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The Premiership of darts is a month old now and it appears at this stage that the young guns are going to take some beating.

Phil “The Power” Taylor who until this season had never lost a Premiership match, is now languishing in the bottom half of the table and in danger of not making the final stage, having lot 3 of his first 4 matches.

Once new boy James Wade showed he could be beaten, Taylor seemed to lose that air of invincibility and confidence, and that coupled with the decision to change his darts has led to the 13 times World Champion looking a shadow of his former self.

It’s funny how this happens to great players in any sport. It takes enormous mental strength and dedication to compete regularly at the highest level, and with that comes wealth and opportunity. It is therefore understandable that at some point other interests will take over and the once long hours of practice that are important to sustain excellence start to fall away.

Taylor took his eye off the board so to speak about 18 months ago when his business interests, which will secure his future, took precedence. Once he realised that things had begun to slip he went on a fitness regime, losing weight and upping his practice hours. However, the damage has been done.

Once people realise you are beatable they beat you. Its that simple. It’s like once people know it is physically possible to run a mile in under 4 minutes, many realise they have it within themselves to do it.

Taylor managed to win last years Premiership title on reputation. A number of times he was on the rack and his opponent choked when they realised it was Phil Taylor they were about to beat. He was then able to claw back and either win or force the draw.

Now that reputation has been damaged he will find it hard to regain it. What is most sad is that he has resorted to tinkering to try and get it back - why oh why would you change the type of dart you have used so successfully for your entire career? It’s the sign of a man desperate to find that missing something - that elixir of youth. Unfortunately it doesn’t exist and once you have fallen from the pedastal it is nigh on impossible to climb back on.

Nobody could argue that the injury sustained by Eduardo at the weekend was horrific.  However, once again the reaction from Arsene Wenger was well over the top in what was already an emotionally charged atmosphere.

His comment that “a killer only has to kill once to be a killer” and that Martin Taylor should be banned for life cannot be excused as heat of the moment stuff.  The tackle happened withing 2 minutes of the start of the game and he would have had over 2 hours to choose his words.  He obviously decided that these were the right words.  A subsequent statement issued by the club and NOT by Wenger himself retracting the comment is not enough.

First of all Taylor’s record shows he is not a dirty player (3 yellow cards in 74 games and only one red card over 8 years ago) and the replay shows that he was beaten by the speed of Eduardo’s feet.  This season alone has seen a number of much worse tackles, which have either gone unpunished, or have resulted in no injury.  It is nasty yes, but as much a fluke as anything that the injury was as bad as it was.

What annoys me though is the refusal of Wenger to see anything wrong (or “fail to see”) any incident, which involves his players stepping out of line but to continually whine in post match conferences about the slightest infringment against his own team.

It is time he and other high profile managers took off their rose tinted glasses when looking at their own teams and were actually honest.  If they can’t, then maybe the FA should step in - the comments made by Wenger were slanderous (which I suspect is why they were withdrawn), and he is lucky that Tayor doesn’t go after him.  As a minimum I would like to see Wenger charged by the FA.

I flicked on the golf World Match Play yesterday and was kind of satisfied to see Tiger Woods struggling with his game and trailing by 3 to JB Holmes.  But history has shown you should never under estimate the World Number 1.

Seemingly out of it at 3 down with 5 to play and struggling with all aspects of his game it looked like it was all over.  But then he showed why he is a champion.

The comeback started with a birdie, was followed by another then an eagle then another birdie. Meanwhile Holmes was in reverse, struggling to make par as the pressure started to tell and the crowd got behind their man as only annoying Americans can with their incesssant shouts of “get in the hole”.

The comeback was complete when Holmes could only match Woods par on 18.  The only saving grace is that Holmes is possibly the most annoying player in the world with his long and drawn out pre-shot routine. It consists of stand behind the ball and visualise.  The take your grip and wiggle 4 or 5 times.  Then stand behind it and visualise again.  Then take 4 practice swings.  Then finally address the ball and play the shot.  All of that takes about 2 minutes by which time I would be ready to take a swing myself - at him.

This routine was compounded on the 18th when he walked the 90 yards to the green, inspected it closely before walking back going through the routine and making the shot.  At least 5 minutes to play it. Madness, and hardly a good spectator sport!

How he doesn’t get pulled up for slow play is anybodies guess.

Rafa Benitez is now walking a very tight rope, following Liverpool’s shock exit to Barnsley on Saturday.

Much will be said about his rotation system again, which he stubbornly refuses to change, and which could prove his undoing.  He once again started with Gerrard on the bench and with Torres not even making it that far, deciding to rest players for the Champions League match this week.

However, the team he did put out, which was still full of Internationals should have been good enough to beat the boys from South Yorkshire.  The fact is they under performed and despite creating a number of quality chances, failed to take them, due largely it has to be said to some last ditch defending by Barnsley and some superb goalkeeping by Luke Steele.

But the buck will stop with the coach/manager as it always does in football.

The Liverpool fans appear to be split.  Some irrationally blaming the American owners, some blaming Benitez and others backing both just asking that he be given more time.

As an outsider looking in, the owners seem to have done little wrong (other than be American), apart from deny Benitez another £100m in the last transfer window. With what he has spent, they could and probably should expect some silverware this year.  As it is, they now have to pin all of their hopes on the Champions League, and if they don’t win it, might not even make that particular competition next year.  If the 4th spot is taken by Everton it will rub salt into the wound and even the most loyal of Benitez’ supporters will call for his head.

The bottom line is that spedning a fortune on quality players does not guarantee trophies as many have found before.  The team needs quality throughout and balance,  and consistency.  It is down to the coach to ensure that the fortune is spent wisely to achieve this.  As far as I’m aware, Benitez has been given free reign here, and has failed.  Undoubtedly the rotation policy will play a large part in the the inconsistency.

Fail to win, and win well against Internationale this week and their season is over.  If that is the case I think Benitez’ spell on Merseyside will also be over come the summer.

I turned the TV in this morning while having breakfast to cast an eye over the England ODI score, expecting them to be in the pavillion having tea having been soundly thrashed for the third time.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were in firm control and went on to win by 6 wickets.  The reason of this post is to ask if Hussain knows what he is talking about.

He took over commentary a few overs from the end to see out the England win.

One of the first things he said was that Shah needed to stick to the basics and not over elaborate, and that he has a tendency to play low percentage shots and this is not what’s required. A good solid finish - a la Hussain no doubt who never played a flair shot in his life.

The very next over Collingwood thumped 18 off of the first 4 balls, the last one being a reverse sweep.  Up pops our friend Hussain again with “Thats what this England team needs to do.  Play with flare and without fear of losing”.  You can’t have it both ways Nassar.  If Collingwood had got out he would chastised him for poor shot selection no doubt.
The same thing applies to KP - he plays his way, which is to score quickly and without fear of anybody.  The crowd love it as to the commentary team, unless he gets out early - then he is reckless.

The game needs flare these days. It has moved on over the last 30 years and has moved even further on over the last 5 years with the advent of Twenty20.  But you have to take the rough with the smooth. The commentary team might like or dislike the flare players, I don’t mind.  All I want is some consistency.

Dwain Chambers has caused massive controversy on his comeback to Athletics. In many ways even more controversy than when he was banned 5 years ago for taking the banned drug THG.

At the time of his ban he said he had “unwittingly” taken the drug, and received sympathy from many of his peers and big names associated to the sport. As such he was more or less welcomed back when his ban ended.

However, since then he has admitted he took drugs knowingly and has compounded the issue by adding that “you have to take drugs to win”. Now just about everybody has withdrawn their support for him. The problem now is that he comfortably won the 60m indoor trials at the weekend and has now been selected to represent GB, amongst huge protest from just about everybody.

In fairness to the selectors they have no choice in the matter unless they want to risk legal action of some sort. They have simply followed their own rules. The problem is clear. The rules are wrong.

If anybody takes drugs, they should received a life time ban. Full and final. There can be no argument that it “accidental” or “unwitting”. These athletes are surrounded by coaches and medical staff who know what is and is not legal. There is no grey area as far as I can see.

The problem as I see it is that some of these drugs enable muscles to be built up. Once this has happened does the extra bulk disappear after 2 years or are they able to keep it by working out and therefore always have that extra advantage. Not only that, they have brought their sport into disrepute and denied somebody the chance of standing on a podium and receiving the credit they deserve. This is only partially rewarded when medals are awarded retrospectively.
Chambers should do the decent thing and withdraw, and allow one of the honest hard working athletes to take his place. He won’t do that though, as he seems thick skinned enough to soak up the criticism and determined to milk the sport he has damaged for as much money as he can before he has to retire.

With the England rugby team failing to hit their straps in the 6 Nations, I looked to the cricket team to put some pride back into our sport. Oh dear!

Having won the Twenty/20 warm up match comfortably, it seemed that they were finding some form. Then came the first ODI, which England duly lost by 6 wickets, failing to bat their full compliment of overs thanks to 3 run outs. Their very very modest total of 130 was knocked off by the Kiwis with half their overs left.

So Collingwood promised better for the second match in a 5 match series. And it started well with England getting to 89/2 but after a stop for rain they collapsed as only England can, losing the last 8 wickets for 68 runs, setting a Duckworth-Lewis of 165, which the Kiwis promptly knocked off with 10 wickets and 6 overs to spare. Yes 10 wickets to spare. The Black Hats biggest ever result.

Collingwood is at a loss to explain what has happened although a further 3 runs outs obviously didn’t help. He did mention the bowling being maybe a little too aggressive, which is resulted to all bowlers being knocked to all parts of the ground. This has been blamed on inexperience. This is where I have a problem.

Surely no matter how little experience you have, if you keep banging it in short and it keeps disappearing to the boundary, you would have to be extremely thick to not adjust your length. Or is that just too obvious?

As England have proved before though, they clearly and quite rightly come to the match with a game plan, and whatever happens on the day they stick rigidly to it. Heaven forbid they actually try and think on their feet.

Their is one saving grace in all this - due to the time difference I have not felt obliged to sit up all night or get up early to watch this shambles.

I have to say as I have mentioned in this blog on more than one occasion, I am not happy with an Italian coach for the England team. However, I am impressed with what I have seen so far.

I love the rules he has instigated:

• Blazers to be worn
• No mobile phones
• No partners
• Everybody eats together

I’m obviously naive, but I thought some of the basics would have been in place anyway. You mean to tell me the team don’t normally eat together for example.

What is clear is that he will not pick people on reputation, and he will not tolerate breach of his code of conduct and he will only pick players on form. Hence the exclusion of Beckham (although I hope he gets his 100th cap), and the banning of JT from training camp as he is injured.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the likes of Terry and Lampard are both fit again.

The tactic of picking in form players only is great. Not only does it mean the big names are no longer guaranteed to play, but also that those “lesser” players will try harder, now that they know they have a genuine chance.

Sadly that has never been the case for as long as I can remember. Past managers, probably without fail have picked squads and teams based on past performance rather than current form, which has the effect over time of disillusioning the fringe players, who start to feel no matter how hard they train and how well they are playing one of the “superstars” will always get the nod.

Nobody has a right to play for their country, it has to be earned, and not just earned once, twice or even three times. It has to be earned every time they train, and every time they step out onto the pitch.
In the past few years, I have had the distinct impression from certain quarters that some of them believe they are so good that simply turning up is enough. Under this new regime, that would not appear to be the case. We will undoubtedly see some of that passion and Bulldog spirit all over the pitch now, and if not then they cannot expect to play in the next match.

So in essence, I am happy with the start Capello has made. For me there is only one question left. Why oh why does it take an Italian do this?

Another shambles surrounding the Premiership, Harry Redknapp and a transfer deal. Is Benjani a Man City player or not? I thought Defoe had been bought as a replacement for Benjani but it now appears he is in loan, as he is hoping for a better offer from elsewhere. Thanks a lot mate!

First of all the whole Benjani thing smells fishy and all sorts of conspiracy theories abound. How can you miss two flights no matter how laid back you are? One of the theories is that he has a dodgy knee and was worried about taking to full a medical and deliberately turned up late. It’s an interesting theory but no more than that, with Eriksson, Benjani and Redknapp all hoping the deal will go through today.

What’s not clear is why he is being sold. If the club are wanting to cash in on him then I take this back, bu if he has decided he wants to move then I would have an issue with that. The club and fans have stuck by him for a two seasons, half of which he couldn’t hit a barn door - and then half way through a season when he is finding the net, he packs his bags. If Eriksson watched the performance on Wednesday against Man United I think he might have changed his mind - mind you the same could be said for the entire team. Fair enough for Redknapp to praise United, who were good, but they were made to look better than they were by a very lack lustre performance. The team to a man looked to have decided that 2-0 was respectable and they would settle for that.

Now back to Defoe. I’m clearly missing something here, because whenever I have seen him play for Spurs, England or even for Pompey on Saturday, I haven’t been convinced. He seems t spurn some really easy chances, which a top quality striker would tuck away more often than not. He seems to need 3 or 4 gilt edged chances in order to take one.

I might be doing him a disservice, and he may just need match practice, but when if that is the case and you are offered a first team place with a top 10 side you have to have an over inflated opinion of yourself to sit on the fence waiting for a better offer. The fact remains that two managers in succession have put him third against real class, so why should he think he would get regular football within one of the big 4 clubs, who have an abundance of top quality? Wake up and smell the coffee, and don’t look a gift horse in the mouth (and any other metaphor that fits).