who are sending their teams out to stop other teams playing, which is happening more and more - the Stokes, Blackburns, Wolves”

Singling out football clubs Danny, well done. Producing no evidence at all, no facts, nothing, just drawing from his imagination and pointing the finger at Tony Pulis, Sam Allardyce and Mick McCarthy. And they had a finger to point back at him too.

Sam Allardyce came out first with his reading glasses and a power point presentation. Pointing out that his Blackburn side have received no more than 11 yellow cards this season and no red card. Now, Big Sam has had this power point out a few times. He has it on his windows 7 taskbar (it was his idea). Everytime he plays Arsenal he gets it loaded up before he arrives at a press conference to save time. I’m sure Arsene gets so bored on the coach up to the dreaded North he just decides to phone random journalists and slag off Blackburn some more. Even when he’s not playing them.

Mick McCarthy, when interviewed by the Beeb, just laughed it off, but Tony Pulis called it right when he said they were “easy targets.” And they are, they don’t play poetic football like your Arsenals, Man Uniteds or Chelseas. What do you expect them to do, go all out attack against them and take a 7-0 drubbing and be happy with it? No, they’re going to try and get something from the game. Stoke, Blackburn, and even Wolves are more than capable of getting a result against any Premier League side. It’s why it’s the  best and most competitive league in the world. I think it’s incredibly disrespectful to round them up and throw slander in their face, just because they play a different style to your own.

What annoys me about Murphy’s comments is not just the fact that it’s not thought out, and it feels like he just read a tabloid newspaper’s sports pullout. It’s the fact he’s a hypocrite. This is a bloke who just last year against Shakhtar Donetsk in the Europa League decided it would be okay to kick out at fellow professional Darijo Srna. People in glass houses, Danny, they shouldn’t be throwing stones.

Strangely though Murphy declined to mention the team harbouring the most evil man in football. A man so wicked he wanders the night killing first-borns as part of some sort of ritualistic pre-match warm up. A man whose name reverberates around dojos everywhere striking fear into the heart of the most hardened of fighters, even Chuck Norris. This man, if he is a man at all, is Nigel De Jong.

De Jong has been tearing apart player after player ever since he joined Manchester City back in 2009. If you believe the papers that is. But he only really had mediocre reputation as a footballing bad-boy until his big moment in the spotlight, on the biggest stage. Back in March he tried to get into the evil scene when he took out Stuart Holden’s fibia in an international friendly. But the world didn’t seem to notice. He knew this though was his moment. His time to shine. The world thought they could ignore his evil capabilities. Well they could do so no longer.

Twenty eight minutes in and he saw his opportunity. Xabi Alonso, a mere mortal, only a few yards away was foolish enough to jump for a header with De Jong in the vicinity. The result was a merciless kung fu kick to the chest. De Jong’s card may have been bemusingly yellow but his evilometer was red, blood red. When he walked onto the pitch in Johannesburg he was a mere droplet on the radar, when he left it looked like coffee had been spilt all over it. Alonso was lucky: he left with his life.

After that spectacular moment De Jong became synonymous with pure dastardly evil. Since then he’s kept his bad-boy reputation by breaking Hatem Ben Arfa’s fibia AND tibia. Everybody knows Nigel now. He’s become the number one hate figure in football, even El Hadji Diouf looks like a wilting schoolgirl compared to De Jong.

Needless to say the media have slated him. Everyone’s getting in on the act, Marseille even want to sue him! Even Dutch coach, Bert Van Marwijk, has slammed him, dropping him from their most recent international games stating he has a problem with the way he “needlessly looks to push the limit.” But where is that limit? De Jong won’t be satisfied until he’s broken every bone in every player’s body. Then and only then he’ll be happy.

Not everyone has been hammering the Dutchman though. His international team-mate, Mark van Bommel, a man who if he stands still for longer than two minutes a mischievous teenager will run up to him and inscribe ’I wish my wife was this dirty’ onto him, has jumped to his defence saying the following:

“I know Nigel as a sweet guy. He doesn't want to injure anyone but wants to win every match. That is his strength… Thanks to Nigel we reached the final of the World Cup. And now I hear people calling him a criminal. What a nonsense.”

I’m sure De Jong is pleased someone out there, especially in the Dutch camp, is on his side. But there again Mark Van Bommel sticking up for Nigel De Jong is a bit like Myra Hindley calling Harold Shipman ‘a sweet guy’.

His club boss Roberto Mancini has come out defending him as well, calling the Ben Arfa challenge “a normal tackle,” which in fairness it was really, “people do look at things negatively but every week, in every game, here, in Spain, in Italy, there are unbelievable fouls, worse than Nigel's.” And he’s right, Karl Henry has produced his fair share of horrendous tackles way worse than anything De Jong has come up with. But he doesn’t get the fame, mostly because he’s rubbish, but also because he didn’t kung fu kick a Spaniard. Then there’s Paul Scholes, a man who doesn’t so much tackle as fall feet first into passers by. And how could we forget the one and only Roy Keane, he’d eat De Jong for breakfast and still go back to the buffet table for more!

De Jong is nothing more than a wannabe. He’s got a long way to go before he can sit amongst the alumni of hard-man tech with the likes of Big Duncan Ferguson and Terry Butcher. A man can dream though, a man can dream.