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Today we ask a simple but pertinent question – Will Mancini last the season?

The furore surrounding the Italian’s arrival at Manchester City perhaps overshadowed the good work that his predecessor Mark Hughes had done over the last couple of years. ‘Sparky’ was not just a great player but also a great manager and his untimely demise left us wondering if the City board had made the right choice.

After their dumping from the Carling Cup by neighbours United and now their untimely exit from th FA cup by Stoke City, silverware seems a long way from the empty tropy cabinets at Eastlands. Will Mancini last to the end of the season – probably. But it remains to be seen if sucess will happen quickly.

There is a well known joke in Manchester that involves City’s trophy room being broken into and the police searching for a man last seen carrying a light blue carpet over his shoulder. If Mancini doesn’t improve soon the only carpet he will see is the one onto the plane home.

Time is slowly ticking away for Portsmouth FC. Unless they can find a buyer before Friday the club will go into administration.

Portsmouth owes debts of around 70 million pounds and their players have not been paid on many occasions this season. If they enter administration the club would be hit with a points reduction which would leave them floundering at the bottom of the premier league with no real possibility of staying up.

It is a sad state of affairs that a club with a history as illustrious as Portsmouth’s should end up in this position; we only hope a buyer is found soon.

While Chelsea, Man Utd and Arsenal all battle for the top three places in the premier league, perhaps the most difficult position to guess come the of the season is fourth.

This weekend saw a no bore draw between two of the clubs aiming to finish in fourth, Manchester City and Liverpool. Liverpool have been in poor form recently and with City not playing talisman striker Carlos Teves, the action was always going to be a little stiff. The BBC were reduced to showing the highlight of the game which was a misplaced free kick from Steven Gerrard that nearly hit the corner flag.

Everton and Tottenham are the other two clubs to back if you think you might have a flutter and with Tottenham in top form and Everton beating Manchester United at the weekend you wouldn’t back against them.

The FA cup quarter-final draw was made yesterday after some cracking action during FA cup weekend. Crystal Palace nearly did a giant killing act and missed out on going through because of a late equaliser from Aston Villa. Bolton and Tottenham will have to play again after Tottenham missed a penalty. Man City and Stoke will also have to replay after a dull draw at Eastland’s, whilst Chelsea calmly swept away Cardiff, in perhaps the game of the weekend.

Here is the quarter final draw in full:

Chelsea v Manchester City/Stoke City
Fulham v Bolton Wanderers/Tottenham Hotspur
Reading/West Brom v Crystal Palace/Aston Villa
Portsmouth v Birmingham City

The transfer window has now closed so we thought we would bring you all the action from the final day. Hmmm….There wasn’t really any big signings or surprises. perhaps the biggest speculation surrounded a move by Micheal Owen who is currently at Man Utd. The move didn’t happen.

At the time of writing this blog Robbie Keane was contemplating a loan move to Celtic park. And that was about it. We could mention David Nugent, but we thought we wouldn’t’ bother. Also we thought a brief note about Benni McCarthey might interest you, but he is a player of the past, not the future, so we didn’t mention him either.

It is becoming a worrying trend for football in this country, with the news that Championship side Crystal Palace have become the latest club to go into administration.

This announcement has been made by the administrators P and A Partnership after the club has been unable to pay players at various times this season. The club chairman Simon Jordan has been trying to attract investment while keeping the club running.

The administration is expected to be short-lived though as several buyers are said to be interested in the Eagles.

The club are yet to release a statement, but any club outside the Premiership that goes into administration are automatically docked 10 points. This would leave the club four points above the relegation zone.

The main topic of recurring news over the past week has not really been about transfers, but the fallout from the first leg of the Carling Cup Semi Final between Manchester City and United. Fair enough, the other Semi (second leg) produced 10 goals and plenty of talking points of its own – but the Manchester derby has now taken on extra significance after comments made by Tevez in the aftermath.

Ever since the Abu Dhabi United Group took over control at City, the rivalry between the two clubs has taken on a new dimension. Tevez left Old Trafford in controversial circumstances and crossed the divide in the summer and the way in which he celebrated his two goals will surely bring a response from United in the second leg. Plus, the recent comments attributed to Tevez about Gary Neville will ensure he gets a hot reception on Wednesday night.

I can’t wait to see how it all unfolds!

The January transfer window officially opened on 2nd January 2010 but there hasn’t really been much going on to report until now. The window will close again on Monday 2nd February at 5pm and until then there is likely to be a flurry of activity – with many loan signings expected at least, especially involving those clubs decimated by growing injury lists.

Over the next few blogs we will be looking at anything interesting going on with regards to moves as well as rumours of player activity.

The main signing in the Premiership so far is Patrick Viera moving from Inter Milan to Manchester City. I’m sure this move will rekindle his ‘special’ relationship with United fans!

The Ivory Coast may start as favourites when the Cup of Nations starts this Sunday, but the event held two years ago showed there are always a few surprises along the way – as Egypt eventually proved. Angola will play Mali in the first Group A game.

This year there are many Premiership footballers on show in the tournament including Didier Drogba, Michael Essien, Yakubu, Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Toure. It will be interesting to see which team will emerge victorious. The Cup Groups are shown below.

NATIONS CUP GROUPS

Group A: Angola, Algeria, Malawi, Mali
Group B: Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Togo
Group C: Benin, Egypt, Mozambique, Nigeria
Group D: Cameroon, Gabon, Tunisia, Zambia

The heavy snowfall during this week and constant temperatures below freezing have meant that many of the football fixtures due to be played this weekend in Britain and Ireland have had to be postponed.

Some of these postponements have been due to frozen pitches while there is also concern over supporters’ safety when travelling to the games.

The Premier League games at Burnley, Fulham and Sunderland due to be played tomorrow have already been called off. Decisions are expected imminently as to the fate of other games to be played on Saturday and Sunday.

We have not seen weather like this for many years and the freak conditions may last for a lot longer yet.