After a string of excellent performances at the Lane this season, the midfielder is a summer target for current Champions League holders Barcelona.

Clubs often spend millions and millions of pounds on forwards and attacking players but it can often be at the other end of the pitch that can be the difference between success and failure.

Dundee United host Rangers at Tannadice on Tuesday evening, Rangers can go four points clear of Celtic who face Kilmarnock on Wednesday. Dundee United are on fine form recently with only one defeat in their last ten SPL games including a 3-2 win over Rangers at Ibrox on April 11.

My month started with a trip back to The Valley, the ground where it all began for me on BBC Final Score two seasons ago. My last visit was a memorable one, after I parted with my hard-earned cash (albeit very little) to have a small wager on the game (it’s difficult not to as there’s a bookie’s stand just inside the Millennium Suite).

The last two seasons have given us every reason to love the top flight game at its best. Cast your mind back a few years ago to this point in the season in 2008 or 2009 and the Premier League table would already be depicting the slow suffocation of those teams in the bottom half of the table. The top four were dominant and getting stronger, and the rest were left to lash it out amongst themselves.

When your star player signs a new contract nowadays, do you really care? Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo signed one at the back end of the 2006/07 season, swearing his allegiance to Old Trafford for another five years on mega-bucks that we mere mortals can only dream of. 

A few months ago 33 men emerged one-by-one from a mine in Chile relatively unscathed, having survived underground for six long and lonely weeks.  As one man escaped, his first thought was to unfurl a banner of his beloved Colo Colo, the top club in Chilean football.  Another miner fetched himself a ball and proceeded to do some keepy-uppies, proving that 40 days in darkness hadn’t dampened his feel for a football. 

As you know, we at Football Friends abhor the diving culture that has seeped into out beautiful game – it is ungentlemanly, unsavoury, and it just isn’t English.