West Ham United 2 Cardiff City 0

The one thing that struck me before this match kicked off was how fit West Ham looked in pre-season, I only know this secondhand from watching a feature on Joe Cole on BTVision but the omens were good. They needed to be after a Tarot reading on Friday nights Baker and Kelly show said that this season the wheels would come off, the low point was seeing big Sam stabbed in the back by twenty five swords!

Anyway Cardiff City have to be played at the some point in the season (never understand this 'we have a difficult start nonsense') and we may as well take three points off them in August as in May. The one thing that did come out of this match though was how badly we need a back-up striker for Andy Carroll, an experienced striker who can come in and score ten goals or so this season.

With the exception of Serie A all the major leagues in Europe are now up and running and it's not only the action of the field that will be of interest but the competition between Sky and BT Vision/ESPN. Have to say I've been impressed by the new combo so far although Michael Owens monotonous tone will take as much getting used to as 'Carra's' 'when are my balls going to drop' exciteable Scouse accent. Of course the big news of the summer in footie broadcasting terms was the easing aside of the most boring man to come out of Preston - Mark 'Lawro' Lawrenson. Great defender, dreadful pundit.

With BT incorporating the existing ESPN contracts we can now enjoy coverage from the 'big five' leagues in Europe plus Russia, USA and Brazil - although you have to be nocturnal to enjoy the last two live.