The Third Leader: Football crazy

Gutting times for the dwindling numbers of incurable romantics (or, if you prefer, naive herberts) who still like to see our national game as a thrilling, simple folk drama where hard-honed skills and honest endeavour, aided by the odd nudge from the Gods of the Round Ball, are the paramount prerequisites of success, along with a foreign owner.

It's tempting, too, after observing the current Premier League riddlemeree of agents, Argentines, truth economics and dodgy survival to retreat to a time of flat caps and simple handshakes when centre forwards arrived on the bus.

We say: leave it out. The idea that off-pitch proceedings were ever any less serpentine is as wide of the mark as Watford's attack. It's just that, largely due to the likes of us, everybody knows more about it. If I were being pompous, I'd say that football's present mix of celebrity, money and shenanigans is bang up-to-date simple folk drama reflecting, as sport always does, wider society. If I were being honest, I'd say it didn't half make a fantastically exciting final day even more exciting, Gary.

Court battles, too, are an imaginative way of filling the close season with interest for the keen fan, who will surely relish another chance to be let down, again. And traditionalists are still catered for: this is the great Neil Warnock, Independent columnist and manager of the relegated, for now, Sheffield United: "By Tuesday it will all be chip papers, in the bin."

Meanwhile, I urge everyone, especially the beautiful-game obituarists, to follow our football correspondent's advice and look at the young Brazilian, Kerlon, on YouTube. Sensational, Gary.

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