That is exactly what this young side needs. Victories against Fulham and West Brom on the back of Wednesday’s win against Roma will set Arsenal on track for a strong end to the season. The coveted fourth Champion’s League spot will be theirs, but more importantly, a growing confidence will accompany the young Gunners to the next season. If they can welcome the return of Fabregas and Rosisky, land Klass Jan Huntelaar and reap the best of Ashavin, Nasri, Denilson and Diaby, Arsenal will be scintillating. For the sake of the EPL – I hope they are! Watching United run away with yet another title is simply getting old, as has yet another failed Liverpool attempt. In the age where cash wins championships, let there be a team of enthusiastic young ones strung together on a tight budget playing attractive passing football with sheer pride and bravery to win the league. Bring on the underdog!

Until then, all we have to settle for is an exciting relegation battle.

With only seven points separating 13^th and 20^th place, a win by either of the bottom clubs can see them leap frog out of the drop zone. Make it two wins and they are up to a comfortable mid table place. Sorry, did I say comfortable?

Playing in the top flight for the first time, Hull City at 13^th place in the middle of the table are anything but comfortable.  With 29 points raked in and six points above the drop zone, they face Blackburn, Newcastle, Portsmouth and Middlesbrough ready to overtake Hull in the coming weeks. A loss in any of these games will put Hull in a very precarious position. The toughest test awaits as their last five games see fixtures against the likes of Manchester United, Liverpool and Villa.  Middle of the table at the end of February, Hull City may very well make a quick return to The Championship.

The clubs in this ‘sinking seven’ are presenting a treat to all the neutrals alike. Tottenham, the Carling Cup finalist and currently one spot below Hull, have 4 games against each of the top four and another four games against fellow relegation strugglers. Blackburn, the only non – ‘Big 4’ team to have won the Premier League and now third from the bottom, are up against three of the ‘Big 4’ with another five games against the other relegation fighters. With nothing separating the bottom seven, the season is shaping out to be a game of Relegation Roulette. 

Liverpool fans out there, I am sad to say, but today is going to be a nightmare, for this is when it will all come apart. Let’s start with the Premiership. The draw against Man City over the weekend meant that Liverpool reached their tenth draw this season. Both Liverpool and United have roughly the same away form (Liverpool have one more win and United one more loss), but it is at Anfield that Liverpool are particularly disappointing. They have drawn six times there, all games which they were favourites to win, so it has to be considered 12 points lost.

United have lost twice this season. Since the start of the EPL, they have lost an average of five and a half games a season, which is good news for Liverpool fans. If Liverpool have a perfect run-in and United lose their quota of games, the title will go to the Reds. The statistics-backed truth couldn’t be further from the title however. United’s average is based on 16 years. Their average number of losses a season for the past five years come in at just under five games.  And then there is the matter of considering Liverpool’s average, which is somewhere at the wrong end of eight and a bit losses.

The painful truth? Liverpool have had a fantastic season so far, outperforming their average self.  United have been about the same as previous seasons, Chelsea quite a bit worse, and Arsenal pretty much terrible. That is why Liverpool are second in the league. Good progress as it is, this has come at the expense of domestic cups, and at the grace of Arsenal and Chelsea. The occasional League or FA trophy appeases fans. This year, Liverpool run a real risk of a second consecutive trophyless season.

The reason for the pain? Its cash money, plain and simple. When United beat Blackburn at the weekend, they had five players, Carrick, Ferdinand, Nani, Berbatov, and Rooney, that cost more than 15 million quid. That’s not counting the likes of Ronaldo, who only cost 12 million, and Hargreaves, Tevez and Anderson, who were either on the bench or out injured. United easily have nine players that were bought (rather than their current value) at more than 15 million.

The Liverpool team who drew at “Fortress Anfield” to the team with the worst away record had two players bought for 15 million or more: Mascherano and Torres. And that was it, there is nothing else. The most expensive player on the bench was Babel, increasingly looking like an older John Barnes on a diet of jerk chicken, who was bought for 11 million pounds.

Like having someone pull a plaster off as slowly as possible, tonight’s game against Real Madrid is going to be painful for Liverpool fans. Rafa Benitez has said that the game has no bearing on the security of his job, which basically means that his American owners have said that he better deliver the Cup or ship out.

When the Champions League draw was made, the tie against Madrid looked like an easy one. The next thing Real did was lose their match against Barcelona and all but concede the title. Since then, they have not lost a game, scoring ten goals in their last two, and have cut their twelve point deficit to seven. Liverpool have seen an eight point lead converted into a seven-point gap.

If Liverpool go a goal down, Benitez won’t be able to resist playing Gerrard. In the worst case, Gerrard will get injured, Liverpool will lose, Benitez will get fired and Liverpool will start to “rebuild” their squad yet again, still with little poundage and with less tactical expertise, and United will have tied their record for most number of domestic titles. In the best case scenario, the only difference will be that Gerrard won’t get injured.

Whatever it is, I somehow sympathise with them. This year was their best ever start to a Premiership campaign. They had a seven point lead over Manchester United on New Year’s Day. Now, they trail United by the same amount. Many Liverpool fans are now declaring that it is already too big a gap for them to recover with just a dozen more games to go.

It’s a truly sad turn of events and Liverpudlians look ready to throw in the towel. Everything they have tried close to two decades now has failed, so it is probably a natural progression to probably hope for the only one person who has actually gazumped United in the recent past - Jose Mourinho.

How could we blame them? Being the only ones among what we consider the Big 4 without a Premiership title must be rough as it is. And then to lose such a big advantage that they managed to garner early on is probably like the final twist of the knife.   

The thought of the serpent-tongued, self-claimed-messiah, making a return to the EPL by joining Liverpool is entertaining. It would be quite remarkable on multiple levels. That man alone could probably save the British tabloids from recession and, truth be told renew that drama that we have missed in the last two seasons. Who knows, maybe even give the Reds a title.

Even with him currently coaching in Italy, Mourinho’s comments and views about the EPL is still thoroughly amusing. His disagreement with Arsene Wenger’s comments on Man United being “untouchable” a day before his Inter faces Sir Alex’s Devil’s was classic Jose. And not just that but to imply that Man United’s successes and their great game was somehow his doing is a stroke of pure genius.

Even though Jose's successes at Porto have come under scrutiny due to the revelation of Porto’s match fixing scandal, and perhaps his success is more a factor of money rather than his coaching prowess (Abrahamovic's billions), but the fact of the matter is, Mourino is a lovable rogue. Can you imagine being Ferguson right now? Waking up early in the morning, well rested before flying off to Milan to play a relatively tough fixture at the San Siro. You're sipping your morning cuppa, grab the newspapers, flip to the sports section and see that the same annoying twit you finally managed to get off your back over a year back, boasting and taking credit for your team’s fine performance and victories, since. 

Now you can’t help but watch tonight's game. And the psychological pressure is suddenly not on the team facing the defending champions, but the defending champions themselves. To add to that, Beckham has openly warned his former club of the dangers that Adriano and Ibrahmovic present and that is certainly not going to help his former team’s morale.

Not always has Mourinho beat Sir Alex with a better squad or tactics. It was exactly these kinds of little things which he is so good at that probably gave Chelsea the upper hand on numerous occasions. The Special One is certainly not holding back even now, and expect Inter to beat United tonight, partially because of his “off the field” tactics.

In any case, I'm expecting to meet more Liverpool fans determined that Mourinho is the right man at Anfield in the days to come. Especially if Inter secure that win tonight.

The race to the Premiership title is slowly revealing itself as a bore of a lone marathon. Watching Man United gallop away with the title is like watching Paula Radcliffe in one of her road races. There is just something off-putting about both their styles but it is effective and more often than not, they cross the finish line ahead of the rest.

This last week, United made doubly sure of winning the title by first demolishing Fulham midweek and followed that up with a weekend win over relegation threatened Blackburn Rovers. United may have lost their run of clean sheets when Roque Santa Cruz scored for Blackburn in United’s 2-1 victory, but the win put them eight points clear of second-placed Liverpool with only 12 games to play.

The manner of victory itself was slightly fortunate. Cristiano Ronaldo could well have been sent off if the referee had not missed him kicking out at David Dunn. A strong appeal for a penalty when Morten Gamst Pedersen went down in the United box was also waved away by referee Howard Webb. To make matters worse for Blackburn, Ronaldo grabbed the winner on the hour with an audacious free kick.

How Liverpool wished they could get themselves out of trouble like United. They may have already performed miracles this season but it seems a Liverpool season collapse is becoming as regular as the expected capitulation when the England cricket team goes out to bat.

Man City, low on morale, almost illogically produced their finest away performance of the season to earn a point at Anfield. The combination of resolute opponents and Liverpool’s own inability to create clear-cut chances has meant this was the sixth team to leave Anfield with a draw, none of them from the top four. In contrast, United have only dropped 2 points at home all season long. What a difference those 12 points could have made to the title race if Liverpool had won all their home matches.

Those familiar problems for Liverpool began to resurface: a lack of incisive passing, over-dependence on a certain absent captain and an inability to convert chances. Though, Liverpool could well count themselves unlucky as they always seem to come up against teams in particularly good form on the day.  Although Liverpool hardly deserved any more from the game, if the referee had spotted City’s Richard Dunne punching away a goal bound Yossi Benayoun header, it could well have been a repeat of the stirring comeback at the City of Manchester Stadium earlier in the season.

The only consolation for Liverpool is that in previous seasons, they may not even have had the courage or quality to get the equaliser, let alone the winner after going a goal down to such stubborn opposition. The title may also already have been all but mathematically beyond them. At the moment, at least they still have hope.

Liverpool have still only lost one game all season in the league and although their task of usurping United are not impossible, time is running out fast. They may already need some help from opposing teams to stop United, but they need to get their own house in order, and fast.

Trumpets have been blowing all week. “Chelski in chaos”. Arsene Wenger admits United are “untouchable” and now talk of Uniteds “psychological boost” against Liverpool. It is as if Uniteds ribbons are already on the Premier League trophy. 

And why not? With United’s fearsome form, records have broken on route to the top of Premiership. The Ferdinand-Vidic backline has become a fortress. In the midfield, United boast its ‘evergreen’ duo of Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs playing like it is 1996 again. Fergies forwards are giving him a headache as he is spoilt for choice between $486 million worth of talent in Rooney, Ronaldo, Berbatov and Tevez.  It’s all been said before, two trophies already in the bag - another four lie in wait. 

But let’s not get too excited. The fixture list is excruciating. Winning the League and all the other riches is going to be a herculean task. In the span of eight days, United are up against Blackburn, Inter Milan and Tottenham in Premier League, Champions League and League Cup clashes respectively. 

Ok, so Blackburn isn’t going to be a problem. In fact, Van Der Sar will welcome the chance to win the European record for clean sheets at Ewood Park. While the goalie receives the accolades, let’s not forget Vidic. The steady Serb has been winning header, and tackles in all of United’s 14 clean sheets. It is no wonder Van Der Sar had only 24 saves to make in the last 14 encounters.  

But that might soon come to an end. With a certain Jose Mourinho and the golden boots of Zlatan Ibrahimovich, United’s recent run of form might hit a wall. The stats don’t lie. Mourinho leads Ferguson 6-1 in head to head encounters. To make matters worse, Inter just tucked away a star studded AC Milan to put them 9 points clear at the top of the Serie A. If they survive Inter, United have the likes of Real, Juventus, Barcelona and Porto amongst others to deal with.  

From the Champions League, United travel to Cardiff for the Carling Cup Final. With Robbie Keane and Jermaine Defoe back at the helm, the Lilywhites will be charged to defend the trophy they won a year ago. Fighting relegation, out of the FA cup and trailing Shaktar Donetsk by two goals in the UEFA cup, this tiny trophy is their only shot of pride this season. United will have their hands full as Ferguson fields his young fledglings who brought them to this final. 

Turning our eyes back to the Premier League, both United and Liverpool have 13 games to go. Vidic and Berbatov talk about the 5 point lead being a big psychological advantage for United. They need to brush up on their history. Psychology counted for nothing as United overcame a 10 point league to pip Newcastle for the title in 1996. Again it counted for nothing as United did the exact opposite as they blew a 12 point league to let Arsenal win the league in 1998. 

Looking ahead, United are up against Liverpool on March 14. Assuming all things remain unchanged, a Liverpool win at Old Trafford can set the stage for a nail biting finish. From there, United risk dropping points at Villa, Spurs, City and Arsenal while Liverpool face similar challenges with Villa, Arsenal and Spurs.   
Come May 24^th, the ribbons on the trophy are undoubtedly going to be red and white. Liverpool or Manchester, something tells me Arsenal will decide.

Hold on to your horses. The return of Eduardo, the much missed Croatian striker is a great relief for the Gunners but not necessarily the answer to all their woes and suffering form.

Two superb strikes on his return and it looks like Eduardo has picked up exactly where he left it a year back with that horrendous injury. That's a great start for someone who many believed to have been forced into early retirement. It also surely is a major moral booster to Arsene who has been losing everyone that mattered to injury, one at a time.

Eduardo's return is quite timely, with Adebayor sidelined for at least three weeks with a hamstring injury he suffered against Tottenham a week and a half back. There is still the 21-year-old Danish international Bendtner as an option up front, but the lad is still young, inexperienced and it shows on the field. He's a tough kid, makes the runs, fights for the headers but has yet to hone his killer instinct that is much needed to find the back of the net consistently. So all his remarks of how he should be starting all games is just immature gibberish.

Goals, or more accurately the lack of them regularly, has been Arsenal's biggest problem the whole season. Since the absence of Fabregas, the midfield has become non-existent with Denilson and Diaby unable to successfully hold or make use of the centre to supply the balls forward. As a result, an already shaky and unconfident forward line now does not even have chances to try their luck.

Van Persie has pretty much been a one man attack force for the Gunners for months now. Seriously, this over reliance on him alone to produce result was becoming something of joke for a team like Arsenal, who are undoubtedly considered one of the finest teams in the EPL and Europe.

Eduardo's return is therefore a more than welcome and should ease the pressure on the Van Persie to a certain extent. Plus with new signing Arshavin currently building his match fitness should add more fire power to the Gunners' frontline. But despite these developments, for us Gunners fans to start celebrating and suddenly raising our expectations will likely prove to be trap.

For Arsenal to actually stage a comeback to break back into say the top three will need the entire currently missing team (including Rosicky) to come back, Sagna learning how to cross, Diaby being able to pass, Nasri and Vela manhandling opponent defenders, and everyone on the first team to play in top form for the rest of the season. That plus a substantial amount of luck. The odds of all this happening immediately isn't exactly low, so lets not get carried away too soon.

This weekend against Sunderland, with the return of Walcott and Arshavin on his debut, will probably be the first glimpse into what we can expect from the Gunners in the remaining dozen odd games. It would probably be best not to expect anything spectacular but I'm pretty sure it is not going to be as torturous as the last few games we have painfully been subjected to. 

What are we to make of Hiddink’s appointment? To begin with, he is certainly one of the most respected managers in the game. His successes with the South Korean, Australian and Russian national teams cemented that reputation. Together with a successful club period with PSV in the earlier part of this decade, Hiddink has largely been beyond reproach when it comes to a discussion about his managerial ability. He is deemed to have a golden managerial touch despite notable difficulties in the past managing clubs in Spain and the Dutch national team.

As far as respected managers go, Hiddink has few equals. He should command the respect of the Chelsea players, at least initially. But Scolari’s example also shows that even a World Cup winner can be forced out by player power. But, rest assured, we can expect the crafty Hiddink to be able to negotiate the huge egos at Stamford Bridge. He is famous for being a superb man-manager and motivator. He is able to get the best out of his players regardless of where he has coached.

Tactically, he is also extremely astute. He is said to not favour any particular system, preferring to assess the players he has at Chelsea before deciding the shape of the team. From Korea’s 3-4-3 to Australia’s 4-5-1 formation, Hiddink has shown that he can bring success given different cultural and tactical scenarios. That will stand him in good stead as he assumes control at Chelsea. Perhaps, the most salient point to consider is does he have the time and ultimate focus of his players to get the way he wants them to play? In his previous jobs, he had total control, and those around him moved mountains all so he could do his job well.

It was already reported that he has spoken to a number of players in private and also had a hand in the team tactics in Chelsea’s FA Cup triumph over Watford on Saturday. If that performance was to give any clue to Hiddink’s thinking, then solidity will be a key point, with Chelsea’s fullbacks ordered not to attack with as much verve and careless adventure.

But the main question is whether Hiddink can be Chelsea’s hero at the end of the season, rescuing them from a 10-point gap to overhaul Manchester United? The advantage is that Hiddink has no pressure on him. If he does not succeed then critics will deem he did not have enough time and he assumed an impossible position at the club. People are half-expecting Chelsea not to turn their season around and that would suit Hiddink just fine as the underdog. It is when Hiddink and his teams are underestimated that they are at their most dangerous. As he has shown with all the most recent teams he has managed, you ignore Hiddink at your own peril.

Scenario 1: Manchester United take the title (again)

Not only will it be a historical victory which sees the Red Devils complete yet another three-peat for Sir ALex, it will also see them tie the all time title win record with fierce rivals Liverpool. He will thank his boys' hard work and good fortunes, but Scolari's sacking will be seen as one of the potential reasons and bumps as to why pre-season favourites Chelsea were probably not able to stop the big red machine.

Scenario 2: Chelsea takes the title

The Blues make a historic comeback from fourth place and edge out the Devils to take the crown. The credit will undoubtedly all go to Golden Guus, who worked his miracle yet again to achieve what was thought impossible. Abramovich is genius for having seen the flaws in his club under Scolari and having successfully secured Hiddink's services. Hiddink might quit coaching the Russian team to stay on at Stamford Bridge after all. And get the sack in the following mid-season when Abramovich decides he can manage Chelsea all by himself. 

Scenario 3: Manchester City sign Kaka or Messi

Despite getting a fair share of bad press and being often times ridiculed throughout the course of this season, if City manage to finally sign more super stars they are going to look back to last week and pat themselves on the back for officially removing Thaksin from their board of directors and as the club chairman. The former Thai premier is somewhat an international fugitive and having him on the board has been detrimental to City's already suffering image under their new Abu Dhabi owners. Thaksin's omission does not automatically make this club that much more appealing, but at least, I would argue, it is a step in the right direction. 

Scenario 4: Portsmouth get relegated

Already tied for 16^th position, Pompey are severely lacking in form. Now with the departure of Tony Adams there will only be a bunch of assistants trying to save the team from a season in the Coca Cola. The bigger blame might fall on Redknapp's departure, but Adams (though untested) will probably be their last proper manager for this season. In any case even if Portsmouth manages to stay clear of relegation, once again Tony's departure might be regarded a wise decision.

Now all we can do is wait and see how it will all play out. But what we can definitely say with some degree of certainty is that this week will go down as one of those rare 7 days that changed the EPL.