Under normal circumstances, a big club signing a 21-year-old with all of one senior appearance under his belt would hardly get noticed.

Maybe the club just wanted an extra body to fill out the squad, maybe they wanted to give their new Brazilian star somebody to talk to, or maybe they did it as a 'favour' to some shady agent.

But when the club is Arsenal, everybody sits up and takes notice. Therefore, great excitement greeted the plucking of Amaury Bischoff from the total obscurity of Werder Bremen reserves on a free.

He breaks the Arsene Wenger mould by not hailing from West Africa.

Robbie Keane proudly showed off the 'mythical' Liverpool number seven shirt yesterday, but recent history would suggest he is letting himself in for years of injury and ineffective appearances on the wing.

Look at Liverpool's number sevens since 1971 and you'll do well not to notice dramatically diminishing returns.

The shirt went from Kevin Keegan to Kenny Dalglish to Peter Beardsley to Nigel Clough to Steve McManaman to Vladimir Smicer to Harry Kewell.

Switch Clough and McManaman and you would have a perfect downward trajectory, mirroring the club's slide into

Today marks
the start of pre-season training for the Premier League's
brave football aces.

Having
spent just six weeks messing around on the golf course or getting bored on a
beach with their Page 3 WAGs, it is time for our fittest and finest to put their
perfectly-bronzed noses back to the grindstone.

For those
teams lucky enough not to be involved in the chore of European qualifying or
Community Shield, the season starts on August 15.

And they
can expect a pretty tough workout between now and then - as our sample
pre-season schedule will show you.

The Premier League player's pre-season

Emmanuel Adebayor is in a bit of a pickle. He
plays for Manchester
City against Arsenal
tomorrow and is going to be given a torrid time by the visiting fans.

Gooners were delighted when Adebayor left
the club, after the striker was deemed to have stopped trying last season -
notably during the Champions League semi-final against Manchester United.

After joining City he has started
scoring goals again - and it has been said he has a point to prove when
Arsenal visit.

Normally, scoring a goal is the right way
to prove a point, but it depends on what exactly that point is.

If Adebayor finds the

Well, for 85 minutes the best club competition in the world was a whole lot of nothing.

Both Liverpool and Chelsea looked set for drab goalless draws in the Champions League, the Blues in a game of quite breathtaking awfulness.

Then it all changed - at least it did at Anfield. First Dirk Kuyt saw his keeper-bound effort take a deflection over Julio Cesar, then Steven Gerrard slammed home the first 'wondergoal' to bounce three times before reaching its target.

Still, Liverpool deserved their win, producing a performance that, in equal measures, made you marvel at their ability to deliver when

ED had a moment or two on its hands yesterday, so on a whim, it decided to do an internet search for 'goal machine'. The computer fired back an interesting range of answers.

First up was something called a 'goal machine calculator', a clever bit of kit from New Zealand that can help you work out how much you will need to save regularly to reach a specific financial goal.

No help to misfiring strikers there then, but as expected, a brief musical reference aside, the remainder of the search engine's top answers related to football, and more specifically, the holy union of onion bag and ball.

Like Bonnie Tyler, Mariah Carey and (gulp) Nickelback, Early Doors has a thing for heroes.

So imagine its delight five minutes from time in last night's game at Anfield, when Arsenal's mandatory late goal came courtesy of a man who was so overhyped, so early in his career, that at the age of 19 and three weeks he is widely considered past it.

(Incidentally, Early Doors finds it curious that Arsenal are so good at the end of games and so rubbish at the end of seasons.)

Theo Walcott collected the ball from a Liverpool corner and slalomed the length of the pitch, beating four men before squaring

Newcastle gaffer, and well renowned tactical genius, Kevin Keegan has kick started reinvention week.

Michael Owen scored his third goal in as many club games at Tottenham yesterday - playing as a midfielder behind the front two.

"This is the position you have to play in this football club because that is where you are most use for us," Keegan explained to Owen with his usual level of in-depth analysis.

Of course this has been done before. Ray Kennedy won the Double with Arsenal before Bob Paisley converted him into a midfield player at Liverpool.

Of more recent vintage, Paul Scholes started as