EVEN the hype which always attends the early days of the new season can’t mask the fact that English football is going through another of its periodic bouts of soul-searching and self-flagellation.

WHAT a long, strange week it’s been.

THE household names have given way to the names of households.

IS there a more accomplished juggler of carrot and stick in football management than Alex Ferguson?

HERE’S an authentic text exchange which took place between myself and a fellow football fanatic last Monday morning.

HE might be just 12 but, already, Charlie Purcell is following in the footsteps of some famous football names.

WELL it curdled and curdled but just when we thought the final of the 2010 World Cup would leave us with a sour taste in the mouth, the cream eventually, and mercifully, rose to the top.

ROLL UP! Roll up!

AND SO, rubber aprons donned and meat cleavers sharpened, English football’s by-now traditional World Cup post-mortem goes about its grisly business, not that, after what we witnessed from her finest sons in South Africa, one can truthfully say there was a whole lot of mortem to be post about.

WHEW!