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Manchester United and Chelsea played out a boring and somewhat uneventful Premier League match at Old Trafford on Monday night. Despite the eneventful 90 minutes, there were two aspects that intereseted me; the first was that Wayne Rooney started and played quite decently, and the second was that Juan Mata was once again overlooked by Jose Mourinho. What is going on with the little Spaniard, and has Mourinho already taken a dislike to Chelsea’s Player of the Season for the last two years?

Now that the impending news of Gareth Bale’s transfer to Real Madrid is likely to happen sooner rather than later, what future is there for Argentine winger Angel Di Maria? Cristiano Ronaldo, Isco and Bale are likely to form the attacking trident behind Karim Benzema, which doesn’t leave any room for a player that has been a regular ever since joining the club from Benfica in 2010. However, I believe that it would be a big mistake to let the tricky winger go and certainly a huge benefit to the rumoured clubs that are interested in him, such as Arsenal.

It appears that reports of Lukas Podolski’s impending exit from Arsenal have been greatly exaggerated.

Southampton splashed out over £12 million on Pablo Osvaldo (who somewhat bizarrely claimed in his first press conference at the club that he wished to be known by his middle name ‘Daniel’), but just what can Saints expect the Argentine-Italian striker to bring to their ever-improving squad?

With Kenny Miller retiring from international football, Scotland are in need of a new goalscoring hero.

I realise the statement that I made in the title is rather bold, but if you’ve seen him over an extended period of time then you’ll realise my statement isn’t as bold as first thought. The 19-year-old German has spent his entire professional career at Schalke and most of his youth days as well. He also plays for the German national team, which says an awful lot about the quality of the player if he already features for Germany at his age.

Time for goal of the week now and it comes from a Champions League qualifier between Real Sociedad and Lyon.

Following on from my Javi Martinez article, next on my list is fellow Bayern Munich man, Thomas Muller. The man that I raved about so much last season because of his passion, desire and determination on the pitch. The 23-year-old has been at Bayern Munich all his professional career so you can understand where the passion has derived from. He was another crucial member of Bayern Munich’s treble winning team along with Javi Martinez.