LeeDixon

The Arsenal players and fans will have mixed feelings about Tuesday night. On the one hand they played incredibly well and beat the Serie A favourites 3-0, coming within a whisker of what would have been the greatest two-legged Champions League comeback ever. But on the other hand they didn't quite manage to get over the line and achieving as high a Premier League finish as possible really is all they have to play for right now. Arsenal have now won their last four in the league and two weeks ago it was Tottenham they beat, who followed that up with defeat at home to Manchester United. All of which means Spurs are no longer guaranteed third place, which seemed to be where they'd finish (at least) for much of the season. Arsenal's run won't end here. Newcastle have had a great season...

We'll have to wait and see whether Harry Redknapp takes the England job or not. For all we know, he doesn't want it at this moment in time. But all the speculation about it won't be doing him or Tottenham any good at the moment when they have an in-form Newcastle making the trip to White Hart Lane. [u]Match Odds[/u] Tottenham's match away at Liverpool wasn't exactly a classic but Redknapp will have seen it as a good point earned at a ground where the home side very seldom gets beaten. This match is a different story though and the Spurs boss will be seeing it as one that he really needs to win if his side are to stay in the title race. The Betfair market makes them 1.53 to do just that but I'm not so sure about that price. Newcastle may be missing Cheick Tiote (international duty),...

The dressing room must have been the last place in the world any of the Manchester United players involved in Saturday's match wanted to be at both at half-time and full-time. The dressing down Sir Alex must have given his players will have been amongst the most brutal the great man has ever delivered. Wayne Rooney will have been upset at sitting out the match - apparently due to an evening out with his wife - but at least he was safe sitting in the stands! The worst defeat I was ever involved in was actually against Manchester United. We lost 6-2 at home in the Carling Cup. I was given the task of marking Lee Sharpe. He scored a hat-trick. Ugly stuff but not quite as ugly as United's away kit that day. That 3-2 defeat on Saturday will surely have been one the worst of Sir Alex's time...

I hope that all the talk ahead of the match doesn't revolve around Luis Suarez, who seems to be making headlines for all the wrong reasons at the minute. I'd rather that people are discussing the players who are going to take to the pitch rather than those who aren't. I suspect that won't be the case though. [b]Match Odds[/b] Having just said the above, I can't help but mention Suarez's suspension myself! But only to make the point that Liverpool's odds have drifted from around 1.42 to their current price of 1.65 purely on the back of the news that the Uruguayan sits this one out as a result of that 'incident' at Fulham a few weeks ago. As things stand, he'll be spending far more time on the sidelines than on the pitch over the next couple of months. That's bad news for Liverpool....

There's that famous story about Nikita Kruschev's last days in power. I don't know if it's 100% true but it goes something like this. When he was being removed from power in the USSR, Kruschev handed Leonid Brezhnev two sealed envelopes marked '1' and '2' and instructed him not to open them until things were going badly and he found himself in a political situation that he was unable to get out of. If he did, he should open the first letter. Some years later, the time came and Brezhnev opened the first envelope. Inside was a letter that simply stated "Blame everything on me." - he did and it saved his political career for a while. A few years later he was faced with further problems that he didn't know how to solve. He then opened the second one - which read "Sit down. Write two letters.". I'm...