A subject close to my heart is diving. When I say 'close to my heart' this is because I have in the past been accused of diving. I have always been adamant that I don’t dive but I merely invite the mistimed challenge which I have long believed gave me the moral high ground over those that went down under no contact whatsoever. If I lived in Italy or Spain my ability to ‘win’ a free kick or penalty would be admired and applauded as they consider it to be one of the dark arts of football. In England however it is still very much frowned upon. But should it be?

It is time for the annual New year dilemma for all darts fans, after being juiced up with the razzmatazz of the PDC darts on Sky sports with their delightful “walk on” girls and superior quality of darts, do you put yourself through the BDO darts on BBC where all the glamour is replaced with a game almost unrecognisable from the sky version and with a quality of darts that makes you think after watching the PDC version “I’m sure I could win this”

My initial blog was a tedious ramble about my predictions for the up and coming season (for those that are interested I had Man City pipping United to the title with Chelsea in third) but my annoyance in the world’s obsession to 'find the next Paul Scholes'has prompted me to write a tedious ramble about Paul Scholes instead. This subject has annoyed me now for such a long period of time now and only seems to be getting bigger and bigger with their pursuit of Wesley Sneijder who may well be “the next Paul Scholes”

The England cricket team has made no secret of their desire to be the number one ranked team in Test cricket but does anyone really care about Test cricket other than England? Since the emergence of Twenty20 cricket the popularity of Test cricket has been on the decline. I am not suggesting Twenty20 is a bad thing because for one it has increased the awareness and popularity of the game with young kids who see the players in a Twenty20 match smacking the ball to all parts of the ground and want to try and copy these shots.

Football has changed a lot in the last 15 years since Jean-Marc Bosman shifted the power from the clubs to the players. Since then the emergence of football agents and the introduction of the transfer window has produced a panic buy scenario that the clubs universally hate but I for one love. Transfer deadline day still rates in my top 5 days in football season alongside the first game of the season and Champions League final day. If I am honest I look forward more to transfer deadline day than the FA cup final (unless of course Wrexham are playing!)

With the recent sports writers award going to Scott Parker after being overlooked for the players’ player of the year award it highlighted the difference between being the best player in the country and the most valuable. No one can disagree that Scott Parker is irreplaceable to West Ham and the records back this up with West Ham’s win ratio plummeting alarmingly when Scott Parker doesn’t play, but does this make him the most valuable player in the premiership?