SCREEN PLAY

Even if you can gain admission to the match of your choice, watching the game on a big screen in a pub has a number of advantages. It’s warmer, it’s cheaper (a couple of pints will cost you a fraction of the average Premier League ticket price), and you don’t have to sit in a motorway hold-up at nine o’clock on a Saturday night, punching the dashboard in frustration at the last-minute chance your team missed that would have won them the match. But you should be aware of the rules:

1. If you are on your own and your team scores, do not jump up in the air and shout at the top of your voice. This runs the risk of offending any opposition fans present who might interpret your reaction as a deliberate provocation. Instead, clench your fist tightly and growl a muted ‘yes’ through gritted teeth, as though this was an involuntary action by someone who nevertheless wishes to preserve their public dignity.
2. If you are watching the match with a friend, you should develop the ability to talk out of the corner of your mouth. This is because your eyes must never leave the match. Football fans in pubs thus take on the appearance of undercover cops in a crowded square – communicating, but not actually acknowledging each other’s presence.
3. The same rule applies when being served at the bar. You can allow yourself the briefest break from watching the match in order to achieve eye contact with the barman, but after that you must complete the rest of the transaction while remaining glued to the screen. Offer your money and receive your change simply by holding out your hand; make the barman’s hand come to yours, not vice-versa. Only check your change during a break in play.
4. Accept that if you go to the Gents, someone will score a leading contender for ‘Goal of The Season’. If you put off your visit, the game will remain goalless. There is no escaping this immutable law of football.

If your team is not involved in the match, there are some simple guidelines that tell you who to support:

a)  If Manchester United are playing, support the other team.

b)  If an English team other than Manchester United are playing in a European competition, support the English team.

c)  If Manchester United are playing in a European competition, grudgingly support them, but pepper your support with comments about Surrey.

d)  If it’s an international match involving England, support England.

e)  If it’s an international match not involving England, support anyone except Germany.

f)  If you’re in a strange town, support whomever everyone else in the pub is supporting.

The philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote about the importance of pursuing your own individualist agenda, free from the tyranny of popular opinion. As and when John Stuart Mill has supported Sheffield United in a pub full of Sheffield Wednesday fans, you can listen to him.

ACTION REPLAYS

These are a vital part of TV coverage of football. They allow the director to play back an interesting or controversial incident, thereby ensuring that you miss the goal someone has gone on to score directly from the event in question.

TV PUNDITS

A crucial difference between attending a match in person and watching it in the pub is that in the latter case you can listen to the analysis provided by the television pundits. These strange creatures come in a variety of species – professional presenters, ex-managers, ex-players, currently injured players...The list is endless, and quite often tedious. Some, such as the BBC’s Mark Lawrenson (who played for Liverpool in the 1980s), are determined to display their cynicism about the modern game at every possibly opportunity. Others, especially those who have played the game more recently (so earning vastly more money), give off a Great Gatsby-esque air of ennui, not just about the game of football they’re watching that minute, but about the whole notion of a lifetime ahead of them with nothing more to animate it than whether they should drive the Bentley or the Porsche today. This makes them just as spirit-sapping to listen to as you’d expect.

Reserve your praise for the odd pundit such as Sky’s Gary Neville (ex-England and Man Utd) or ITV’s Lee Dixon (ex-England and Arsenal) who both display a keen knowledge of and interest in the modern game, and who don’t talk in clichés like most of their contemporaries. Otherwise, you should state that pundits are there not to inform viewers, but to entertain them. In some cases this will be as a result of their choice of suit, in others by their use of grammatical constructions with which they are clearly unfamiliar, and in yet others by their failure to get to grips with technological wizardry intended to aid their analysis. This has become ever more sophisticated in recent seasons, but almost always ends up with the pundit drawing white lines on the screen to illustrate the player and/or ball movements under discussion. These lines are similar to the arrows in the opening credits of Dad’s Army, except that they have marginally less meaning.

PLAYER INTERVIEWS

Post-match player interviews are yet another delight that you miss out on by actually bothering to attend a match. Footballers being creatures of habit, the same phrases tend to crop up again and again, so it is imperative that the bluffer is familiar with them. For example:

‘It was a game of two halves.’ This means that the pattern of play before half-time was markedly different from that after the break. Footballers should not be mocked for using this cliché. In their terms, the concept of two halves adding up to a whole constitutes advanced mathematics.

‘We set out our stall early doors.’ We showed the other team that we were determined to win the game at an early stage.

‘We came to do a job.’ This means the same as ‘We came to play a game of football’.

‘Obviously.’ Players have started using this as a generic verbal fill-in, rather like ‘um’ and ‘er’. They say it about things that are the exact opposite of obvious. ‘Well, you know, obviously in the dressing room at half-time the manager told us to feed the ball more down the left.’ (How is that obvious to anyone other than the few people in the dressing room at the time?)

Do not think badly of players for constantly falling back on stock expressions. It’s infinitely preferable to what can come out of their mouths when they ad-lib:

‘We’re in a no-win situation, except if we win we’ll go through to the next round.’ Graeme Le Saux

On moving to Italy: ‘It was like living in a different country.’ Ian Rush

‘I don’t want to see him [Rooney] leaving these shores, but if he does I think he’ll be going abroad.’ Ian Wright

‘If you stand still there’s only one way to go, and that’s backwards.’ Peter Shilton

‘Football’s football; if that weren’t the case then it wouldn’t be the game that it is.’ Garth Crooks

‘Arsenal are streets ahead of everyone in this league and Manchester United are up there with them.’ Craig Bellamy

‘You need at least eight or nine men in a ten-man wall.’ Mark Lawrenson

‘I’d been ill and hadn’t trained for a week and I’d been out of the team for three weeks before that, so I wasn’t sharp. I got cramp before half-time as well. But I’m not one to make excuses.’ Clinton Morrison

‘Gary Neville was captain, and now Ryan Giggs has taken on the mantelpiece.’ Rio Ferdinand