10:06am: To paraphrase Pink Floyd: does anyone here remember ... David James? Well, if you do, you may even be vaguely aware that he's stil on the books of Bristol City and, therefore, is about to get a first-hand view of the Gus Poyet's upwardly mobile Brighton side. He'll also get an answer to the intriguing question posed below by Piltrafilla (punctuation added by me, in the hope that Piltrafilla will try harder next time): "Will Gus Poyet go with Craig 'rooney' Nooney, Will "Bucksfizz' Buckley, Kazenga 'so good they named him twice' Lua Lua or the newly signed Vicente 'little bit of stardust' Rodriguez on the left wing?"
10am: As the All Blacks run in another try, another, entirely unrelated question springs to mind: where could you find David Beckham, slinky young Danish thing Christian Eriksen and no-nonsense, not-much-class striker Rob Hulse clustered together in happy unison. Why, in today's Rumour Mill, of course.
Rugby update: So I left my desk for a moment to negotiate what turned out to be a highly complicated coffee transaction (how do you say 'coffee and milk' in Slick City talk? I thought it was an Americano ... and now here I am with coffee and no milk. Bah!) and I happened to catch sighjt of the rugyb. And I can tell you that New Zealand are already cruising against Tonga, to the tune of 15-0. For more on the rugby world cup, follow Barry Glendenning's ruck-by-gouge account here.
Hello and good morning and welcome and, just to recap because it's early and some of us may have had an unsettled night, hello and good morning and welcome. This is our weekly pre-weekend blog, in which we preview the football weeekend and provide you with regular breaking news, dispatches from managers' press conferences around the country and discuss football matters both weighty and light-hearted.
No Mega Super Sunday Deluxe clashes this weekend but the Premier League promises plenty of intrigue all the same. We could, for instance, get answers to the following questions:
1) HOW THE HECK will Arsenal respond to their 8-2 humiliation at Old Trafford? Will Yossi Benayoun and Mikel Arteta be parachuted straight into the team to rescue the ramshackle Gunners (or will they incur injuries in training and be out for a week ... no, a month ... no, the whole season)? Arsene Wenger his holding a press conference today at which he will, presumably, discuss those very matters and, as ever, the mental state of the most psycholanalysed team in the land. We have a correspondent in situ to bring you the news from there.
2) Has there ever been a more catchy rallying cry than the one bugled by the Everton fans who are organising a protest march at Goodison Park ahead of the home game against Aston Villa tomorrow. Frustrated by the "stagnation" of their club, they're calling for radical change. Here's their snappy call-to–arms: "The aim of the protest is to promote the concept of allowing the CEO to be left to concentrate on reducing costs, developing our revenue streams and repairing the relationship with the fanbase whilst leaving the board to appoint a fully autonomous group of professional individuals who can effectively develop and implement a strategy that will identify and sell the club to a buyer who can demonstrate an ability and a genuine desire to take the club forward on both a commercial and football level." Take that, anyone who says modern football is just big business!
3) Do Manchester City constitute the ultimate test of Roberto Martinez's ability to organise a defence?
4) Are Chelsea back on the up now that Juan Mata and Romelu Lukaku are here and will that pair start at Sunderland? Or do their problems require deeper surgery than that?
5) Will Wolves go top of the table? by beating Spurs by a landslide (and, um, profiting from shock defeats for the Manchester clubs, Liverpool and Chelsea)? Or will Emmanuel Adebayor help inflict their first defeat of the season?
6) Will Andy Carroll go on the lash against Stoke and bag his first Premier League goals of the season? Or will Tony Pulis's commandos ambush Liverpool's bandwagon?
(Try to imagine the next batch of questions being posed in some sort of converted warehouse and in the company of resolutely non-shiny-shirt wearing, blue-collar pundits such as Steve Claridge, the set-up seemingly being chosen to underline the more gritty, real nature of lower league football).
7) Will the Saints go marching on? and fell Nottingham Forest, thereby ensuring Steve McLaren gets the chop?
8) Will Chesterfield get the first win of their season against Bournemouth?
9) Are Scunthorpe the team to blunt Sheffield United?. Well, are they?
10) Will Lawrie Sanchez embellish his CV by adding a victory over Crewe, one of the few teams currently below his Barnet side in League Two.
If you any other questions - or, even better, if you have answers - please post them below or send them by email.
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