Midweek action

It may have occurred sooner than expected, but my first hearty laugh of the season arrived on Wednesday night when Christiano Ronaldo's red card sent me into a tight-fisted Tim Henman-esque celebration on my own sofa just before midnight. And yes, it's that important to me.

What do you get when 34 fixtures involving 68 teams get played? Absolutely no TV highlights, that's what. Ok, so there weren't many upsets in there, but if I were a Morecambe fan I'd be positively tearing my hair out at the lack of coverage of our 2-1 away win at Preston. Grimsby took Burnley to penalties but lost, and Shrewsbury beat Colchester after extra time. Rochdale beat Stoke on penalties and my relegation favourites Leyton Orient followed up their excellent weekend win at Southend with a 2-1 away win at QPR. I suppose I should mention MK Dons' win over Ipswich, but franchise clubs don't deserve any sorts of mentions.

Kieron bloody Dyer has finally joined West Ham from Newcastle for "something in the region of £6m," reports the BBC. At 28-years old Dyer has most probably pissed the best part of his career by - sorry, I mean passed the best part of his career by - and one can't help but feel that he never fulfilled his potential. Instead of concentrating on his profession like a professional he was paid to be, he acquired an attitude, urinated in the streets of Newcastle and seeked to express his essentially working-class identity by learning to fight with his own teammates. However, your Spy has to question the intelligence of anyone who actively seeks to annoy and antagonise Lee 'The Mentalist' Bowyer into a fight in front of 60,000 people.

Well, it's good to see Manchester United in the bottom half of the table at any time of the season. I can't say I'm thrilled to see Chelsea at the top after two opening victories but you can't expect everything, can you? In fact, you can't even expect normal things like Mark Lawrenson talking sense, or ITV making and showing decent highlights programmes.

It was the clash of the titans; the meeting of the big bollocks last night when Arbroath took on Alloa in the Scottish Challenge Cup first round and won 2-0, heaping further misery on Alloa after their rubbish 6-0 defeat at home to Airdrie at the weekend. And it is Airdrie who will play Arbroath in the second round, which then goes straight into the quarter finals after that. The Scots don't like to mess around with these things.

Oh no, here we go: Sheffield United are now wanting compensation from West Ham for their relegation from the Premiership last season, opening up yet another legal row that's bound to come to an obvious conclusion and prove once again that taking things to court is just an incredible waste of time and money for what could be decided by two chimps locked in the same room for ten minutes. Call me stupid, but doesn't this already exist in the form of 'Parachute Payments', covered by the Premier League, which is quickly helping to create and establish elitism in the Championship?

I'm not used to midweek Premiership action so early on in the season. If you were as cynical as your favourite Spy then you would make a logical assumption that this is an effort by the chief fixture list people to create more time for those teams in European competitions to complete their oh-so-important European ties. If they love European cup football so much, why don't they just go ahead and marry it.