"Bobby Robson became the heart that English football wore on its sleeve." The words are a touching epitaph from the beginning of David Lacey's tribute to Sir Bobby Robson in this morning's Guardian, after the footballing great passed away yesterday. But they only do him partial justice. Best known in England for successful spells as a player then manager at Fulham, West Bromich Albion, Ipswitch Town and Newcastle and for his eight years at the helm of the English national team his feats overseas often go undocumented, or at best overlooked.

A report by the Commission on the Future of Women's Sport which the BBC's Gordon Farquhar blogged about earlier this month points out that just 2% of media coverage on elite sport focuses on women. Now I first got into writing about football by following one of my best friend's journeys through the matches, tournaments and politics of women's football in Oxford.

Imagine on Monday morning you get a phone call. Your company's biggest competitor is on the line, offering you exactly the same job but on twice the salary. What's more, they'll give you a couple of million quid as a sweetener just for signing on. Now don't get me wrong, I love my job. But you'd have to be a pretty brave or, to be frank, a pretty stupid man to hang up the phone.

While� Florentino Pérez has been busy� attempting to� revenge his fantasy football frustrations� ("why won't� The Sun let me have Cristiano Ronaldo,� Kaká and Karim Benzema!?") on� Real Madrid, another of Europe's less glamorous elite clubs has been undoing a "sporting project" of their own.

He conquered European champions Spain with two delicate touches of his right foot, then came within a whisper of masterminding the downfall of world football's Goliath mighty, magnificent Brazil -� in the final of the Confederations Cup. So who is this footballing Adonis? Argentina's beloved Leo Messi?

Every year Premiership managers conspire to spend millions of pounds on exotic sounding foreign players whose names have never graced the screens of an English TV. Last year it was Marouane Fellaini, a £15 million signing for Everton. And what's more, his tough tackling, willingness to play ludicrously out of position, and even more ludicrous haircut have made the Premiership a better place over the last twelve months.

Back in 2006, I interviewed Steve Tew at the New Zealand Rugby Football Union. At the time, he was the second most important person in All Blacks rugby. Now he's the first. We were talking about the impact the Pacific Islands have on New Zealand rugby, and he made a pretty convincing case for players from Fiji, Samoa and Tonga looking to come and play for the All Blacks as a way of improving their lifestyles while giving something back to their adopted homes.

Any regular followers of this blog will know that updates have been few and far between since May. As the football season has reached its dramatic climax and the transfer window has reopened, the world of work has come under an enormous and ever increasing amount of pressure from the recession.

A few eyebrows will doubtless be raised by Chelsea's decision to appoint an exotic continental manager with a poor grasp of English just six months after sacking an exotic continental manager with a poor grasp of English. Accusations were certainly cast about Luiz Felipe Scolari's ability to control the dressing room given his alarming accurate impression of an overweight Andrew Sachs� in Fawlty Towers.

A few eyebrows will doubtless be raised by Chelsea's decision to appoint an exotic continental manager with a poor grasp of English just six months after sacking an exotic continental manager with a poor grasp of English. Accusations were certainly cast about Luiz Felipe Scolari's ability to control the dressing room given his alarming accurate impression of an overweight Andrew Sachs� in Fawlty Towers.

Another Champions League semi-final, another season of near misses all but complete for Chelsea fans. Even victory over Everton in the FA Cup would do little to make up for another 12 months of thwarted dreams. I never thought I would say this, but I can almost sympathise with Didier Drogba's reaction.

Richie Jones returns to typically opinionated form with a rallying cry for Tevez to turn to Liverpool.

So in today's Sun it says that Michael Carrick has "issued a ‘please-don't-leave-us' plea to teammate Carlos Tévez," who apparently has been linked with Liverpool. Now, first I would like to point out that I learned this from the BBC website gossip column as I refuse, on principle, to buy The Sun.

Yesterday the shortlist for the PFA Player of the Year was announced, with Liverpool's Steven Gerrard the only man to break Manchester United's domination over the awards - the other contenders are Nemanja Vidić, Ryan Giggs, Rio Ferdinand, Cristiano Ronaldo and Edwin van der Sar. Now there's no doubt that Manchester United have been the best team in the Premiership this season, currently leading the league and bringing home the Club World Championship and League Cup titles.

Richie Jones is back (again), and this time he's being border-line reasonable...

I write this in fevered anticipation of the second leg of the Champions League tie between (my beloved, free-scoring, incomparable) Liverpool, and (the equally free-scoring, but somehow managing to concede three to Bolton) Chelsea.

Thanks to the millions being shelled out by Premiership teams like Manchester City, Tottenham and the big four this season, it is easy to forget that English football is currently seized by its very own credit crunch. Today Luton Town dropped out of the football league for the first time in 89 years in football's equivalent to the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year.