Yesterday's
Guardian featured a piece discussing the weakness of both teams competing for
the Ashes.

It was headlined: 'May the less bad team win'.

ED has shown its appreciation by pinching the title to describe this season's
Premier League race (but substituting 'least' for 'less', pedantry fans).

Xabi Alonso's imminent departure from Liverpool
to Real Madrid means that all four of the main contenders go into the present
campaign in a weaker position than last year.

While the slide
may not be as drastic as Australia's from 2005 to 2009, you feel the champions will be
the team who deteriorate

Early Doors is not going to accuse Steven Gerrard of deliberately throwing a match - not until video evidence of a News of the World sting emerges, anyway.

The Liverpool captain's poor back pass led to Didier Drogba's opener as Chelsea won 2-0 at Anfield, tightening their grip on the title.

The man the tabloids still insist on calling 'Gerro', even though no sane person in the real world does so, did his utmost to help the Blues towards winning the league, and stopping Manchester United overtaking their record haul of league championships in the process.

The back pass was eerily similar to

Mick McCarthy
could face punitive action from the Premier League after making 10 changes to
his team to face Manchester United last night.

Angry visiting
fans who saw a shadow side slump to a 3-0 defeat chanted: "What a waste of money", "Where
is our first team?" and "Forty quid to watch the reserves".

Section E, rule
20 of the Premier League's rules and
regulations states that: "In every league match each participating club shall
field a full-strength team".

By effectively putting
out a team of reserves at Old Trafford, did McCarthy contravene that rule, and
must he have the book thrown at

Was it anger, frustration or merely embarrassment that led to Arsene Wenger storming off down the tunnel at Eastlands without shaking Mark Hughes's hand?

Wenger's misplaced belief in his latest crop of youngsters was shown up as Arsenal lost 3-0 to Manchester City in their Carling Cup quarter-final, their third defeat in their last four matches.

The Gunners have now shipped 10 goals in their last three trips to the City of Manchester Stadium, and Wenger left the dugout right on the final whistle, neglecting to congratulate his opposite number.

The beef had been bubbling under nicely throughout

Fabio
Capello claimed he learned valuable lessons from England's shambolic display against Brazil in Doha - presumably
that a one-legged Gary Neville would be a better option for South Africa than Wes Brown.

Despite the
dreadful performance, Capello is probably right. It would have been nice for England to play
well, but at this stage it is just as important to find out who is rubbish as
who is good.

Capello's first XI for the World Cup is almost nailed down.
Between now and June his job will be to whittle his squad down to 23.

If he can
now strike Brown, Darren Bent and Jermaine Jenas off

Two days remain until the start of Euro 2008, and the excitement in Austria and Switzerland has reached feverish levels.

Which, in medical terms, means about 39 degrees centigrade - only slightly higher than normal, but enough to make you feel quite unwell.

Early Döorß might hail from a remote Alpine hamlet inhabited only by mountain goats and some distant relatives of the Governor of California, but it will admit its motherland is not fit to host a major football tournament.

Like most Austrians, it wants the country to, like any good Catholic, pull out to avoid embarrassment and focus

Have Help The Aged got nothing better to do than dispute the claim that footballers over the age of 30 are not likely to improve much?

The codger-friendly charity have weighed into the debate on whether Chelsea are too old to win the title, with a clearly very bored spokesperson taking issue with Alex Ferguson's (pictured above, possibly at a bus stop) claim that Big Phil's side are a bit past it.

"In 2008, age is no longer an acceptable yardstick to measure a person's worth ot potential. There's a lot to be said for experience," said Kate Jopling.

"People should never be written off because

Early Doors doesn't understand the world any more. Is there money in football or not?

On the one hand, West Ham are in grave danger of getting credit crunched so comprehensively they will soon be nothing more than one of those small metal cubes that used to be a Ford Sierra.

English clubs are £3 billion in debt - and nearly two-thirds of that belongs to the big four.

The FA and UEFA are urging the introduction of a salary cap to prevent the imminent implosion of every club in the universe.

Yet, at the same time, foreign consortia plough billions into English clubs with no real prospect of