Editor’s Note

Football players aren’t necessarily expected to be funny, or even articulate. As Brian Clough once noted, their brains are in their feet. Which means that when someone comes out with a thought-provoking comment, like for instance Eric Cantona’s famous pronouncement on press intrusiveness (‘When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea’), people react almost as if they’ve just heard a latter-day Shakespeare.

A lot of the so-called wit in these pages is unwitting, if you’ll forgive the contradiction. This is the football world’s confused (and often confusing) meanderings on lame duck managers, overpriced (and under-performing) stars, visually challenged referees and cash-hungry magnates.

If you’re an aficionado of Match of the Day you’ll know what it’s like to suffer dull post mortems. But occasionally a pundit comes out with a nugget – intentionally or otherwise – and it’s up to anthologists like me to commit these to memory and regurgitate them for your delectation.

As the man said, football’s a funny old game.