The big question this week, away from the hurly-burly of the World Cup qualifiers, is: who is Christian Damiano? That’s what Southampton fans are wondering as their topsy-turvy season gets more confusing. Neal Collins also takes a look at the weekend’s soccer action.

There are times, aren’t there, when you wonder if the whole world’s gone mad. Mass graves are being uncovered in Iraq and children are being shot on the streets of London, but the English media have been dominated this week by David Beckham’s admission that he had committed a professional foul.

It’s all a bit convenient isn’t it? England play Wales in the international game of the weekend and – poof! – Michael Owen has “a muscle strain”. Suddenly the whole pick-him-or-axe-him debate about the struggling striker can be filed under the enormous category of “fitness problems”. Truth is, the Real Madrid striker is simply not performing at the moment.

On the face of it, this week’s score-line reads Arsenal 1 Chelsea 0. And this result will echo through the corridors of football for the next 15 years. Yup, Arsenal have nipped in and grabbed Chelsea’s outgoing sponsor, Emirates Airlines, and secured a deal worth £100-million starting from 2006/07.

Okay, you crazed students of English football, it’s time for an early squint at the Premiership table. Arsenal, unbeaten in 45 games, have made a perfect, goal-happy start, Chelsea remain unbeaten two points behind them with upstarts Bolton struggling for oxygen in third. Then drop lower down the table.

So there he is, the 18-year-old Wayne Rooney. Looking uncomfortable in a suit and tie. Struggling to string two words together in true young footballer fashion, with the microphones ganging up on him. A £20-million move to Manchester United and the lad from tough Croxteth in Liverpool is definitely history at Everton.

So now we know. Arsenal, 3-0 winners against Blackburn on Wednesday night, really are the best team in Britain, if not the universe. Yes, Nottingham Forest’s 42-game unbeaten record lies shattered, the goals are flowing and Thierry Henry appears to have forged a partnership with young Spaniard Jose Reyes.

You’ve got to love this guy Jose Mourinho. The new Chelsea boss, who guided Porto to supremacy in Portugal, just doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. With Roman Abramovich’s open chequebook at Chelsea, he has no choice but to achieve European dominance by next May.

Just for once, let’s forget about the megastars. Sure, the Real Madrid pair of Michael Owen and David Beckham scored two of the goals in England’s 3-0 friendly win over the world’s 71st-best side, the Ukraine, on Wednesday night. But the real star of the show at a worryingly empty St James’s Park was Shaun Wright-Phillips.

In September 1994 Leeds United manager Howard Wilkinson paid £250 000 for a young South African called Lucas Radebe (and his pal, Philemon Masinga) to help his side recover the form that had won the championship in 1991. Ten years later, “The Chief” is about to bow out, his reputation unsullied but his legs spent.