One win in nine matches tells a story. And it should be a horror story as far as Liverpool supporters are concerned. Yet their faith in their manager remains strong. Monday night's 2-2 draw with Birmingham will be chiefly remembered for David Ngog's winning of a dubious penalty yet there were far stronger undercurrents at play.

ESPN pundits Kevin Keegan and Danny Murphy made great pains to remind the watching audience of Liverpool fans' propensity to never boo a manager and also the tradition the club has of never sacking managers. It is often said that Don Welsh, back in 1956, is the only Reds boss to have been fired by the club. That however, does not take into account the enforced departures of Graeme Souness, Roy Evans and Gerard Houllier.

Souness was roundly booed and perhaps rightly so. He eventually walked after making the grave mistake of selling the story of a heart-bypass operation to The Sun newspaper, the publication that infamously sullied those who were killed and injured at Hillsborough. Performances on the pitch hardly helped his cause and he was replaced by Evans, the final graduate of Bill Shankly's "Boot Room". Evans' team played a brand of entertaining football the club have rarely been associated with since yet failed to deliver anything but a League Cup.

Fernando Torres' ultimately decisive strike in Manchester United's defeat at Liverpool has further sharpened the pencils of those wishing to proclaim the waning of Rio Ferdinand. Last week saw the man himself declare that he needed a run of ten games to pull himself back to the required levels of performance and fitness. However, the signs are that Sir Alex Ferguson's patience is fraying.

"He has one game back and picks up another injury when he really needs games," said Ferguson last month. This week saw him move on his concerns a little further. "He has to get good form. That's an important issue for the coach to pick the right team," he said on Monday. "In defence you've maybe got more options than other positions. He'll need to get his form right."

Meanwhile, Ferguson has made great recent play of his admiration for Jonny Evans, the young Ulsterman who has stepped in frequently when Ferdinand has been laid low by a series of inter-related back and muscle injuries. Ferdinand could do with reading the runes. His friend Wes Brown, another current alternative, once received the Ferguson public seal of approval after the controversial sale of Jaap Stam.

Craig Bellamy has never been one of the game's sympathetic characters. He is a grandmaster at stealing PR disasters from the jaws of personal victory - see that fist-fight in Sierra Leone when visiting his own charity foundation last summer - and last Sunday followed the usual pattern.

Written off as a bit-part of the Manchester City project, he proved his playing mettle by scoring two exceptionally taken goals and then besmirched himself by lamping an intruder clearly already under the control of Manchester United's security goons. But that was not the only ugliness on show. His dubious - considering the opposition - aeroplane-style goal celebration featured his wing-span on show and with it one of the modern footballer's most prevalent pecadilloes; the all-over arm tattoo.

Where once, during his Newcastle days, it bore the legend "Cameron", the name of one of his three children, his right arm is now completely engraved in an Indian ink tribute to medieval Welsh rebel Owain Glyndwr. It bears resemblance to the gargoyles you can find on any church from that era and must raise the odd eyebrow in the Carrington showers from those not versed in the story of 1402's Battle of Pilleth. Cameron still gets a billing on his dad's arm, he just has to compete these days.

During those weeks of the season when we're concentrating on domestic action you'll be able to catch our regular "Premier League Heroes" feature. This week, however, sees international football take centre-stage as World Cup qualifying nears its business end.

One team with hopes just alive of being in South Africa next summer are Ukraine, in Group 6, behind runaway leaders England. When they face Andorra on Saturday, they may well call on the talents of a man who must surely rank as a Premier League zero; Andriy Shevchenko, who last Friday ended his time at Chelsea, an association that finished with much more a whimper than a bang. Contract paid up, "Sheva" rejoined Dynamo Kiev, the club where he once made his name, paying glowing tribute to Roman Abramovich as he went, his exit a mere footnote on a day of constantly breaking transfer news.

He left for no fee where it once took £30m paid to AC Milan to secure his services in the summer of 2006 and augment a Blues team that were looking for three titles in a row. Most, including myself, considered his addition another nail in the rest of the Premier League's coffins. I recall watching his debut for Chelsea in the Community Shield that August. A well-taken strike against Liverpool caused me and a pal to drink up and leave a Toulouse watering hole in resignation that this would be another season of domination for Jose Mourinho's team.

The newspaper headlines were much as expected, with The Sun's "Scum" being the prime sample of media outrage at the goings on at Upton Park on Tuesday night. That a man was stabbed in the chest reflected a seriousness to the situation, so too the tears of Jack Collison as he left the field at the end of West Ham's extra-time win over Millwall.

Collison bravely decided to play in the match after losing his father to a motorcycle accident on Sunday, the day after Hammers defender Calum Davenport had suffered a knife attack that seems likely to end his footballing career. West Ham, a troubled place as it is, could really have done without the embarassment brought to their club by the actions of a section of knuckle-dragging fans during, before and after their Carling Cup match with Millwall.

Once the two teams were pulled from the hat for a second round tie many had predicted trouble between two sets of rival fans who have a long-running emnity and, to adopt the tiresome vernacular of the hooligan, have not had the chance for a "tear up" since 2005. This one was always likely to "go off" and while certain media wail and gnash teeth about what happened, questions must be asked over what has made the ructions of Tuesday night acceptable to a sizeable minority of idiots.