Premier League title-race makes glorious viewing from the neutral corner

‘Tis the season to be neutral, payback time for those of us who could never could quite commit to an English club in our formative years.

Growing up a League of Ireland fan as the 60s gave way to the 70s was not without its external trials, chief among them a veritable rite of passage which involved trying, usually with negligible success, to explain the seemingly inexplicable to the stubbornly unreceptive.

Or to put it more simply, from about the age of eight I learned to endure numerous short-lived schoolyard conversations along the following lines: