JAMES SHARPE: A football match was starting in half an hour, but it was already clear who was the main event and what was the sideshow.

Forget 'Doing the 92'. Steve Broughton has visited a staggering 5,630 grounds and travelled almost a million miles, in a hobby that's stretched more than 40 years.

Sunderland clearly did not receive the memo. Promoted sides are not supposed to enjoy Premier League life as much as this, and certainly not a club that has been away for almost a decade.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW BY JAMES SHARPE: The friendly voice at the end of the phone sounds jovial, but you need not strain your ears to hear the steel in the words of a man left behind.

In swapping Big Ange for Flexible Frank, Spurs chairman Daniel Levy has switched one of the Premier League's most unshakably principled managers for one of the most adaptable.

JAMES SHARPE: As the Crystal Palace buses carrying their FA Cup heroes reached the corner of Whitehorse Lane and Park Road, and Selhurst Park came into view, the grey clouds gave way.

Champions League football looked firmly within the two-time European Cup winner's grasp. One win in six has seen Nuno's side drop out of the top five with just three games to go. What's gone wrong?

THE SHARPE END: All this has led to the question: is this the worst Premier League bottom three of all time? That's the easy bit: yes.

THE SHARPE END: Onana's two years at United has been littered with mistakes, like when he charged out of his goal to hand Ipswich an early goal in February

THE SHARPE END: When Liverpool announced the £85million signing of striker Nunez just a day after Erling Haaland joined Man City, it felt like it could be the dawn of a great Premier League rivalry.

JAMES SHARPE: Who are you? Erling Haaland asked Arsenal's teenage debutant Myles Lewis-Skelly after John Stones had snatched a dramatic late point for Man City at the Etihad in September.

JAMES SHARPE: Soler joined West Ham on the final day of the summer transfer window on loan from PSG, whom he joined in 2022 from Valencia. It took him a while to settle, on and off the pitch.

JAMES SHARPE: For the first 10 days, Graham Potter couldn't even go home. So chaotic was life as the new West Ham manager that Potter lived out of his hotel room in Stratford.

JAMES SHARPE: It's fair to say that, sometimes, Bruno Fernandes doesn't help himself. A misplaced pass from a team-mate and up go the arms and out comes the sigh.

JAMES SHARPE: Diallo has forged himself into an undroppable part of Amorim's side and was rewarded this week with a new bumper contract.

JAMES SHARPE: Not since David Beckham has an English wide player been able to play - and see - the passes Alexander Arnold has in his armoury.

THE SHARPE END: As my mum always used to say, pride comes before a fall and so it was after those words to Arteta that Haaland embarked on his worst league run of goalscoring in a City shirt.

JAMES SHARPE AT THE LONDON STADIUM: Two tributes to team-mate Antonio, lucky to be alive in hospital after his horrific car crash, after two huge goals on one emotional night for West Ham.

THE SHARPE END: Trying to make sense of Tottenham is, and always has been, an impossible task. Why can Tottenham beat the big clubs but get turned over by those they should beat?