Some bumper Premier League matches this weekend but will that mean we'll be seeing bumper points totals in our predictions competition?

A Merseyside derby is probably the last match Liverpool's Rafa Benitez wanted and if they lose, it will surely be the worse week of his managerial career. Club bosses say his job is safe but bottom side Portsmouth also gave their backing to Paul Hart just a few weeks ago...

New Pompey manager Avram Grant takes on Manchester United hoping it turns out better than the last time he met them in Moscow (see photo).

Oh, and I almost forgot, it's Arsenal v Chelsea too! Let's make that our double pointer this week. Remember you get one point for correct result and five for a correct score.

Here's the panel's latest standings with this weekend's fixtures and their wild guesses underneath. Give us your predictions in the comments.

Reuters Soccer Blog panel: Patrick Johnston 129, Mitch Phillips 111, Paul Radford 106, Mike Collett 101, Simon Evans 89, Kevin Fylan 88, Mark Meadows 87, Miles Evans 86, Neil Maidment 81, Julien Pretot 74, Asia Sports Desk 68, Martyn Herman 46, Justin Palmer 38, Sonia Oxley 29

Portsmouth v Man United: Patrick Johnston 0-2, Mitch Phillips 0-1, Paul Radford 0-1, Mike Collett 0-3, Simon Evans 1-1, Kevin Fylan 1-2, Mark Meadows 0-2, Miles Evans 2-2, Neil Maidment, Julien Pretot, Asia Sports Desk , Martyn Herman 0-3, Justin Palmer 0-2, Sonia Oxley 1-0

Aston Villa v Tottenham: Patrick Johnston 2-1, Mitch Phillips 2-1, Paul Radford 2-1, Mike Collett 1-2, Simon Evans 2-1, Kevin Fylan 1-4, Mark Meadows 1-1, Miles Evans 1-3, Neil Maidment, Julien Pretot, Asia Sports Desk , Martyn Herman 1-1, Justin Palmer 2-1, Sonia Oxley 1-2

Manchester City v Hull: Patrick Johnston 3-2, Mitch Phillips 4-0, Paul Radford 4-0, Mike Collett 2-1, Simon Evans 5-0, Kevin Fylan 2-0, Mark Meadows 3-0, Miles Evans 3-2, Neil Maidment, Julien Pretot, Asia Sports Desk , Martyn Herman 1-1, Justin Palmer 4-0, Sonia Oxley 2-0

Wigan v Sunderland: Patrick Johnston 2-1, Mitch Phillips 1-1, Paul Radford 1-1, Mike Collett 2-0, Simon Evans 2-1, Kevin Fylan 1-2, Mark Meadows 1-2, Miles Evans 1-1, Neil Maidment, Julien Pretot, Asia Sports Desk , Martyn Herman 0-2, Justin Palmer 1-1, Sonia Oxley 2-1

Blackburn v Stoke: Patrick Johnston 2-1, Mitch Phillips 2-0, Paul Radford 2-0, Mike Collett 1-0, Simon Evans 0-0, Kevin Fylan 0-2, Mark Meadows 2-1, Miles Evans 1-2, Neil Maidment, Julien Pretot, Asia Sports Desk , Martyn Herman 1-0, Justin Palmer 2-0, Sonia Oxley 2-1

Fulham v Bolton: Patrick Johnston 3-0, Mitch Phillips 1-1, Paul Radford 3-1, Mike Collett 3-1, Simon Evans 3-1, Kevin Fylan 3-1, Mark Meadows 2-0, Miles Evans 2-0, Neil Maidment, Julien Pretot, Asia Sports Desk , Martyn Herman 2-0, Justin Palmer 2-1, Sonia Oxley 0-1

West Ham v Burnley: Patrick Johnston 3-2, Mitch Phillips 1-0, Paul Radford 2-1, Mike Collett 1-1, Simon Evans 1-2, Kevin Fylan 1-1, Mark Meadows 3-1, Miles Evans 2-0, Neil Maidment, Julien Pretot, Asia Sports Desk , Martyn Herman 1-1, Justin Palmer 3-1, Sonia Oxley 1-1

Sunday:
Arsenal v Chelsea: Patrick Johnston 1-2, Mitch Phillips 2-1, Paul Radford 1-1, Mike Collett 1-3, Simon Evans 1-1, Kevin Fylan 1-2, Mark Meadows 1-1, Miles Evans 2-2, Neil Maidment, Julien Pretot, Asia Sports Desk , Martyn Herman 1-3, Justin Palmer 1-1, Sonia Oxley 2-1

Everton v Liverpool: Patrick Johnston 1-1, Mitch Phillips 0-0, Paul Radford 0-2, Mike Collett 2-2, Simon Evans 2-1, Kevin Fylan 2-1, Mark Meadows 0-2, Miles Evans 1-2, Neil Maidment, Julien Pretot, Asia Sports Desk , Martyn Herman 0-1, Justin Palmer 2-1, Sonia Oxley 2-1

Wolves v Birmingham: Patrick Johnston 1-1, Mitch Phillips 2-2, Paul Radford 2-2, Mike Collett 1-0, Simon Evans 2-2, Kevin Fylan 1-1, Mark Meadows 3-3, Miles Evans 1-3, Neil Maidment, Julien Pretot, Asia Sports Desk , Martyn Herman 2-3, Justin Palmer 1-2, Sonia Oxley 1-1

Liverpool hopes of one more great Champions League escape were dashed on Tuesday night, as Fiorentina sealed their place alongside Olympique Lyon with a 1-0 win over the French side, leaving the English team's 1-0 success against Debrecen irrelevant.

Liverpool, of course, only have themselves to blame for leaving their fate in the hands of a team that had already secured their own qualification.

There will doubtless be a lot more criticism of Rafa Benitez, his transfer dealings and the perceived failures of man management, but the analysis of exactly why Liverpool failed to progress can wait for another post.

For now, consider one question: Might this result actually work in Liverpool's long-term favour?

The club could certainly have done with the revenue from a run to the semi-finals or beyond but, with the best will in the world, did this season's team ever really look capable of making it as far as Madrid?

With a squad that (everyone has said) is inferior to last year's, maybe it will prove in their interests that they no longer have to juggle Champions League and Premier League campaigns. They can now have a leisurely tilt at the Europa League -- if they make it to the final it will be an enjoyable run, if they don't ... well, who really cares? -- and concentrate on doing something about that dreadful domestic form.

The priority, as always, must be to secure qualification for the group stage of next year's Champions League. That 19th league title looks as elusive as ever but a top-four finish may have just become a more realistic possibility.

PHOTO: Liverpool's coach Rafael Benitez looks on as Steven Gerrard walks off during the Champions League soccer match against Debrecen at the Puskas stadium in Budapest November 24, 2009. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh

Major League Soccer shows plenty of signs of good health and progress but beneath the surface the North American league has some critical decisions to make over its future direction.

After a week of largely upbeat build-up and nationwide publicity for a sport that so often struggles to get space, the league’s title deciding game, MLS Cup, was played out in front of over 46,000 fans here in Seattle – the city that is staking a strong claim to be the de facto home of U.S soccer.

"It was a memorable night for soccer in the United States," said league commissioner Don Garber.

Strolling through the squares of downtown Seattle, packed with fans bedecked in team colours and chatting to the soccer-savvy locals, it was hard not to imagine how the sports scene in the U.S could change if the Seattle experience truly was replicated across the country.

David Beckham and L.A Galaxy didn’t get their title, losing on penalties to Real Salt Lake, but they did both earn some respect.

Beckham has surely put to bed the argument that he is not fully committed to his MLS project by playing through the pain barrier of a badly bruised ankle for 120 minutes and since Bruce Arena took over as head coach, the Galaxy feel like a real team rather than the circus act they were in danger of becoming.

Salt Lake won the league in just their fifth season of existence – a real boost for the trio of new teams about to enter MLS, Philadelphia in 2010, Vancouver and Portland a year later and encouraging also for other teams in the league without a big name foreign player.

But for all the very real advances the 14 year-old league had made, MLS now finds itself at the crossroads with some very difficult strategic issues to deal with, including some tough talks with the players' union over a collective bargaining agreement on wages and conditions.

MLS has prided itself on avoiding the boom and bust associated with the first attempt at a nationwide professional league – the NASL which ran from 1968 to 1984 before collapsing as one debt-ridden club after another folded.

The MLS executives have led a conservative expansion and investment strategy designed for steady and intelligent growth and in many areas that approach has been justified.

The league is a ‘single entity’ which means that there is a strong central control over spending and a collective responsibility for debt. The salary cap and the restrictive rules on recruitment and squad development act as a brake on what is so often the biggest cause of debt in professional soccer -- wages.

Like all the pro sports leagues in the U.S, the desire for parity – keeping as many teams as possible competitive with each other – leads to rules and regulations that are surprising for a country known as the home of modern capitalism.

There has been some loosening of the reins – the Designated Player exception, also known as the ‘Beckham rule’, allows clubs to have a player on their squad who is outside the salary cap restrictions and is paid for directly by the team and not the league.

Some clubs in MLS, such as the Seattle Sounders and the L.A Galaxy, would like to see an expansion of that exception and greater freedom for clubs to buy in their own players and offer lucrative deals while less wealthy franchises fear that would create a small elite.

At the weekend Galaxy owner Tim Leiweke suggested a rule change was on the horizon which would allow for three designated players and that he expected to see more big name players head to the league.

However, Garber was quick to put the dampers on such talk.

“It is clear that the LA Galaxy are a big proponent of the designated player rule but I can assure you that no decisions have been taken on the designated player rule,” he told reporters at halftime in Seattle.

“Frankly no discussions will be held at the board level on that rule or our salary budgets or anything related to what we spend on our players until after we get through our CBA negotiations,” he said.

BASIC MATTERS

It is a tricky issue for Garber to address. He wants to keep the big money backers of the Sounders and the Galaxy happy; he wants to see more Beckham style big-name players in the league but he doesn’t want to make the mistake of leaving weaker franchises to fade if they can’t keep up with the big-spenders.

But with the current agreement with the players running out on Jan. 31 and the union pushing for higher wages, it is more basic matters that Garber must attend to.

Some of the salaries being paid to experienced and talented players in MLS are astonishingly low compared to the money that players of similar ability earn in Europe or South America.

Stuart Holden, a 24-year-old U.S international and one of the top midfielders in MLS this season with Houston, earns a salary of under $35,000 from the league while Salt Lake’s top scorer Robbie Findley with 18 goals in 27 regular season games and the equaliser in Sunday’s final, this year earned just $72,000.

A deal needs to be struck with the union to avoid the acutely embarrassing and potentially damaging scenario of threats of a strike and also to lessen the danger of the country’s best talent voting with their feet.

Not only is MLS unable to attract quality foreign players into the league, salaries well below the international level mean that it cannot hang on to a lot of American talent.

Holden’s contract runs out in January and he could well move abroad and while players of his quality will always be tempted by an offer from England or Spain, what should be worrying Garber is the exodus of more modest talent to smaller leagues.

It doesn’t look good for MLS’s credibility as a major league – among U.S sports or on the international soccer stage -- when young American players choose, as a number have, to move to the relatively anonymous and modestly paying Danish and Norwegian leagues in order to earn a better living.

And while Leiweke talks of new names coming into the league, the fact is that his team and the league can’t control the top names they do have.

Next year’s MLS season starts two months before the World Cup finals in South Africa – an event which is being well promoted on television and which is increasingly on the radar of mainstream sports fans in North America.

MLS’s two highest profile foreign players – Beckham and Mexico’s Cuauhtemoc Blanco – will likely be featuring in that tournament and offer the perfect way to lead interested fans from the World Cup to the domestic competition.

Yet at the start of the MLS season in March, those two players will be playing in different leagues, Beckham with AC Milan in Italy and Blanco back home in Mexico – thanks to deals designed to keep them in shape for South Africa.

Blanco may not return while Beckham is being loaned out -- a bizarre situation that is simply unthinkable for any major league sport in the United States or any serious soccer championship elsewhere.

The one area where MLS’s caution has been less evident of late is in the matter of expanding its size. The league will go to 16 teams next year and 18 by 2011. In the subsequent seasons Garber would like to add Montreal and then a 20th team, possibly one owned by Beckham or a consortium he would front.

Here again there is something of a quandary – expansion risks spreading the talent too thinly across the league and creates a need for more imported players and therefore a demand for higher salaries to attract those foreigners.

But with interest in the game as a whole growing – with rising television audiences for the English and Spanish leagues and Champions League football – not embedding MLS into key soccer markets risks allowing a generation of fans to get their fix elsewhere – probably from foreign television.

MLS’s prudent, intelligent and relatively cautious approach has been largely justified by the steady progress the league has made and Garber is perfectly right to celebrate the achievements in bringing the sport to a new level in North America.

But there is, at the heart of all these issues, the conflict between the tried and tested methods of North American major leagues – salary caps, drafts, the desire to keep the gaps between the best and the worst to a minimum, and the fact that, unlike American football and baseball, MLS faces strong competition from overseas leagues and a global labour market for talent.

Soccer, globally, is a ruthlessly free-market business where the rich usually get what they want.

Ultimately, if MLS wants to step up to a higher level, if it wants to be truly major league in the U.S. and in the world soccer scene, there will be some strains on the almost socialistic structures it currently operates in.

PHOTO: Los Angeles Galaxy's David Beckham watches the celebration after losing to Real Salt Lake in a penalty shootout during their MLS Cup 2009 championship soccer match in Seattle November 22, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Sorbo

Major League Soccer’s finale, MLS Cup, takes place on Sunday in Seattle and (perhaps surprisingly to some) the game between L.A. Galaxy and Real Salt Lake will be broadcast in over 120 countries.

For the benefit of those fans outside of the States, who might be tuning in to watch David Beckham play for the Galaxy (or perhaps admire the intelligent midfield play of Real’s Clint Mathis?) and aren’t familiar with MLS or it’s final, here are some answers to the kind of questions you might be asking yourself as you sit down on the sofa and get ready for…

Well no, not really a Cup final. Officially the game is known as ‘MLS Cup’ (or Copa MLS in the league’s Spanish language literature) but unlike say every other Cup final in the world, this is not the final game of a knockout Cup competition. No, this is the game which decides the league champions of MLS.

But what about the team who finish top of the league table? Aren’t they the champions?

What league table? There is no single league table in MLS. The 15 team league has two league tables for the two conferences – East and West. The top two teams from each conference alongside four teams with the next best record in the league overall go into a knockout playoff format and this is the final game of that process.

Ah, so it’s like the NFL’s Super Bowl then, or the World Series. MLS Eastern Conference champions v MLS Western Conference champions?

Got it! L.A Galaxy are the Western Conference champions and Real Salt Lake are the Eastern Conference champions.

But, hold on, isn’t Salt Lake City in the West of the United States?

Yes it is and it plays in the Western Conference. But as five of the eight playoff teams were from the West, Real were moved into the Eastern playoffs – which they won. So both teams in this final are from the Western Conference…

Right…erm, moving on…what’s all this ‘Real’ about anyway? Isn’t it a bit silly to copy Real Madrid’s name when the team has nothing to do with the Spanish giants?

To be fair, the alternative name was apparently Salt Lake City Highlanders and the Salt Lake team, who only joined MLS in 2005, have a 10 year co-operation agreement with Real Madrid which is to include a $25 million youth academy in Salt Lake which Real cough up half the costs for, in return for access to the young players.

However, as this article shows, little has been delivered on the agreement.

$25 million academy…there seems to be a lot of money in MLS. Isn’t Beckham getting something like $250 million for his five-year contract?

No he isn’t. Nowhere near that amount. That widely quoted figure was put out by Beckham’s management team when he signed for Galaxy but it includes an estimate of likely revenue in sponsorship. His actual salary is $6.5 million a year, which is not bad either but not at all typical of the league.

In fact there is very little money in MLS for players salaries – Real Salt Lake’s leading scorer Robbie Findley (18 goals in 27 regular season games) this year earned just $72,000. The MLS Players Union kindly provides details of every player’s salary here.

But if Findley keeps scoring like that he will get a big money move to another club won’t he?

Do you really want me to go into salary caps, drafts, roster regulations etc? Let’s just say MLS is very different from the league you are used to in your country. MLS is called a ‘single entity league’ which means that all the player contracts are actually owned by the league not by the clubs.

There isn’t really an internal transfer market. And as for moving abroad – if say, Manchester City wanted to sign Robbie Findley, they would need to do a deal with MLS not just Salt Lake.

But anyway, Americans don’t care about soccer do they? Will most Americans even know this game is taking place?

Come on, get with the program. 40,000 tickets have been sold in Seattle for Sunday’s game. The main newspapers – like the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today and TV channels like CNN and ESPN have been building up to the game.

Remember with cable or satellite you can watch soccer from around the world pretty much non-stop every weekend from any living room in the States. And quite a number of Americans do just that. If you have the good fortune to meet a committed MLS fan be ready for a two hour conversation covering various aspects of the global game over the past 20 years and to be told about their lifelong passion for Scunthorpe United....

Scunthorpe United?

Or some obscure Irish team or a French third division club. Soccer is a sub-culture in the United States, maybe even slightly counter-culture. It is an alternative ‘scene’ and the fans are intensely proud of their involvement in the sport, take their ‘fandom’ very seriously and consume and debate huge amounts of information about the game locally and internationally.

Yet despite all that they aren’t trainspotters – just very passionate and remarkably well-informed. Soccer fans are basically amongst the nicest people you will meet in the U.S. Oh and its not just Americans, don’t forget Canada is part of MLS too – with a team in Toronto and a future team from Vancouver joining in 2011 with Montreal possibly following.

Expansion franchises eh?

Now you’re getting it....

By the way, who is that white guy with the long dreadlocks in midfield for Salt Lake?

That’s Kyle Beckerman. He’s pretty good actually and could well be part of the U.S midfield at the World Cup. Keeps it ticking in midfield, intelligent passer.

Is he a Rasta or what?

A Reuters reporter asked him that this week and Beckerman replied that his haircut does not reflect any religious beliefs. However he did say that if he was religious he would probably be a Rastafarian.

And that Donovan fellah playing upfront for L.A. He doesn’t like Beckham does he?

Nonsense. Landon Donovan may have made some very critical remarks about his team mate in the book “The Beckham Experiment” and made no attempt to hide his antipathy for how the Englishman was behaving at the Galaxy but he and David are best friends now. The other day they spent two thirds of the pre-final press conference expressing their admiration and respect for each other.

What is that Shakespeare line about protesting too much?

Stop being cynical. But if it goes on like this much longer, they’ll be modeling underwear together….

Hold on a minute, aren’t they playing on a plastic pitch?

The surface is called ‘FieldTurf’ and is indeed an artificial grass pitch. It’s very different to the early artificial surfaces (English fans may remember a very bouncy ‘plastic’ pitch at QPR’s Loftus Road) and is used on a number of NFL venues. Qwest Field is home to the Seattle Seahawks as well as the MLS’s Seattle Sounders.

So American players like playing on artificial surfaces then?

No. “All the players prefer grass” said one MLS Cup participant this week.

What happens if the scores are level after 90 minutes?

Extra-time and penalties if needed -- same as anywhere else. The days of the ‘shootout’ with players running with the ball and taking on the keeper are long gone. Shame really, that was pretty good.

So will they be dancing in the streets of Salt Lake or honking their car horns around L.A if their team wins?

OK, MLS Cup is raising its profile but sure, it isn’t the Super Bowl. There will however be several thousand fans from both cities in Seattle to support their team and many more at viewing parties in the pubs back home. The pub has become a central part of the new MLS fan culture as the last few nights in Seattle have proven.

Hmm almost sounds worth going to a game over there, but if I go to America do I really have to call it ‘soccer’?

Well, is it really so bad? Think of the history of that term -- soccer was a phrase first used by the English as a way to shorten the term 'Association Football' used to distinguish the game from Rugby Football. Charles Wreford-Brown is credited with coining the phrase and if it was good enough for a man schooled at Charterhouse it is surely acceptable for former subjects of the crown to use.

And doesn’t it make perfect sense in countries with other kinds of football (Australia or the U.S) to use the phrase soccer?

But anyway if you really have ‘issues’ with the phrase then don’t worry – almost everyone in America knows what the rest of the world means when it talks about football. They won’t think you are talking about the NFL. MLS probably gets it right with its slogan – Football, Futbol, Soccer (video here).

In other words, take your pick.

Ok, let's have your pick then. Galaxy or Real?

I'm not a betting man but the form book shows that Salt Lake lost more games than they won in the regular season and only won twice away from home.  But then again this is a Cup final.....

PHOTO: Kyle Beckerman (R) of the U.S. and Walter Julian Martinez Ramos (L) of Honduras fight for the ball during the first half of their CONCACAF Gold Cup semi-final soccer match in Chicago, Illinois, July 23, 2009. REUTERS/Frank Polich

Overseeing qualification for the World Cup via a blatant handball is unlikely to do much for the popularity of French coach Raymond Domenech, either at home or abroad (his Wikipedia page is currently saying some very nasty things about him, but it will doubtless be put back to its less offensive version soon).

The 57-year-old former defender, whose name is booed at every match, has never made any effort to make himself popular, but here are 10 reasons (or nearly 10) why football fans may want to reconsider their view:

1. He has never won anything as a coach, a characteristic shared by most soccer fans, which makes him less intimidating than, say, Giovanni Trapattoni.

2. He was a workaholic defender with limited skills in his playing days, with makes a nice change in a country full of retired magicians.

3. He is more successful as a coach than the great Michel Platini, under the guidance of whom France failed to win a single match at Euro 92.

4. He convinced Zinedine Zidane, Lilian Thuram and Claude Makelele to come out of retirement and guide France all the way to the 2006 World Cup final.

5. He made Yoann Gourcuff his playmaker when others doubted he even had a place in the starting line-up.

6. He made sure Loic Remy, Andre-Pierre Gignac and Bafetimbi Gomis became famous outside their regions.

7. He is an incurable romantic, asking his partner to marry him rather than apologising to the fans after France lost a World Cup final largely because of Zidane's infamous headbutt.

8. He is not obsessed with television, being the only Frenchman not to have watched the replay of Wednesday's controversial goal.

9. Most people don't like him, so being a fan of Domenech is more original than liking Nelson Mandela, the Beatles or chocolate ice cream.

10. OK, that's only nine. Anyone care to nominate a 10th?

PHOTO: France team coach Raymond Domenech (C) celebrates their win against Ireland in their World Cup qualifying playoff return leg match at the Stade de France stadium in Saint Denis near Paris November 18, 2009. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

France ensured the likes of Franck Ribery, Karim Benzema and Thierry Henry will be at the World Cup in South Africa next year after winning through with a goal that has left Irish fans seething.

There was nothing wrong with the finish from William Gallas, but Thierry Henry admitted using his hand to keep the ball in play and commentators and Irish supporters are already talking of "The Hand of God II" and "The Hand of Henry" in reference to Diego Maradona in 1986.

"Yes, there is handball but I am not the referee," Henry told reporters. "I'm in the box, there are two defenders in front of me. The ball bounced off my hand, the referee did not see it and I played on."

Ireland coach Giovanni Trapattoni called the goal a "great mistake" by Swedish referee Martin Hansson but he chose not to accuse Henry of cheating.

"I told the referee that it is possible to make great mistakes," Trapattoni told a new conference after the game at Stade de France. "It is a bitter evening."

Trapattoni said he felt the referee should have talked to his assistants and to Henry before awarding the goal.

"I am sad because the referee had time to ask the linesman and I am sure he should have asked Henry as well," the Italian said.

The result, 1-1 on the night, gave France a 2-1 aggregate win and saw them join Portugal, Greece and Slovenia as the successful sides on the final night of European qualifying.

So Ribery and the rest will join Cristiano Ronaldo and Deco at the finals, after Portugal booked their place with a more convincing performance away to Bosnia.

Joining the list of big name players to miss out are Andriy Shevchenko, after Ukraine were denied by Greece, and Andrei Arshavin, following Russia's elimination against Slovenia.

With Algeria winning through 1-0 against Egypt in Sudan, 31 of the 32 places have been decided, with Uruguay v Costa Rica to decide the one remaining issue.

France wining through against Ireland was by no means a shock but the manner of their victory will be painful to take for a team that played out of their skins in the French capital.

(Post updated with quotes)

From 1730 GMT.

Robert Enke had none of the extrovert qualities associated with the great goalkeepers in German football folklore, larger than life figures such as Sepp Maier and Oliver Kahn.

He didn't quite reach the same levels of achievement on the field either but this modest man will certainly be remembered as a great talent.

Enke, who has committed suicide at the age of 32, was the best of an outstanding crop of German keepers and would likely have been chosen to keep goal at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Maybe there he would have fulfilled his exceptional potential.

That he had even made it into the Germany squad was testament to his character and professionalism.

Enke had to struggle to get his career back on track after a disappointing spell at Barcelona in the 1990s. Barca snapped him up on a free transfer after an excellent three years at Benfica but he was never able to make an impact at the Nou Camp, with his time there effectively cut short by a single poor performance in a Cup game.

He moved on loan to Fenerbahce and dropped down to the Spanish second division with Tenerife before he fought his way back into the top flight in 2004, back in Germany with Hanover. He eventually won the first of his eight German caps in 2007, eight years after being called up to the squad for the first time. It was a promotion that was long overdue in the eyes of most fans and players.

By then, as is well known, his life had been marked by tragedy, with the death of his two-year-old daughter in 2006 because of a heart problem.

The death touched people in Germany, and he was widely admired for the strength of character he showed in coming back. It helps explain why people have been so moved by his suicide, which came, according to his wife and doctor, after he battled depression for years.

"I can hardly breathe," said Hamburg captain David Jarolim. "This is a real tragedy: first his daughter and then this."

A lot of us will have felt the same way on hearing news that is just so terribly sad.

PHOTO: Supporters of Germany's national goalkeeper Robert Enke stand in silence outside the headquarters of his club Hanover 96, November 11, 2009. REUTERS/Christian Charisius

Out of eight Spanish and English teams playing in the Champions League this week, only Arsenal were victorious.

Was this a blip for the two powerhouses, or is it another indication that Europe's top club competition is becoming more balanced?

I did a video blog on Tuesday about the difficulties in Italian football (and got a bit of stick for it!) and for 86 minutes of Dynamo Kiev v Inter Milan the problems were still there.

But a quick double burst by Jose Mourinho's men gave them a 2-1 comeback win and they are now top of the group. If they beat Barcelona at the Nou Camp next time out then the holders could be in real trouble. 

In the long run, I still maintain that a Serie A side will really struggle to win it this season but what about flying Bordeaux?

It's possibly beyond a French side as well, which leads me back to Arsenal.

Manchester United are suddenly looking shaky at the back while Chelsea, Barca, Real Madrid are far from perfect.

I reckoned at the start of the season that Arsenal, with their youthful exuberance and delightful play, could be real challengers in Europe and although they have probably had an easier group and are not even through yet, their chances look to be increasing.  

PHOTO: Arsenal's Cesc Fabregas scores his second goal in the 4-1 home win over AZ Alkmaar, Nov 4, 2009. REUTERS/Eddie Keogh

It is a little glib to suggest that Liverpool have a one-man strike force in Fernando Torres.

It seems almost beyond dispute, though, that whenever the Spaniard is unavailable Liverpool look ill equipped to challenge for the title, a situation hardly helped by the sales of Xabi Alonso, Robbie Keane and Alvaro Arbeloa in the past year.

I realise this could come across as heresy to Liverpool fans, but might the answer be to sell Torres too?

Torres is, without question, an exceptional player but he is not irreplaceable. Liverpool have won nothing with the Spaniard in attack because they simply do not have the same in-depth quality that Chelsea and Manchester United can boast.

If Cristiano Ronaldo was worth 80 million when he moved from Manchester United to Real Madrid, Torres should command a similar figure.

With that money Liverpool could buy three, maybe four, top drawer players who would give their squad more balance. Valencia striker David Villa would cost around 30 million and would be a handy replacement for Torres, as would Atletico Madrid's Argentine frontman Sergio Aguero. Either, or both of them, would leave manager Rafael Benitez enough left over to strengthen in other areas.

Villa's team mate David Silva would add some creativity in Liverpool's midfield as would Tottenham Hotspur's midfield spark Luca Modric or his team mate Aaron Lennon, if they could be prised away.

With Liverpool's debts unlikely to ease any time soon, Benitez will probably need to sell before bringing in new blood but few of their current squad, apart from Torres, Gerrard and midfield anchor Javier Mascherano, would raise the kind of money that they would require for a major squad overhaul.

Selling Torres might be the one step back Liverpool need to take in order to take two forward because at present they appear to be getting left behind.

PHOTO: Fernando Torres looks on during their Champions League soccer match against Fiorentina at the Artemio Franchi Stadium in Florence September 29, 2009. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi