THE sacking of Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson  on Saturday morning was preceded a couple of days before by comments from the chief executive of the League Managers Association warning that clubs should not be “treated as the playthings of the super rich”.

Hodgson was one of four managers reportedly at risk from the axe along with Gerard Houllier at Aston Villa, Carlo Ancelotti at Chelsea and Avram Grant at West Ham.

STRUGGLING Championship club Preston North End learnt a harsh lesson this week – don’t mess with the football institution that is the Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson.

Ferguson is one of the most revered men in the game, a manager with an almost unmatched honours list and a tough, powerful Scot with a demeanour that at times can be fearsome.

FOOTBALL fans are fickle creatures and this was clearly illustrated over the weekend when both Manchester clubs secured wins to leave them in the top two spots in the Premier League.

It is only a few seeks since Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney and Manchester City’s Carlos Tevez were expressing dissatisfaction with their current employers and seeking pastures new.

THERE was much  hype surrounding the draw for the last 16 stage of the Champions League with pundits wetting themselves with excitement at the prospect of Arsenal re-staging their epic clashes against Barcelona last season.

True, both matches were real treats, a feast for football purists and it does seem that Arsenal face the toughest challenge of all the English teams still left in the competition.

A few years back my wife and I spent a short holiday in Barcelona, a fabulously vibrant city which I can heartily recommend (although beware of the pickpockets!).

Whilst there we took advantage of an open-top bus tour of the Spanish city which included a stop outside Barcelona’s impressive Nou Camp stadium.

AFTER the dust settled on the England World Cup bid fiasco, the overriding thought was why on earth were the Prime Minister, the future King of England and a supposed football superstar fawning over these people?  The BBC TV Panorama programme and the Sunday Times newspaper are media institutions with a fearsome reputation for uncovering corruption at all levels of society.  The fact that both these bodies have made serious allegations against some members of FIFA should surely have sent a message out to our Fab Three – ‘don’t touch the organisation with a barge pole.’