11th February

Okay, so there wasn't a lot of sport yesterday or today, so I'll just round up some of the general stuff that's happening across the world of sport today and in general.

Football

• Dimitri Payet has signed a new deal with West Ham despite only joining in the summer. This new, five year deal will keep him at the Hammers until 2021. This is an interesting move to say the least, as Payet signed a five year deal only six months ago. Now there's no denying how class Payet has been, but class enough to secure a new deal? Either he made demands for a pay rise (something West Ham have denied) or there was a clause that either needed to be added or removed, plausibly an increase in his buyout? Either way, this is a signal of intent from West Ham, that they're determined to keep hold of one of their star players, unless they get an out of this world offer.
  
• Another man signing a new deal to keep him at his club is Bojan, who will now be under contract at Stoke until the summer of 2020. This comes over 18 months after he signed his deal. Like Payet, Bojan has had a solid season and the man himself has claimed that Mark Hughes is the driving force behind this new deal. Unlike the Payet deal, this really does appear to be a case of footballing, rather than financial reasons.
  
• The inevitable fallout from Adam Johnson's confession has already kick-started. He's been sacked by Sunderland, he's lost his sponsorship and he's due in court to see if he's guilty of the other two charges that he's been accused of. Now this to me is very fishy. The fact that less than a week ago he was playing for Sunderland, and now he's pleading guilty tells me one of two things. Either the club knew what he was going to plead and decided to stay oblivious as long as they could feasibly do so, or Johnson himself didn't tell the club in order to keep his career going as long as possible. I suppose it's plausible that the decision to plead guilty was a last minute one, but surely he can't have been playing on Saturday unaware that less than a week later he'd be pleading guilty? Either way it's an interesting moral question, leaving a difficult taste in the mouth when you consider the phrase: "innocent until proven guilty".
  
• And Derby have insisted that they're not interested in ex-Leicester boss Nigel Pearson to replace Paul Clement as their manager, claiming that they're going to give their caretaker boss Darren Wassall until the end of the season (yeah right). This smacks to me of another Swansea situation, and I don't understand the logic in sacking a manager who took you to 5th in the league without replacing him. But hey, it worked out so well at Swansea, so there's no way things can possibly go wrong...

Rugby 

• Welsh fly-half Dan Biggar is going to be fit to play Scotland on Saturday after what has been called a "miraculous" recovery, after it looked like he was going to face a month on the sidelines. This has allowed Warren Gatland to name an unchanged side following their 16-16 draw against Ireland. At international level, consistency is vital and Biggar is a huge player in this Wales team. As a result, you have to say that Wales will be very confident in running rings around this Scotland side in Cardiff. And as for the Scots, centre Duncan Taylor is in for Matt Scott in their only change, after Scott picked up a thigh injury in training. Scotland have now lost eight games in a row in the Six Nations and against Wales and the odds are really against them stopping it being nine on both counts.
  
• The Irish are absolutely riddled with injuries at the moment. Simon Zebo and Keith Earls are the latest two players to pick up injuries, Zebo his knee and Earls his head, ruling both of them out of Saturday's match in Paris. Luckily for them, Sean O'Brien and Rob Kearney are both back from injury and both Sexton and Trimble are fit to play, so their injury problems are nowhere near as bad as they could have been. The French on the other hand, are making six changes, and there are clear signs of trouble for them. As far as Ireland are concerned, with the current state of play, this is a game that they must win, by whatever means necessary. 

The Hard and Fast Section

• Tomorrow night. 6pm. RaW. Be there. 
• Bapchild Cricket Club bowled out for 0. Yes. 0. Ouch.
• Cricketers can pick up yellow and red cards. Interesting. 
• Kenya missed a WADA deadline. Uh oh. 
• Bit of a dry day today. Some cricket tomorrow though.