After last year’s feast, the famine…

The news that Jack Grealish is to be a character’s name in the next outing by thriller writer and Aston Villa fan Lee Child added an appropriately dramatic twist to the week’s spiciest narrative.

“At half-time,” Alessandro Ciotti recalls, “one of our fans was already on his phone looking for flights to Japan for the FIFA Club World Cup. He wanted to get in first so that the prices hadn’t gone up too high.”

Chelsea brought out all that is characteristic in Shearer and Savage when they locked horns on the subject of the champions-in-waiting on Match of the Day at the weekend.

Sensational breaking news on the home front: my seven-year-old daughter has suddenly discovered the beautiful game.

Hubris. Now there’s a word I really like, with its hint of a serpent’s hiss at the end offset by the near certainty that the slithery one is in for a nasty surprise.

I have to say that Twitter comes into its own on sad occasions such as the passing of the great Ray Treacy and I’m sure it must come as some considerable consolation to his nearest and dearest to see the outpouring of affection and admiration on the internet which has shown no sign of drying up since the shocking news of his death emerged.

All set for another Super Sunday, everyone? 

Ireland’s 1-1 draw with Poland last Sunday provided definitive proof that, just as we’d always suspected, the celebrated glass is indeed both half-full and half-empty at one and the same time.

Andy Townsend might struggle to remember Ireland’s 3-3 draw away to Poland in 1991 – the last competitive meeting between the two countries – but it’s a game which is lodged firmly in your humble correspondent’s memory banks.