Pitch battle is Keane’s biggest

SINCE we’re so desperately short of reality television, here’s an idea for a new one – Gaffer Swap, which is just what you think it might be, except with the added, exciting twist that the managers involved don’t exchange jobs, they exchange personalities.

So you might have Arsene Wenger complaining about there being too many foreign managers in the Premiership, say, while Harry Redknapp suddenly starts speaking perfect English. Or maybe Gianfranco Zola coming over all Terminator-like while Alex coos and chirps and gurns for the BBC cameras. Or how about pasty-faced Roy Hodgson taking to the sun bed while Phil Brown is heard to say something sensible, for once.

Above all, who could resist the image of Giovanni Trapattoni kung-fu kicking the tactics board in the Irish dressing room before – after just a brief pause to slaughter a pig – whipping out one of his four (or is 14?) mobile phones and texting Stephen Ireland to suggest that he should go and perform the standard anatomical impossibility. Meanwhile, over in Ipswich, all is touchingly serene as Keano illustrates his club’s current plight by miming a melancholic piece on an invisible viola…