Goals and gold: 12 short columns about the Premier League

RAYMOND WILLIAMS, the Marxist scholar, had an interesting take, not on sport per se, but on people’s attitudes – one that could easily be applied to the non-stop erotic cabaret on offer across the water in the Premier League.

Williams said once that the great achievement of the bourgeoisie was a confidence trick: that its concerns and interests were the concerns and interests that should naturally occupy the minds of right-thinking people everywhere, and that this was a state of affairs beyond question.

Does that sound familiar?