MIKE Whitlow is enjoying life so much these days it would take a crowbar to prise the smile off his face.

He could not have made a better start to the season ... in the team, playing at the peak of his form and revelling in the fact that the team spirit he has personally worked so dilligently to generate is playing such an important part in Wanderers' success.

Not even a public bust-up with Gudni Bergsson could knock him out of his determined stride.

"It was just heat of the moment stuff," Whitlow said, making light of the incident early in the second half of the Liverpool game when he and Bergsson squared up and needed Paul Warhurst's intervention to calm the situation.

"We're best of buddies. We got a bit heated but that's only because everyone wants to be in the right position. There's nothing wrong with that.

"Paul slaughtered us about Zimmer frames going at each other!"

All three may be the wrong side of 30 but there is no doubting the impact the "old guard" have made in the first three games as Wanderers have taken the Premiership by storm.

For Whitlow it is especially satisfying after the spate of injuries that restricted him to just a handful of games last season - "a hellish season" as he calls it.

On the form he has shown so far and with his experience and Premiership pedigree, Colin Hendry and whoever else Allardyce has in mind at centre-back will have their work cut out knocking him down the pecking order.