• Everton for the World Cup, Adam Johnson for England and Mud.

How can you not love this game, this league, the drama, the terrible state of the DW in Wigan? Forget that last one. Gameweek 27 saw Everton continue their fantastic league form as they beat Manchester United emphatically at home only ten days removed from performing so gallantly against league leaders Chelsea. David Moyes has the Toffees charging up the table while remaining involved in a competitive Europa League. The Scot surely rues the early season injuries that see Everton just in eighth spot and is left to wonder what could have been. I wonder if a Europa Cup Final featuring a red team and blue team from Liverpool is possible?

The race for L4 heated up again, with Aston Villa and Tottenham gaining 3 points confidently (over Burnley and  Wigan respectively), while the clash of two more L4 wannabes ended 0-0 in Manchester as Adam Johnson impressed again (call him Fabio). Nothing is remotely close to being decided yet as L4 is now separated by only 1 single, solitary point, with two of the four teams in pursuit of L4′s riches holding vital games in hand.

Chelsea went through the motions at Molineux, Fulham left the drama late at home, Portsmouth continue to play out a doomed season with bravado, and West Ham continue to find their foot while Hull City continue to slip. Beautiful Passing Gnomes unconvincingly disposed of woeful Sunderland while they play keepy up with their title aspirations and big Sam has Blackburn above and beyond anything resembling a relegation struggle, which of course you should know by now brings us to:

Honorable Mentions:

Kevin Doyle, Wolverhampton Wanders- Although the forward’s side didn’t win or score a goal, Doyle’s alertness off the ball impressed me. The Republic of Ireland international and Wolves best player has an acute sense of awareness that allows him to shine for a club battling relegation. Doyle’s 16th minute run with the ball at his feet was one of Wolves best scoring opportunities of the day. Doyle ran 25 yards to the edge of the box and shot across the face of Petr Cech’s goal only for the Chelsea keeper to gobble up the attempt.

Doyle continued to make a nuisance of himself and was yards away from scoring from a free kick in the 31st minute that just missed. Again in the 79th, Doyle’s shot was stopped by Cech after he spun on a Chelsea defender and struck a low shot while falling down. If Wolves are to stay up this season, they’ll need to provide Doyle with the quality service he deserves. If they don’t, Doyle could be seen in another shirt next year.

Roman Pavlyuchenko, Tottenham Hotspur-  I suppose the Russian is no longer out of favor. It seems every time he comes on for Harry Redknapp, he scores. Pavlyuchenko came on in the 73rd and scored two quality goals in his twenty minute appearance. With his opener, his first touch was quality as he brilliantly set up his second touch which was a clinical left footed, falling down strike past Chris Kirkland in the 84th. His second came only minutes later as he nicked a rebound from his saved header. Pavlyuchenko stayed with the ball and flicked over Kirkland and a Wigan defender who was laying hopeless on the ground.

What impresses me about Pavlyuchenko is that he continually performs to the best of his ability even when he hasn’t been receiving quality playing time. It would be so easy for him to sulk on the bench and phone in his late game cameos, but the Russian seems to have something to prove to boss Harry Redknapp as his brace on Sunday secured all three points for the current fourth place Tottenham.

Premier League Footballer of the Week -

Stewart Downing, Aston Villa- Yet again, a high flying Villain shows up among the week’s best. The boys from Birmingham will look to win a piece of silverware this Sunday when they take on Carling Cup holders Manchester United in the final to be played at Wembley. The quick left footed winger has been building on his good form over the last few weeks and seems to get better with each appearance. There’s a lot of pressure on Downing as his return to match fitness saw Martin O’Neill place Downing on the left side of midfield while James Milner moved to a central role. Downing will look to keep his current form as he hopes to force his way into Fabio Capello’s England plans.

Villa came out the winners in a 5-2 thrashing of Burnley on Sunday after a four goal second half blitz finished off the visitors. This thirteen minute onslaught of quick passing, forward movement and convincing finishing opened up the game and exploited Burnley’s weakness in defense while it highlighted Aston Villa’s fluid movement. Downing was at the forefront of the Villa attack scoring a quick brace in two minutes that all but finished off the tie and gave Villa the three points.

Downing is an exciting wing player who oddly enough was signed when he was injured. When at his best, his crosses into the box can be lethal to central defenders. Martin O’Neill sure put a lot of faith into the former Middlesbrough man and here’s hoping that faith continues to pay off.

Disagree with me? Saw a good movie this weekend? Wanna share your favorite recipe? Leave a comment below.

Former AS Roma manager Luciano Spalletti has long been linked with Zenit St. Petersburg.

In partnership with Russian Football Now, EPL Talk presents the second episode of RNF’s podcast.

An active week in papers sees former AS Roma manager Luciano Spalletti take an additional step toward the long-rumored more to Zenit. Meanwhile, Roman Pavlyuchenko gets priced out of his move to St. Petersburg, instead staying in London. While this was happening, the Russian National Team was gathering in St. Petersburg in anticipation of the week’s World Cup qualifiers, for which they look to be without Yuri Zhirkov, Denis Kolodin, and Andrei Arshavin (at least for the first match).

Russian Football Now’s podcast discusses all the plus runs down the Premier League table for you in this, their second full-length podcast.

The scenes of jubilation this evening were incredible to watch as Tottenham Hotspur’s Roman Pavlyuchenko scored a last minute winner to beat Liverpool 2-1 at White Hart Lane.

In just one week, Harry Redknapp’s reinvigorated Tottenham side have beaten Liverpool and Bolton, and staged an incredible comeback against arch-rivals Arsenal.

In the pouring rain, Tottenham Hotspur never gave up, which is one of the redeeming factors about Harry Redknapp’s side. After going down 1-0 to a sensational Dirk Kuyt goal in the third minute, Liverpool were completely in charge of the game as they hit the bar and crossbar, and had several other chances that were so close.

Liverpool continued to push forward but, against the run of play, Spurs pulled a goal back after a Jamie Carragher own goal which he headed in from a corner. Then in the last minute of the game, David Bentley unleashed a powerful shot that Reina tipped away, but Pavlyuchenko was able to sneak in the winner into the corner of the net.

The scenes at White Hart Lane were so wonderful to watch especially after all of the heartache the fans have suffered all season long after the dark days of Juande Ramos. One negative aspect of the fan’s behavior was how the Spurs fans booed Robbie Keane whenever he touched the ball. When Keane was substituted, the chorus of boos from the Tottenham fans was very noticeable, but thankfully the majority of Spurs fans gave him a standing ovation.

The win was a lucky win for Spurs. But in order to be lucky you have to create luck, and that’s what Spurs did. The win pushes Spurs up to third from bottom. It just goes to show how much of a difference a manager can have on a team.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse for Newcastle United, it just did. In the battle of the two bottom teams of the Premier League, Newcastle lost 2-1 at home tonight to fellow underachievers Tottenham Hotspur in the Carling Cup in front of their lowest attendance in years.

The performance by Newcastle was utterly pathetic, lacking any passion, character, pace and commitment. Newcastle looks like a team with nothing to play for and without the leadership of a permanent manager, which is exactly the situation they find themselves in.

At St James’s Park tonight, there were massive pockets of empty seats visible as United fans decided to stay at home instead of supporting their club. In 1992, 14,000 saw a first-round League Cup game against Mansfield. Tonight the attendance was 19,743. This at a club where their average attendance in the Premier League last season was 51,122. The lowest attendance since St. James’s Park was redeveloped, before tonight, was 33,000.

The attendance was so small that oftentimes you could hear the players shouting instructions to each other from the field.

Tottenham, for most of the first half, looked equally as apathetic until Roman Pavlyuchenko scored his first goal for Spurs with a header, and Jamie O’Hara soon followed up with a second for Tottenham. Michael Owen picked up his fourth goal of the season near the end of the match.

If it wasn’t for Owen, Newcastle would be in even deeper trouble in 2008.

Newcastle To Announce New Manager

Things will seemingly get even worse for the club who, according to newspaper reports, seem likely to appoint Terry Venables as Newcastle manager either on a permanent or temporary basis.

Venables hasn’t managed in more than four years since he was sacked by Leeds United in March, 2003. At Leeds, his managerial skills were pathetic. The last person Newcastle needs now is another Londoner trying to sort the club out. Newcastle fans and players are sick of Dennis Wise and Mike Ashley, and Terry Venables will be no different.

The only thing Venables will be able to do is to schmooze the British media.

Newcastle, if they do decide to hire Venables, will drive the value of the club down even more than now.

New Spurs striker Roman Pavlyuchenko may face punishment from Tottenham because he’s not learning English quickly enough according to the Russian newspaper, Tvoi Den.

If the newspaper report is true, it’s a bit unfair on Pavlyuchenko. He’s only been with Spurs since September 1st and, in that time, he also played in Moscow for Russia aganst Wales. Plus, the criticism seems very hypocritical given that Juande Ramos is not learning English fast enough either.

The newspaper reports that Pavlyuchenko was substituted at halftime against Wigan because he wasn’t following the orders from Ramos because he didn’t understand a word that his manager had said in the pre-match team talk.

Sure, the sooner Pavlyuchenko learns English the better, but he’s only been with Spurs for just over three weeks. Ramos has been with Tottenham since October 27, 2007.

I got up this morning expecting another tense, dull day to be spattered with the occasional factual transfer as the transfer window creaked shut getting excited about nothing much in particular. A day spent scouring the BBC and Sky Sports transfer vidi-printers and tutting at bored 14 year old’s just texting and e-mailing rubbish to fill the gaps as the frustration grew as the day shortened, the last couple of transfer windows have been very dull affairs, so I was not expecting much. Silly me.

What I didn’t expect was that Manchester City would, as of 9.30am, became the richest football club in the world with the end of Thaksin Shinawatra’s short reign as owner and start throing money around like water. I never expected the Royal Family of the United Arab Emirates to buy any club, never mind Manchester City and immediately tell manager Mark Hughes to spend, spend, spend in an unprecedented scenario. The new owners, Abu Dhabi United Group are the investment & financial arm of the Royal Family and have almost 1 trillion pounds available to them, or 10 Roman Abramovichs. This is football investment on an unbelievable level and has completely changed the entire landscape of world football in a few short hours.

If that wasn’t enough, they then offered a British record transfer fee of £35 million pounds for Dimitar Berbatov, which Tottenham accepted, then announced they’d bid £30 million for David Villa and a further £25 million for Mario Gomes. As I type this, Marca in Spain is reporting that they’ve also bid for Robinho and several other high profile signings but other than the 3 strikers that ADUG spokesperson Sulaiman Al-Fahim confirmed earlier today, nothing is concrete fact. Manchester City can now afford to buy anyone at any club with no worries at all, but the one thing that holds them back is the lack of Champions League football, a key point that will probably see Berbatov choose the red side of Manchester over the blue. Ferguson will be determined to finalise the transfer he sees as vital to enabling United to try and become the first club to win back to back Champions League titles and I expect Berbatov to be a United player by midnight.

The majority of players they need to push on to go for a top four spot would seem to be loathe to swap Champions League for a season of UEFA Cup football so they may not get the players they need by the time the window shuts at midnight but don’t rule out some massive deals being prepared for the next transfer window. Also key to their forward recruitment though is that City are in a position to attract these players in January when they’ll need them, so Hughes knows he needs to keep City in and around the top 8 come the turn of the year. Additionally, the due to Manchester City deal, I expect this to push DIC forward to purchase Liverpool, now that their royal rivals have trumped them to buying a Premiership club first, something that will not be going unnoticed back in the U.A.E.

One man who won’t be a Manchester City anymore is Vedran Corluka who confirmed his protracted move to Tottenham, originally completed on August 10th, this morning to join Pavlyuchenko at Spurs Lodge. It’s been probably the worst kept transfer in football so no surprises that he now joins up with his best friend, Luka Modric. A canny pair of signing for Ramos to add a bit more depth to the squad. All in all, today could be the most important day in the history of the Premiership so far and with 3 hours to go until the window closes, who knows who else is going to switch sides and which football club is going to be bought next by midnight.

Stay updated on the latest transfers in the Premier League today on deadline day, which marks the end of the August transfer window (extended one day because the last day of August was a Sunday):

• Fraizer Campbell (England) joins Tottenham Hotspur from Man United,
• Dimitar Berbatov (Bulgaria) joins Manchester United from Spurs,
• Martin Cranie (England) joins Charlton from Portsmouth,
• Robinho (Brazil) joins Manchester City from Real Madrid,
• George McCartney (Ireland) joins Sunderland from West Ham United,
• Antoine Sibierski (France) joins Norwich City from Wigan Athletic,
• Alexei Smertin (Russia) has had his Fulham contract cancelled by mutual consent,
• Julian Gray (England) joins Fulham from Coventry City,
• Danny Higginbotham (England) joins Stoke from Sunderland,
• Carlo Nash (England) joins Everton from Wigan,
• Albert Riera (Spain) joins Liverpool from Espanyol,
• Collins John (Holland) joins NEC Nijmegen from Fulham,
• Ryan Donk (Holland) joins West Brom from AZ Alkmaar,
• Andriy Voronin (Ukraine) joins Hertha Berlin on a season-long loan from Liverpool,
• Steve Bunn (England) signs for Blackburn Rovers from Northampton Town; amazingly this one of the very few transfers today involving English players in the Premier League,
• Steve Finnan (Ireland) joins Espanyol from Liverpool,
• Rachid Bouaouzan (Holland) joins NEC Nijmegen on a one-year loan deal from Wigan Athletic,
  
• Peter Gulacsi (Hungary) joins Liverpool from MTK Hungaria as a backup goalkeeper,
• Louis Saha (France) joins Everton from Manchester United,
• Nadir Belhadj (Algeria) joins Portsmouth on a season-long loan from Lens,
  
• Vitor Flora (Brazil) joins Liverpool from Botafogo,
  
• Ignacio Gonzalez (Uruguay) joins Newcastle United on loan from Valencia,
  
• Blerim Dzemaili (Switzerland) joins Torino from Bolton on a season-long loan,
  
• Vedran Corluka (Croatia) joins Tottenham Hotspur from Manchester City,
• Roman Pavlyuchenko (Russia) joins Tottenham Hotspur from Spartak Moscow,
• Xisco (Spain) joins Newcastle United from Deportivo de La Coruna,

In a recent development, Manchester City’s new owners have reportedly put a bid in for Dimitri Berbatov in excess of £30 million.

Keep on returning throughout the day for the confirmations of the latest transfers.

Tottenham Hotspur has announced that the club has reached an agreement with Spartak Moscow to sign Russian striker Roman Pavlyuchenko for a transfer fee believed to be £14 million.

The star striker who made a huge impression in Euro 2008 won’t be ready to play against Chelsea in the London derby today. His first match wearing a Spurs shirt will likely be the home game against Aston Villa on Monday, September 15.

While at Spartak Moscow, Pavlyuchenko scored 77 goals in 147 appearances, and has played 23 times for Russia scoring nine goals for his national side.

For many, Pavlyuchenko rose to prominence with his impressive displays at Euro 2008 including the goal he scored against Holland (see video clip below) and his thunderbolt shots from distance.

The 26-year old Pavlyuchenko joins a Spurs side alongside fellow strikers Dimitar Berbatov and Darren Bent.

To me, this is another massive signing by Spurs this summer after signing David Bentley, Giovanni Dos Santos and Luka Modric. The Russian striker was such a breath of fresh air this summer. He’s a born finisher who will take time to adapt to the English game. But in Pavlyuchenko, Spurs has signed one of the most promising players in Europe. Let’s hope he dazzles the Premier League viewers around the world.

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It looks like the floodgates in the transfer window have opened. So far this summer, it seems that the majority of major transfer deals have started and ended at Tottenham’s White Hart Lane.

The spark was Robbie Keane’s move from Tottenham to Liverpool for 20.3 million pounds. That allowed Spurs to finalize the deal with Blackburn for the 15 million pound winger David Bentley.

Now, with cash in hand, Tottenham looks likely to purchase Andrei Arshavin and Roman Pavlyuchenko. If the two Russian stars arrive at Tottenham, that’ll likely mean that Dimitar Berbatov will be exiting White Hart Lane and moving to Manchester United.

In many ways, Tottenham has become this summer’s Chelsea by playing an active role in the transfer market similar to how the Blues have conducted business in previous years. Tottenham is banking on the success of the new players and manager Juande Ramos this season. If Spurs isn’t able to mount a serious challenge this year, there’ll be hell to pay.

If Spurs are able to land Arshavin and Pavlyuchenko, the club probably won’t make any other major transfer signings but will instead concentrate on getting the side ready for the beginning of the new Premier League season scheduled for August 16.

After quite a silly season in the transfer market, deals are beginning to get signed and the excitement is building for the new season, one which promises to be the most competitive in many, many years.