THERE will come a time when football isn’t mentioned once in this column.

DID you ever get the feeling that you’re completely superfluous?

SOMETIMES the only thing you can do is laugh.

GOLF puns, no. Food puns, yes. I’m strange that way.

PLEASE, no more golf puns. I can’t take it any more. We’d just won 2-1 in the Nou Camp after conceding the first goal.

UNLIKE my Mancunian counterpart, I’m rarely privy to inside information from the dusty corridors of Anfield.

HOWDY Y’ALL.Excuse me for slipping into the vernacular for a cotton-picking minute. It’s obviously a direct result of reading all those tedious e-mail circulars.

FROM “Big Picture” to parochial snapshot: what a strange week it’s been.

WITHOUT a game to watch on Saturday (thanks, Jerzy) I’m reduced to making the insignificant substantial.

AS WITH most things in football, finding the right balance is essential even to those of us on the margins. Last week’s rare whiff of positivism struck a chord with readers who have bafflingly come to see me as a miserable old warthog.