Michael Owen has been ruled out for the rest of the premiership season and almost definitely the World Cup after his latest hamstring breakdown. This prompts us to ask, who are the most fragile players in football?

It can’t have been easy for Wayne Bridge, turning down the once in a lifetime opportunity to feature for England at the 2010 World Cup. That aside, it’s about time professional footballers started to live up to the ‘professional’ part of their job title and realise that playing for their country should be a duty and an honour, not something to be discarded when times are tough.

With every red-top tabloid dragging the image of footballers through the mud, and footballers doing their best to provide them with material, in the interest of balance we delve into the world of the ‘brainy footballer’ (and we are not including Graeme Le Saux, on the basis that he reads the Guardian.)

The bad tempered game between Derby County and Swansea City at the weekend could see the Rams brought before the FA again after Gorka Pintado’s tackle on Robbie Savage sparked an 18-man brawl.

The Premier league are drawing up plans to create a play-off for the fourth champions league slot given to an English side. Predictably the top four Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool who have dominated the Champions League places (and cash) for years are up in arms about it, with Rafa Benitez the most dismissive of all.

Almost everyone I spoke to yesterday was of the same opinion, transfer deadline day was deadly dull. Even the biggest move of the day Robbie Keane to Celtic was a loan deal, and taking a look at the list on the BBC you can see the pattern of loans and frees that made up the day’s deals.

Egypt won the African Cup of Nations last night when they beat Ghana 1-0 but the incredible decision by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to ban Togo from the competition for six-years has taken the tarnish of the tournament.

Are low FA Cup attendances this year a sign of growing disillusionment of fans with the competition?

We Derby County fans are used to low points, but when we lost our third home game in succession to Scunthorpe 1-4 (who hadn’t previously won in 10 away performances) we realised the slow car-crash that this year is going to be a relegation battle for Nigel Clough’s men.

The African Cup of Nations starts in Angola on January 10th, We look at how this could impact on the Premiership title and relegation battles.