According to reports in the UK press on Tuesday morning Manchester United centre-back Rio Ferdinand is facing the axe from Sir Alex Ferguson following a series of below par performances.

The England defender's performances for both club and country have been littered with costly errors and although these have been put down to simple lapses of concentration or a shift in focus to off-pitch activites Matt Dickinson, chief sports correspondent for The Times, is concerned that the explanation is much more sinister.

"I wish I did buy the argument, expressed by some disillusioned Manchester United fans, that Rio Ferdinand’s horrible season stems from a lack of focus.

It would make life a lot simpler if we could attribute his mistakes to being too tied up with off-field activities; if we could brush off his helplessness when confronted by an 80 per cent Fernando Torres on Sunday as fatigue from parading up and down a Leicester Square red carpet. Because then we could do something about it.

...His absence from regular training is frequent enough to have set off alarms at Old Trafford about the longevity of a player who is 31 next week. The stiffness, the slowness, the general lack of mobility are bigger worries than any lapses in concentration."

Meanwhile, over at the Telegraph, Jeremy Wilson has reacted to the unusual failings of the league's big boys by asking whether this is the most open Premier League title race to date.

Wenger has ... suggested that around 80 points - the lowest winning total for almost 10 years - is the target for victory.

With Manchester City, Aston Villa and Tottenham all challenging the established hegemony of recent seasons, others have even predicted that the Big Four will be superseded by a 'magnificent seven’.

Yet it is questionable whether such a change to the established order would be explained by greater strength in depth or simply a weakened and, in some cases, ageing elite.

After all, the so-called 'magnificent seven’ have already suffered 16 league defeats this season and, as Fulham, Stoke, Wolves and West Ham proved only last weekend, the fear factor is now strictly limited.

Arguing along similar lines, Kevin McCarra in the Guardian suggests the vulnerability of the elite, and the rise in big spending in Spain, is making for engrossing entertainment.

A Premier League in decline is heading in the right direction. This season's competition should remain engrossingly entertaining now that the leading teams are no longer good enough to feel safe.

...This shift in the general character of the Premier League has some connection to economics. The pound has slumped against the euro and Spain's tax regime is more lenient to the foreign stars, but such factors can be overstated. Complex means do ultimately send funds gushing into the accounts of footballers here.

Sheer impulse has mattered more in Spain than the niceties of financial planning. There is a self-satisfaction at, so far as they are concerned, outdoing the Premier League.