Barnet made one more step towards regaining their place in the Football League when they thrashed lowly Farnborough 7-1 in the Conference on Saturday. The Bees who were relegated from Division Four in 2001 were 1-0 down after just 6 minutes before beginning their seven-goal spree, helped in part by Farnborough having two players sent off. Hat-trick hero of the day for the North London club was Guiliano Grazioli (although shouldn't non-league players be called Dave Barker and work on building sites?) Barnet now find themselves a massive 16 points ahead of Halifax at the top of the table and are destined to boost London's Football League quota to 13 for the first time since Wimbledon were relegated from Division Two into the Combined Counties League.
Talking of which, AFC Wimbledon also look like winning their division after a 4-1 tonking of Horsham in Division One of the Ryman League. The Dons are now 14 points clear of their nearest rivals and are on course for yet another promotion up the non-league pyramid.
Away from non-league matters, Chelsea look to have sewn up the championship with a 4-1 win over Crystal Palace. No, not "The Championship" as in Division Two, but the Premiership championship. The team that wins the Premiership championship being the ones who get to play in the Champions league along with various other runners-up of the Premiership who didn't win the Premiership championship, whereas the team that wins the Championship championship only get to play in the Premiership. They don't stand a chance of winning the Premiership championship, but will get enough money to win the Championship championship again. Got that? Good.
Arsenal's season continues to trundle on like a clapped-out old banger desperately wanting the race to end. When the most interesting thing to happen in a match is the Blackburn mascot abseiling in from the top of the stand to hand the match ball to the referee before the game, you know Arsenal aren't exactly firing on all cylinders. Anyway, 1-0 to the Arsenal.
Saturday saw Charlton's chance of unbelievably getting to within spitting distance of a Champions (sic) League place. All they had to do was to beat the hopeless West Brom at home. They lost 4-1. In part thanks to Tal El Karkouri's outrageous two-footed over-the-ball lunge into Zoltan Gera's legs, for which the defender was sent off, but mostly thanks to a really quite poor performance all-round by the Addicks.
Tottenham meanwhile beat Manchester City 2-1, with a delicate pass here, a sublime chip there, and a huge great Timothee Atouba elbow in Joey Barton's face. One of the more extraordinary moments of this season overshadowed a very good performance from Spurs who still have Europe in their sights.
Without a league win in two months, Fulham now find themselves a precarious six points above the relegation zone. Another lack-lustre performance from the Whites saw them lose 1-0 to Manchester United, who probably deserved to win by more.
In Division Two, three London clubs are separated by one point in the play-off hunt. Millwall had an excellent 3-0 home win against Plymouth, while QPR won 1-0 away to almost-relegated Rotherham. Less good for West Ham, as they could only muster a 2-2 draw at home to Leicester. However, a shining light has appeared for Hammers fans over the horizon as keeper-of-the-scrapbook Tony Cottee has brought together some rich pals to buy out figure-of-hate Terry Brown. Meanwhile, more misery for Watford who are now hovering just four points above relegation after another hopeless home defeat, this time against Preston.
In the Third, Brentford could have got into the play-off zone but found themselves 2-0 down with 24 minutes to go against Chesterfield. However, they managed to rescue a draw from the match to remain in the hunt. While in the Fourth, Leyton Orient lost 3-1 away to promotion-chasing Macclesfield.
