We’re having the snowiest winter on record here in Connecticut. There’s three feet on the ground outside this window, far as the eye can see. A vicious meringue touching the bottom lip of my satellite dish on its pole on the back lawn. I go out every couple of days, wade through the white and shovel it aside; anything to maintain the football seepage into my brain. The Premier League’s the best on the planet, I hear you say. A league invented by Tatlocks but lately invaded by foreign quimmage. In the last mag, you may have noticed me trying much too hard and slagging the middle classes. So I’ll try and slag the working classes now instead. What a queer and wondrous muppet football is today. A working class sport, played by preening whingers who live in massive mansions. I watched Notts County vs. city and was disgusted by the commentator bigging up the Premier League, as city’s dirty bastards bullied the smaller County lads all over the park. “There was once a time when lower league clubs could intimidate players from more skilled divisions by roughhousing them,” he gloated, “but nowadays the Premier League is so good that the players have skill AND physical strength. That’s why we watch them every week, all over the world…” Do shut up, you pompous salesman. As he said it, I re-checked the scoreline, while city’s millionaires scurried about like barking spiders chasing their blue moon. Their fans were lobbing missiles at the County players and stridulating like a gaggle of amorphous sluts in “kiss me quick” hats whenever city stumbled into their opponents’ box. Mancini increasingly resembles Police Chief Brody manning the bench like a demented zamburakchi with his eye on the prize. A suit, a coat, two scarves AND a snood? He’s having a fucking laugh. We love to go on about “our” league being the world’s best, but how many of those athletes are actually English? Football is utterly neglected in its homeland. The government are partly to blame; they could easily have set aside more generous funds to maintain our national sport at the level where it belongs, but football is working-class, so fat fucking chance of that. The continentals must think we’re a nation of unorganised clueless slobs, concerned more with smashing bus-stop windows and being admitted to hospitals for stomach-pumps than taking ourselves seriously. You can guarantee that if football was a middle-class game it would be in better shape financially and organised properly at the schoolboy level. Middle-class people play the game of life like Germans play football; just a cunt hair this side of legal, and oftentimes those lines get bent with the help of poorly sighted refs, lawyers or worse, friends in high places. Very few football clubs have a clue when it comes to bringing up the kids, but we should be proud that United is an example to all. Ferguson and Co. just keep ‘em coming, from Manchester to Mexico. Money is something our players learn the value of by earning it. United are a family and city are an institution. Red is a warm, corpulent colour and blue is a brittle chilly one. It’s all about coming in from the cold. Basking in the blazing embrace of success. We’ve no idea how it feels to have supported a team that’s been complete shite for decades. city have been in such a deep hole for so long they’d sell their firstborn if it guaranteed a trophy in May. If they’d actually landed Rooney when he handed in that transfer request there’d have been mass priapism from Sharston to Simister; the entire south and east of the county riddled with engorged rampaging cripples in bad jackets. It’s strange how different geographic locations emit characteristic vibes. Break it all the way down to the smallest living thing, a primeval bacterium, and all around its circumference there’ll be pulsating pheromones and enzymes. Microbes possess photosensitive cells, and even fungi secrete digestive acids onto their prey. Urban environments are the same, and on up to the biosphere itself. The earth is an organism, and like an organism it has its armpits, arseholes and eyeballs. When I see photos of Eastlands from above, I think of a gaping, sterile blue fanny with giant, drained white pissflaps and parasitic worms spiralling from its corners. Old Trafford reminds me of a red blood corpuscle; full of iron and oxygen, delivering strength to those who feed on its cytoplasm. Our individual bodies are like football grounds; sources of competence chemicals or the odd, blistering fart. The coastline of our nation could be described similarly – chalk erosion lapping from the south coast into the sea…radioactive balls of shite breaking off Sellafield and washing up on Irish beaches…likewise the entire planet….greenhouse gases, volcanoes, zinc smelters, acid mine drainage…..yep, there’s a big difference between an arsehole and an eyeball. Yer either doing yer bit and contributing, or else dragging down the standards like a whore at life’s rich pageant. That’s the difference between us and you, Mister Magoo.