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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.