The Premier League goes from strength to strength both as a sport and as a spectacle.

We now have the equivalent of cricket's Barmy Army in darts. I ended up having a couple of beers with some people from Limerick who were going to see the Premier League nights in Liverpool, Belfast and Blackpool. And they're also planning to go out to Las Vegas to watch the Desert Classic!

Taylor: faces Klaasen

The crowd in Liverpool were in top form and as befits a city that has produced poets like Roger McGough and songwriters such as Lennon and McCartney, the placards were all very witty.

And my favourite line in commentary was based on an old Cilla Black song: "Anyone who had a dart would look at Phil... and say 'I'm taking up dominoes instead.'"

I'm expecting some third-degree (Robert) Burns this week as the Premier League makes its debut in Edinburgh. You can expect some Burns quotes in commentary as well as some lines from the great William McGonegal.

If you've never heard of him, he was known as the world's worst poet. He once wrote a poem about the Tay Bridge disaster along the lines of: "Oh mighty bridge of the Silv'ry Tay/ One fine day you were washed away."

Let's have a look at this week's runners and riders...

JOHN PART v RAYMOND VAN BARNEVELD
These two players both have problems with commuting, but in a funny way I think getting to the extreme ends of the UK bothers Barney coming across from Holland more than it does John Part crossing the Atlantic from Canada.

Barney wasn't giving us the old Rocky eyes last week. He always straddles the paradox between relaxation and intensity and he turned up in Liverpool so relaxed that he treated it like a pub game.

Towards the end he was slapping the darts into the board like he did in the Wembley challenge of 1999 and it was almost as if he'd given up. You could tell he wanted to be somewhere else. But that leg-and-a-half could cost him a place in the last four because the league could come down to legs difference.

I'm not sure if Part has a second gear now. When he starts to snarl and sneer at himself it doesn't seem to achieve anything and I think Barney will win this match. I'd say it'll be 8-5 to the Dutchman.

WAYNE MARDLE v TERRY JENKINS
Phil Taylor is currently as relaxed as I've ever seen him - and I've been watching him since 1989. There was always something inevitable and relaxed about him when he was winning regularly in the mid-1990s and he is even more smooth now. I think the other players are looking at him and thinking if he can be so relaxed , then so can we.

But with Wayne Mardle I don't think there is an issue with his concentration. He has a problem with his technique whereby he aligns the dart wrong along his sighting eye and throws the dart off the straight. That means it goes into the treble five instead of the treble 20.

Unsurprisingly Terry Jenkins threw a 97 average last week and he's got a rock-solid technique. I can't see Mardle getting close to him and I think that's a game that'll finish 8-4 to The Bull.

PHIL TAYLOR v JELLE KLAASEN
Phil Taylor picked up where he left off at the World Championship, beating Barney with a 107.5 average. Last year he started with a 94 average and it took him until week six to really get going. After that he averaged above 100 each week, peaking at 113 in the semi-final against Adrian Lewis. If we follow the same mathematical principles then he'll average 118 in week six in March in Manchester and will beat somebody in the semi-finals with a 120 average.

He is by far the most comfortable player in the tournament. He seems to have lost his obsession with diet and exercise and the state-of-the-art racing bike he bought is probably now used for drying his socks. He's now eating more Staffordshire oat cakes than muesli bars, but he's got his darts right and he seems extremely relaxed.

The second most relaxed man on the opening night was Jelle Klaasen. The atmosphere didn't faze him at all on his debut and he looked completely at home. He is completely Box Office and watching him throw darts is like watching Ronaldinho play football.

He threw a 97 average on his first night against a very good opponent, but that won't stop Taylor trying to beat him 8-0. The Power lost his first ever Premier League match last year on Scottish soil and he'll be desperate to make up for that in Edinburgh. Just like a battery in a remote control, he loves to turn a negative into a positive. I'd say Taylor will win 8-2.

JAMES WADE v MERVYN KING
This will be the best match of the night. James was spitting chips after his match last week because he couldn't believe his practice form had deserted him and he'd only averaged 93.

In contrast, Mervyn King is the Roy Keane of the operation. He takes no prisoners and he enjoyed an extremely impressive debut average of 97.5 in Liverpool.

Both Klaasen and King came into the league and averaged 97 which proves how high the standard is nowadays. The world champion has pushed the bar higher and higher for many years so everybody else knows that when they get in the ring they need to average more than 96 just to be in the game.

Those were the sorts of averages that Eric Bristow and Jocky Wilson were throwing to win the world championship in the 1980s. It seems that what would have won you a world title 20 years ago, wouldn't even win you a match in the Premier League. That's how far the game has come.

And finally...

I've just received a letter from the Performance Analysis Department at the University of Wales in Cardiff from a guy (Paul Gillings) who wants to talk to me about my theories on Phil Taylor and how he stacks and bends darts.

Apparently my words are right on track with the research he wants to do on bio-mechanics - the study of angles, velocities and the like!

Here's me making up analogies for a bloke doing a Masters degree in sports analysis - I've become Albert Einstein!

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