Hope you all had a fantastic holiday break. Wow, 2009. 2008 must have been the fastest running year of my life and here we are. It's incredible to note that we're a little more than halfway through one of the more enthralling Premiership seasons in recent memory, with 18 games to go, and I thought I'd sum up my team-by-team thoughts on the Premiership so far as we head into the turn of a new calendar year. Did your team make the grade in the book of yours truly? Read on to find out.

Or so they seem.

I spent some time over the weekend getting everything around here back up to speed. We are not quite 100% back to where we were before, but hopefully we will be soon.

Well, you cannot say I didn't warn everyone. I break websites. If you have not noticed, over the last 24 hours there have been a number of error messages popping up here and there. I never saw these messages, because they don't show up for admin accounts, which complicated matters a touch.

First though, I want to thank both Chris and Mike for bringing the errors to my attention, if I never would have logged out of the site, I never would have seen these ugly errors. I'd like to thank Ray too, for doing what he could, and stopping me from pulling out my hair.

I know it seems like I haven't been around much during the holidays, I certainly haven't been posting as much. It is the slow season for baseball after all. But I am here to tell you that it just "seems" like I have been away. Actually I have been hard at work, getting things ready for the real season that is set to begin in just a few months.

I setup a Face Book account. I was quite surprised to see well over 100 of our existing team owners already using Face Book. If you have Face Book, please send me a 'friend' invite, so I can get you on the tit. By setting these guys' up as Face Book friends they can get easy access to the blog postings that go on around here, all posted right to their wall.

It feels a tad funny previewing the following round's set of matches before Boxing Day, but Christmas complicates things and so, I'll write a brief match-by-match preview to get ready for Week 20, with most games scheduled Sunday just a couple of days after Boxing Day. Sound good? Alright, let's have it...

Week 20 Fixtures

• Everton v Sunderland (Sun 12/28)

I know I was going to skip the normal recap column, but I found this run-of-the-mill bizarre week in the Premiership to be more noteworthy than I thought at first that it deserved a quick write-up. Liverpool and Chelsea are spinning their wheels again, which means that United are the biggest winners of the weekend in more ways than one than a folly exhibition trophy of Club World Cup winners that ascertain their supremacy as "world champions". Yes, assuming two wins versus Fulham and Wigan puts United level with Chelsea and only a point back of Liverpool.

We're entering the most important and one of the more enjoyable parts of the Premiership season: the holiday games. This is where the Premiership title contenders make their biggest pushes while the clubs at the bottom half, look to avoid the dreaded relegation zone and the Christmas superstition that comes with it. For fantasy managers, it's a turning point in their seasons as well. Some teams are in the thick of their fantasy league's contention, but they're mirror images with the leaders' teams.

A change of scenery could do some good and as you can see, the rankings are formatted a bit differently. For some reason, the copy-and-paste straight from Excel didn't come out as right. So, I'll have it in this table format from now on. A change of scenery could do a few United fantasy players some good and hopefully they find their scoring boots. A changing of the guard for Cristiano Ronaldo's top spot might work the Ballon d'Or winner some wonders too.

Neither of the semifinals were all that close in California.

The Monterrey Park Donuts (7-6) really needed to have a huge week, since they were staring down the front running Pat Riotz (12-1). For the RiotZ, Michael Turner, Pierre Thomas and Calvin Johnson showed up and for the Donuts, Brian Westbrook didn't. It really was that simple.

It was surreal to see The Big Four stuck in goalless draws a few weeks back, which surely should not come as a surprise that The Big Four were all stalemated as the Premiership title race was stuck in neutral. Elsewhere, the focus of world football emanated from the Camp Nou where Barcelona sought revenge for Real Madrid's coronation-turned-beating in taking a double-digit lead over their bitter rivals in the Spanish league.

There's an old Pepsi commercial that aired in the UK in of course, that fabled year, 1999, which featured Manchester United players and the gaffer Sir Alex Ferguson. In the commercial, United found themselves 3-nil down going into halftime, leaving Fergie to give an inspired pep talk, backed up by tossing each player a Pepsi in order "to be more positive". To which, of course, Peter Schmeichel joked in batting down the Pepsi can and claimed he was only joking. (You can find said commercial here.)

A lot to sift through today, as somewhere in between the Champions League group stage, the in-progress FIFA Club World Cup, and El Clasico in Spain - ahem, Catalunya - is another run-of-the-mill weekend in the Premiership. You might want to say bon voyage for a week to all Manchester United players, and in fact, two for some, as they prepare for the Club World Cup, but some others will get their last kicks in Saturday against Tottenham.

Maybe WR will be able to spin his avatar 180 degrees yet-here's hoping.
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Agent: 'Padres asked for too much' for Peavy

By Phil Rogers

LAS VEGAS -– Barry Aexelrod, the agent for Jake Peavy, doesn't sound like a guy who wants his client to stay put.

I know I've been discounting Ashley Young a bit on the rankings of late, but fact of the matter is, even if he doesn't score, he's a near-double digits a week man in Yahoo, in the same vein as Shaun Wright-Phillips. However, that two-goal game-winning performance was inspiration enough to launch Ashley back in the top 5. Also, a mild bump for Captain Scouse and a big bump up the board for one Scouser-turned-Galactico-turned-Geordie. Enjoy.

The Yankees offered 6 years, $140 million. The Milwaukee Brewers made an offer, no where close to the Yankees offer. As far as we know, no other team made an offer.

Then, about a month later, out of nowhere, Hal offers an extra year, and an extra $20 million?

The Yankees just outbid themselves.

Dave Cameron | FanGraphs Baseball : CC Sabathia signs with Yankees

This deal makes the Yankees a better team, yada yada yada. You’ll hear all kinds of people talk about how this deal impacts New York. For me, the more interesting development stemming from this contract is that it cements the fact that we’re going to have an off-season of salary deflation, in terms of cost per win, for the first time in a long time. If ever there was a case where we could have expected an overpay in terms of dollars per win, it’d be with the premier free agent pitcher on the market and the Yankees in the bidding.