Perked-up By The Premier League.

I'm not quite over my post-Olympic Blues but the Premier League has opened up with a something not far off a bang.

Hilariously, Manchester City seem to need to add a player or two to a squad the size and cost of the entire Russian Navy and they've only played a couple of games. They're rapidly becoming a footballing version of a shopaholic's wardrobe. There's simply no limit to the number of floral tops we need.

It's not dissimilar to that time when Britain's Laziest Millionaire Winston Bogarde sat around the corridors of Stamford Bridge doing fuck-all. I'd've strapped a dust-cloth to his arse and he could've cleaned a few seats while he was there.

Citeh will be miffed that Van Persie's still in red, and his appearance for United without rooney raised a few eyebrows. If it's a straight choice between the two then on current form RvP is just the better player (in the same way that Usain Bolt is a just a better runner than Oliver Hardy). Rooney may well be a little concerned, especially now he's had that nasty old gash - ahem.

Me I think Wazza is suffering from Reverse Samson Syndrome - he's never been the same since Delilah the Trichologist stuck all them follicles in his nut.

To some people Chelsea have made the most impressive start, but all that means, really, is that they've played three games to everyone else's two. Di Matteo - who could easily be cast as an intelligent humanoid alien life form in a passable Sci-fi TV series - has every right to be chuffed, mind.

Hazard looks as good as his namesake Micky, Mata looks more and more the identikit Spaniard - short, neat and nimble as a tap-dancing whippet - and Torres has almost made more highlights packages than there are highlights in his preposterously girly barnet. On MOTD, Lawro, dressed like scrunched-up bacofoil, made the valid point that Chelsea seem to be set up to accommodate Nando and if he gets knacked they might not have a Plan B. Plan A looks topnotch, though but.

Arsene Wenger has never had a Plan B, unless it's to moan about the fact that the opposition weren't nice about his Plan A. The early signs aren't good. Once again they are playing toothless footy - I've seen more bite in a box of tissues.

Brendan Rodgers's Liverpool awoke from a nightmarish start and looked good at Anfield. Rodgers hasn't sacrificed his principles and it was brilliant to see the lad Sterling getting a start ahead of habitual kick-teases like Downing.

Swansea have starte brilliantly but then they were aided by some bloody awful work by Jaskelainen and Collins. Big Sam crumpled into his dug-out like a slowly deflating bullfrog, as he does when his lump-it-up-to-the-big-man-philosophy yields nowt. Whoever said 'Football is the Beautiful Game' had not met Sam Allardyce.

Everton, who tend get out of the blocks around March, have started the season with fists swinging. It's weird, like watching a tortoise with an outboard motor attached, but it's refreshing too. Pienaar's looking a world-beater again and if they can keep a hold of Baines and Jagielka, who knows?

Aston Villa look the most troubled thus far. Paul Lambert has always carried the air of the depressive bachelor uncle that no one really wants to talk to at a family do, and at present he may have a few more footy funerals to attend throughout the year. Unlike Southampton, say, or Reading, you can't see where a revival might come. Good though Everton were, Villa were as clueless as a very badly written detective novel. I fear for their future.

But there's been plenty of talent plus the usual fast pace and relentless passion and God help us I'm pleased that it's back so soon.

It certainly has been a better week for the Armstrongs of this world. Neil finally passed on to the next life and if it's heaven, then he really ought to have found it before he passed on. As for Lance... well there's a chest-thumping, truth-bending bullshitter and a half.

It was easy for the uninformed (and yes that includes me) to dismiss the constant barrage of insinuations in his direction as being some sort of envy-fuelled witch-hunt. It was eay to have automatic sympathy for a bloke who lost a bollock to cancer and yet appear to have more balls that at least 50% of mankind put together. There was also the fact that the bloke was clearly a bit of a knob-end - but then a lot of single-minded people are.

Now, the double-speaking toe-rag has pulled out of a court-case that would have inevitably relayed to the world at large a litany of misdemeanours. And he, despite his relentless denials - if indeed 'Prove It!' is a form of denial - has slipped away before the public humiliation can begin.

You might say that in an era of super-doped cyclists, Lance was the best junkie pedalling out there. But that doesn't much excuse it. Credit is due to the Tour de France for instantly stripping him of his titles, even if that means that they have to give the first finisher who hadn't failed a drug test, which conjures up the image of a beardy old Breton called Bernarrrrd with onions on his bike suddenly being slid into a yellow jersey.

Still cycling has set the benchmark for drug-testing in modern sport, and, if we don't want to watch chemically altered freaks fighting it out (and there's summat to be said for that) then the testing has to be rigorous in the extreme.

I sincerely believe that Wiggo, Cav, Trott, Pendleton, Hoy and all them two-wheeling Titans have never had to resort to shifty medical practices to win medals. Indeed the French'll have you believe they simply made the bikes out of magic dust instead. But now I'm backtracking into some sort of Olympian reverie.

Never mind. I'm going to get out my hankie, pretend I'm Arsene Wenger, and watch that Van Persie strike again.