This is Football

Liverpool are the new Newcastle, Manchester United, financially, the new Leeds (Try spending your way to another great team now, Fergie), and Chelsea could just well be the old post-Abramovich Chelsea (it was difficult to tell against Sunderland: the opposition's defending was as ugly as their manager's nose and the only way they could have made it seem more like a training session was by turning up in bibs and slinging a row of traffic cones across the halfway line). Manchester City, on the other hand, have so much cash they get to have a new manager, more money to spend than every other team combined and to play all their easy games one after another like they've found a cheat for a computer game that means they never ever concede another goal (except for last night, obviously. "That Robin Binho's been brought off," my dad shouted, as the world's best player in his own head suffered the indignity of becoming a substituted substitute).

City, along with Spurs, are the last great hopes of cracking the monotony of the Big Four this season, with City favourites because a) they can afford to buy a replacement everytime someone has a bad game and b) their manager isn't under a police charge (and do you reckon they only got Redknapp on tax evasion because they couldn't get the murder, racketeering and whisky-smuggling charges to stick? I never did buy that car crash story).

Newcastle, meanwhile, just continue being Newcastle. Which is good and bad at the same time.