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In the continued spirit of desperately attempting to feel festive, here’s The Pogues! 

Pavlyuchenko to Arsenal, discussed

[Football Fancast]

QPR find a job for Paul Hart

[The Telegraph]

Wayne Bridge’s torrid time continues

[Kickette]

40 of the Top 50 Players of the Decade revealed!

[Daily Mail]

Choose your ten favourite players of the year!

[Caught Offside]

The Modric/Kranjcar conundrum

[Pies]

Transfer rumours and quotes that are doing the rounds today

Photo Credit: Ian Nicholson/PA Wire

Spurs start planning for the summer
The Spoiler thinks Tottenham would be wise to make only minimal changes to their squad during pre-season. The chaos of last summer’s revolving door policy led to Spurs making their worst ever start to a season and recent results - they have lost just one league game since the January transfer window closed - suggest that the current squad doesn’t need to be drastically altered. Harry Redknapp may view things differently though and this afternoon alone the club have been linked with Brazilian defender Joao Miranda de Souza, Gabriel Heinze and Djibril Cisse.

Optimist of the day
Tony Mowbray’s glass appears to be not so much half-full as overflowing. The West Brom manager is refusing to throw in the towel

Click here to hear his interview on the day the Blades went down

If you type “Neil Warnock takes the blame” into Google, about 90% of the results are examples of the former Sheffield United manager passing the buck to either his players, the referee, an authority or the biased Southern media.

This week the Crystal Palace boss was again pointing the finger by claiming that he would still be a Premier League manager right now if it wasn’t for Carlos Tevez, meaning he should be entitled to compensation.

The Spoiler was certain though that at some point Warnock must have accepted that he and his team’s own shortcomings had led to their relegation and eventually we tracked down an acknowledgement of blame in his interview with BBC South Yorkshire on the final day of the 2006-07 season.

While you may require Real Player to listen, Warnock’s key comments were:

• “Everybody’s played their part this season in giving goals away and

  

The most inevitable P45 of the season arrives at Fratton Park

Prior to this weekend, only one thing was more certain than the fact that Emmanuel Eboue would be rubbish at White Hart Lane, and that is Tony Adams‘ departure from Portsmouth.

After just fifteen weeks in charge, Adams has deftly guided Pompey to the bottom of the form table, and was formally given his marching orders this morning.

According to the club’s official site, director of youth operations Paul Hart (the man sacked by Barnsley and forced out of Nottingham Forest) will become caretaker manager.

Spoiler prophecy of doom: Portsmouth had three permanent managers in 04/05, but should think carefully before repeating this. The other three clubs to do this - Leicester (01/02), Southampton (04/05) and Charlton (06/07) - were duly welcomed to the Championship.