Daydream Believer

LIKE Martin Luther King, I too have a dream, although I’ll grant you that mine is perhaps a little more modest than racial integration, civil rights for all and the dawn of a shining new era for humanity.

Nope, all I want is for people to be able to get together on Monday morning, at the breakfast table, on the building site, around the water cooler, wherever like-minded folk are gathered, and just discuss, debate, argue and, ideally, swoon over the football. And by football, I mean all that old-fashioned stuff like goals, saves, goalmouth incidents, near misses, last-ditch tackles, sweeping moves, great moments of skill and the odd howling error.

But instead, I fear that for the umpteenth time we’ll end up talking about what Jose had to say about what Fergie had to say about what the referee did or didn’t do. On the back pages, there’ll be plenty of Mourinho “slams” and Ferguson “fumes” and more space devoted to who won the “mind games” than who won the match. Throw in a bit of diving, a silly outbreak of “handbags”, a narrow victory by a dodgy, disputed goal and — where would we be without it? — the mandatory FA investigation, and it’ll have been another Super Sunday brought to you by “the greatest league in the world”.