To anyone who reads these mutterings on a regular basis, something will immediately become clear – namely that any team I have seen and thought of as being on the up is thereafter condemned to a prolonged losing streak. So to the fans of Everton, Fulham, Spurs and Man City, I apologise. All I can say is that I didn’t realise I was doing it. I really did think that those teams and their managers were doing OK.

I can’t work out whether injuries are a cause or a symptom of these temporary, but sometimes stunning, collapses of form. Sometimes, the team’s progress into the ‘pointless zone’ seems to have come about because of injury to a key player. Everton’s Fellaini is a case in point. Some fulsome praise from Jeff and the next week he’s on the treatment table. 

The same seems to have been true of Ashley Cole, though he might well have brought other offences to the court of the gods, who are the ultimate arbiters in the court of good luck. I would have to mark down John Terry’s alarming form collapse to the same mysterious movers, and of course, to similar offences. I can’t think I’ve mentioned him more than once, and I have no reason to want to interrupt England’s already thin chances of embarassing Brazil, Italy, Spain or Argentina in South Africa this summer.

In my defence, I would say that (many) players have been injured without my recognising their achievements at all. I remain totally guiltless for example, regarding any mention of Aaron Ramsey and his broken leg from the weekend’s Arsenal encounter with Stoke.

So, in future, what I’ll do is this. I’ll just casually mention a hint of the teams and the players I think are doing particularly well at that moment. The ‘lads who play adjacent to the Thames’ perhaps or ‘the midlanders with the Northern Irish manager’.

And for the sake of England’s chances at the World Cup, I shall steer clear of referring to the lad who plays up front for the Reds, ever.

Instead, perhaps (because I’m feeling guilty) I have to recount a conversation with my Arsenal supporting friend, who thinks England should play with ‘more flair’. Talk of some of the candidates for England’s left back position have clearly driven him to distraction. I had to point out that it was all very well for Rob Steen (in his book, The Mavericks) to describe a generation of lost talent (Frank Worthington, Stan Bowles, Peter Osgood etc) but all of them had a problem actually turning up on the few occasions they were picked for England.

And really, better an average England, than no England at all.

And so the Bridge vs Terry saga continues. My personal hope was that Bridge would get over his personal issues with Terry and do his bit for England. Sadly this doesn’t appear to be the case.

In retrospect, Capello has been in a no-win situation with England. While there are many quality players, I question whether they had “leadership” qualities. In fact, I maintain there are two outstanding candidates- Beckham and Rooney. Fair enough, Beckham can’t be on the pitch for 90 mins and Rooney is still a bit too young.

What this situation has a shown is that the issue ran deeper than merely giving Terry a rap on the knuckles. For Bridge, this slight is too much for him. While I think referring to him as a “bottler” is harsh, the hardened cynic in me can’t help thinking this sad fact- he will never be first choice.

Ashley Cole is another high profile England player with severe character faults. Then again he is also not captain. It seems a strange contradiction in our moral perceptions. But then I have experience of the inherent hypocrisy of the English psyche.

Every so often there is just a delectable story that comes along; this time it’s from the controversial world of men’s figure skating. Days after winning a silver medal at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, Evgeni Plushenko launched his campaign to make the world aware that Evan Lysacek was not the true men’s figure skating champion at the games – and let’s be honest, Evan didn’t even attempt a quad jump in his routine, which really irked Plushenko.

In response, he did what every true athlete would do – he awarded himself a platinum medal to show that he was the true champion – and as everyone knows, platinum trumps gold. If you go to Evgeni’s website, http://evgeni-plushenko.com, the loading page stated Silver of Salt Lake, Gold of Torino, Platinum of Vancouver – this has now been taken down, probably because he has pissed the IOC off, but the three medals remain, and the wording has been replaced with “What’s next?” Yeah – very subtle.

Plushenko’s peeps have since come out trying to rubbish the claims, but you have to admire his balls in awarding himself the highest honour in Olympic sport ever. The stuff of legends.

I have, if the truth be told, been less than complimentary about Bobby Zamora in the past. I have made reference to a certain chant which Fulham fans (earlier in the season, it’s true) have been known to sing (to the tune of ‘That’s Amoré’). And now, I admit, I was wrong.

I was so wrong in fact, that an Arsenal-supporting friend of mine told me at the weekend that he was just the sort of player that Arsène Wenger needs to sign to get the Arsenal forward line firing again. For the man who could have been leading the line at Hull to be spoken about in these terms is praise indeed.

But anyone who saw his strike against the prodigiously talented Shaktar Donetsk (who have obviously been – fittingly - named after a particularly pungent kebab recipe) would have said the same.

Just in case you missed it, he rolled casually off the shoulder of his marker just as Gera floated the ball into the space beyond him. Running onto it just outside the box he crashed it first time off the right-hand inside of the cross bar, not having even troubled to look up. It was a spectacular piece of finishing, just when Fulham needed it most.