HenryThierry Henry followed the script to a tee last night when he came off the bench to score the winner against Leeds United on his second Arsenal 'debut'.

The Gunners legend is back in North London on loan from New York Red Bulls during the MLS off-season, and he hit his mark and delivered his lines on his return from the Big Apple with as much precision and finesse as any star on Broadway.

All of the platitudes about his 78th-minute winner that sends Arsenal into the fourth round of the FA Cup - "It had to be him", "He's rolling back the years", "Like he'd never been away" etc — may be about as

Aguero new blogWhether you regard the FA Cup as an outdated inconvenience, a welcome distraction or the greatest cup competition in the world™, best enjoyed while washing down a few, crisp, smooth American lagers, you can't deny that this season's third round has been eventful.

SHOCK! League Two outfit Swindon beat Wigan (still technically a Premier League club), while Stevenage defeated Reading, Crawley eliminated Bristol City and Sheffield Wednesday stunned West Ham.

SACK! Failure to beat MK Dons resulted in Queens Park Rangers sacking manager Neil Warnock.

HE'S BACK! Paul Scholes comes out of retirement

The FA Cup (Budweiser not pictured)Last night, as its Twitter feed filled with the names of soap flops, risible X-Factor 'bad boys' and some woman called Giggs - all accompanied by the dreaded #CBB hashtag - Early Doors remembered: this is what happens on days with no top-flight football.

It is now over a week since the last day with no Premier League action. Thursday, December 29 - a date about which ED remembers nothing since it was still deep in a figgy pudding and eggnog-induced coma.

As living, breathing self-parody Andrew Stone entered the house (or as ED knows him, 'the other dunderhead from Pineapple Dance Studios'), it

Rio Ferdinand: reelingWe are barely past the halfway point of the season, and already the champions have notched up their third crisis of the campaign.

Crisis number one saw them lose 6-1 at home to Manchester City.

Crisis number two saw them knocked out of the Champions League.

Crisis number three has seen them slump to consecutive defeats to Blackburn and Newcastle.

Mind, they are in good company. Arsenal spent the first two months teetering on some imaginary precipice, Liverpool are obviously reeling and Man City also went out of the Champions League.

Meanwhile, Chelsea has been reported as a place of 'open

Yesterday evening began with Liverpool announcing, in the most petulant manner imaginable, that they would not appeal Luis Suarez's eight-match ban.

There is not much ED has to say that it did not say after the initial 'guilty' verdict.

Liverpool's latest extraordinary rant against Patrice Evra and the FA brings more dishonour on one of this country's great football clubs.

Parts of Liverpool's argument have merit, and they are perfectly entitled to stand behind a player who has made a serious error of judgement but is not fundamentally racist.

However, their refusal to accept even the

Neil Warnock shouts the odds at some poor sapNew Year, same old anger steaming out of the Premier League's dugouts.

At the head of 2012's vanguard of rage storms QPR boss Neil Warnock, whose acid-tongued rants are starting to wear thin even on Early Doors.

The delightful Warnock appears to have found a loophole in the rules regarding criticism of refs.

Rather than accuse the match officials of incompetence, he expresses mock sympathy for them while labelling opposition players as cheats.

His reaction to Joey Barton's red card against Norwich amounted to nothing less than a character assassination of Bradley Johnson.

It was a frankly

Roberto ManciniAfter a month when all anyone has done is talk about racism, it is nice to get excited about football again.

The New Year's weekend saw the Premier League's biggest fish gasping for air while some guy in a lumberjack shirt held them aloft for a photo opportunity.

Sure, they'll get thrown back into the sea and start devouring everything in sight, but goodness wasn't it sweet to see them flapping around helplessly for a while?

***End of dreadful metaphor***

For the first time in five years, both Manchester clubs and Chelsea lost on the same weekend, and though Early Doors happily embraced the

Arsenal are reportedly on the verge of resigning Thierry Henry, and the prospect has Gunners fans salivating and everyone else talking. Never has the old footballing maxim 'never go back' seemed less fashionable.

Arsene Wenger looks poised to sign up the 34-year-old Frenchman, who has been training with the Gunners to keep his fitness levels up, in part because he is set to lose Gervinho and Marouane Chamakh to the African Cup of Nations in January and February; oh, and his forwards bar Robin van Persie are quite simply not very good.

If everything goes according to plan, Arsenal hope to have