What a weekend!

Its been a busy month for me personally so apologies for the lack of blog activity, what with Christmas coming up I have been busy with work and shopping. This will probably be my last post until the new year as I shall be back in the UK visiting friends and family and taking a couple of weeks break from it all.

This weekend was quite something for supporters of the supposed BIG FOUR! Liverpool limped to a 2-0 defeat at basement club Portsmouth, Fulham humbled champions Manchester United 3-0 and West Ham even managed to hold Chelsea to a 1-1 draw. It was a great weekend for Arsenal fans as they moved 5 points behind leaders Chelsea with a game in hand. Elsewhere Man City sacked Mark Hughes and immediately replacing him with Roberto Mancini who was in stands to City win 4-3 over Sunderland.

Last week also saw the draw for the Champions League and Europa League knockout stages. Liverpool got a very decent draw indeed facing Romanian outfit Unirea and following that they will face Lille or Fenerbache, both of which are beatable. Which should see them make smooth progress to the quarter finals and by then some bigger teams would have fallen such as Juve, Bremen, Valencia, Benfica, Marseille, Villareal and Wolfsburg.

So the bet for me is Liverpool on the outright market (13/2 with totesport) or Betfair at 7.4 with a view to lay some of it off at the quarter finals stage. Liverpool should be around 4/1 to win this competition after the draw was made so the 13/2 is very fair indeed. Liverpool seem to be in freefall currently but by February 2010 when the next Europa League matches are played I expect their form to have picked up and Gerrard, Torres and Aquilani to be firing on all cylinders - if Benitez is still there it remains to be seen? As I now believe his time is up but the squad is strong enough with or without Rafa to make the latter stages of the Europa League.

I hope you all have a good Christmas and see you in the new year.