It was a fascinating exercise to go through a couple of hours worth of tweets after Arsenal’s stunning 2-1 win over Barcelona in the first leg of their Champions League round of 16 tie. The pundits are one thing, but when the tweets come from players or, in the case of Eskandarian, recently retired players, it’s amazing to see people who are (or recently were) paid to play the game become fans.

Heck no, he won’t go. That has to be the message that Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp receives from MLS headquarters and the Los Angeles Galaxy front office in regards to David Beckham’s request to be loaned out… again. Twice, the man who was supposed to be the face of MLS’ Designated Player program was loaned out to AC Milan. The first time, he remained till the end of the Serie A season, which had him miss a large chunk of the 2009 MLS season. While on loan last season, he ruptured his Achilles playing for the Rossoneri, and missed all but the last month of the 2010 MLS season.

It was clear from talking to players and manager Owen Coyle that the club believed that the coming Premiership season was going to be wide open, that the likes of Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal were going to turn the world’s most popular sports league into their own three-team tournament.