10@10: Jermain Defoe does his best to give Roberto Martinez a heart attack, Darren Fletcher the manager and David Beckham's penalty purgatory - 10 things we learned from watching football this week

Published 10:30 23/11/09

All the talk today is about the unfeasibly large number of goals scored by Tottenham against Wigan yesterday, but 'the Wigan defence is leakier than Thierry Henry's defence case' isn't the only thing we learned this weekend, writes Dan Silver.

1) Big Sam surely wasn't the only Premier League manager to suffer heart problems this weekend (get well soon, by the way, old chap). We'd imagine even the merest mention of Jermain Defoe's name would be enough to bring Roberto Martinez out in serious palpitations…

2) Given that Paul Scharner's consolation goal had a definite touch of the Henry's about it, wouldn’t the fairest thing be for the game to be replayed? We await Robbie Keane's impassioned plea with some interest. Actually, scrap that – the fairest thing to have done would have been to take the Wigan defenders out the back of the ground after an hour or so and put them out of their misery with a shotgun.

3) Talking of which, Irish football fans everywhere will have been dreadfully disappointed to see William Gallas' Arsenal denied a nailed-on penalty in their defeat at Sunderland on Saturday. Still, as they doubtless now say in Dublin, 'C'est la vie…'

4) The reason Phil Gartside's proposal for a two-tier Premier League failed was because we already have one. The innate imbalance of the Premier League was brought into sharp relief at Stamford Bridge in Saturday when an under-strength Chelsea side still threw Mick McCarthy's side to the, er, Wolves. Never mind his kids, Carlo Ancelotti could send out eleven Chelsea Pensioners and still get a result against at least 14 of the other sides in the division.

5) All the pre-match talk ahead of Liverpool's game with Manchester City centered on which of the two would take the last remaining Top Four space. Having watched said error-fest, we can exclusively reveal the definitive answer: neither of them. Both sides have Europa League defences at best.

6) Darren Fletcher's thunderbolt of a strike against Everton added more credence to the theory that he has somehow morphed into the new Roy Keane. So start praying now, then, that he doesn’t manager your team anytime in the future.

7) This column has been rather hard on Emile Heskey this season, so to prove there's no hard feelings, we'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate the big fella on scoring his first League goal for seven months at the weekend. We were naturally a little unprepared, but rest assured the champagne is on order to toast his next one – we've asked for them to deliver it in August. 2011.

8) This column has long scoffed at the much-expressed notion of 2-0 being 'a dangerous score', but West Ham seem hell-bent on proving it to be so. Away at Sunderland they went 2-0 up, only to be pegged back to 2-2. Away at Hull on Saturday they went 2-0 up, only to find themselves 3-2 down by half-time. Memo to Zola: next time your team takes a 1-0 lead, substitute all of the strikers immediately.

9) Alex McLeish was right to describe Lee Bowyer's decisive finish against Fulham as 'world class'. Why, we haven't seen the former Leeds man hit something that sweetly since.. [snip! That's enough of that– MirrorFootball lawyers].

10) You can take the man out of England, but you can't stop Englishman jinxing his team in a penalty shoot-out. Even when he's not wearing the Three Lions David Beckham's luck in shoot-outs is no better it seems. Despite Becks actually scoring his spot kick, his LA Galaxy side still lost the MLS Cup final 5-4 on pens. Still, it gives him a chance to practive his tearful, clapping the fans look which he will doubtless need in South Africa this summer.

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