I'm really coming around on this twitter thing.

Although that really looked like Rooney should have had a penalty, right?

Lazio's Luciano Zauri was lowered into a well on a rope to rescue the granddaughter of the head of Poland's FA in Rome

Poland's FA was lowered into Rome on a rope to rescue the head of the granddaughter of Lazio's Luciano Zauri in a well.

"If you're 1-0 up with a minute to go, you're comfortable at that stage," Ferguson said. "Tottenham worked their socks off, you have to give them credit for that. You cannot deny them the point as they worked ever so hard for it. They just kept pumping the ball in the box and got their reward because of that. We got used to the fact they were hitting long balls into the box and you would have thought we would have dealt with it better.

"Everyone would recognise that Tottenham was a difficult team. But we have [played] all the difficult games away from home so far, so I think we can be pleased on that part. Other teams will drop points here, there is no doubt about that. City still have to come here, I think. Tottenham are a very good team, very committed and will take points off the teams that maybe matter to us."

#914 Besides the forwards is a pretty big deal. Man U is built around creating chances for a group of unusually good finishers.

Also, I've lost track of how many Ligue 1 players Newcastle has signed or want to sign or have almost signed. They all seem like good players, though. Is there a reason they're so fixated on France?

Yeah. It's funny to think back now about how some people thought it was weird for ManU to go after RvP. Where would they be this season without him?

Conversely, I feel like 4-2 to Spurs would have been a more representative scoreline in yesterday's game.

But when it comes to the January transfer window – football's irrational global hypermarket – clubs are realising that using advanced-data analytics is sensible soccer-nomics. Even the biggest clubs find it impossible to assess every potential target, let alone the Championship manager hunting for bargains to keep his team up.

The analytics, for instance, suggested that Michu was hugely undervalued at Rayo Vallecano. But data remains a starting point, not a solution. As OptaPro's Simon Farrant admits: "We can't tell you how a player behaves off the pitch. But when clubs want to know whether a target could do a certain job, that's something we can answer."

Nah, but I'm assuming they would have converted the penalty had it been given. Then again, maybe that's a bad assumption. United have missed three of their five spot kicks this season.

There seems to be a growing Merseyside goal conversion trend. It's not just Liverpool. Everton today against Southampton managed four "big chances" and five shots on target, no goals to show for it. On the season they're fourth worst in the EPL in converting shots on target, and unlike most of the bottom clubs, they're clearly creating high quality chances (3rd in "big chances", 4th in percentage of shots taken inside the box). Is it just bad luck? My hypothesis mostly remains, yeah, bad luck. But any other ideas?

So if you look at a striker with significantly more shots off target than on (Jelavic is at 41% accuracy, according to Squawka), should we be surprised if he's also struggling to work the keeper when he does get it on frame?

A passage in David Weir’s book Extra Time might lend some insight into Jelavic’s lack of sharpness in front of goal compared with last term. Weir reflects on the difficulties that all of Moyes’s strikers – not least Beattie, the man in the spotlight at St Mary’s eight years ago – faced in performing consistently over a sustained period of time, and he makes an instructive point when he says: “Probably the best, over a period of time, was Marcus Bent in that good season we had but you could only play four or five games at that level, with the workrate the manager wanted, while trying to score goals and then you needed a rest.” Everton’s small, tight-knit squad may be a virtue in some regards, but perhaps not for the centre-forwards.

Montpellier president Louis Nicollin on typically hilarious form in today's L'Equipe. On Yanga-Mbiwa choosing Newcastle: "If he's an idiot, it's not my fault. The key thing is that it's bringing in a bit of cash."

Arsenal and Spurs both seem to be sniffing around Diame from West Ham. He seems like a no-brainer for both clubs with that 3.5 million release clause.

Ayite! Poor Cote d'Ivoire, though 1-1 is a deserved score at this point. They need to defend in midfield, which is particularly weird for a club anchored by Yaya Toure.

I had always imagined that weather was the reason they played the ACN in January. But if it's 90 degrees now, what's the point?

Well they're in South Africa, where it's summer. If it was in north Africa, the weather wouldn't be much different. It would be a little cooler but not significantly so.

So then why do they have it completely off-sequence with virtually every other major tournament?

Also, re: weather and the AFCON, we shouldn't forget that Libya was supposed to host the tournament and they had to move it for, um, obvious reasons. South Africa is one of the few countries in Africa with the infrastructure in place to do it on short notice.

I don't know why Spurs fans always think the club is going to go nuts in the transfer market.

I read the accompanying statement as Levy's diplomatic way of pointing out that he can buy shiny, new players or build a shiny, new stadium but not both. So no b!tching about a "lack of ambition" in the January window, plebeians.

@Sammy_Ameobi: Need to brush up on my French because this is just getting ridiculous lol

Haidara and Yanga-Mbiwa are set for Newcastle. They're really looking to shore up the defense this window and they already have Debuchy, too. They're also supposed to be working hard on bringing in Moussa Sissoko. These are all good players, but is there enough time to work so many new players into the system? Wenger has often said he never wanted to add any more than a couple of new players at a time because it was hard to rework a team on the fly. I wonder if Pardew is up for it.

Jelavic was on a hot streak last year after joining the Toffees. It was a big reason for their 2nd half surge. I guess this year is regression to the mean?