Its all starting today. The football season is BACK!! Sky tv has now an official football-exclusive designated channel which won’t become the darts channel at 8 o’clock, or the world mountain biking championship channel at 02.15. No. Even insomniacs can enjoy football for 24 hours a day. Every day. Lovely. And it all starts today at Wembley (Spurs have lent it to them for the day) for the No-one Gives A Shit Cup. Used to be called the Charity Shield, the Community Shield, the Asda Cup, the BHS Shield (they stole the silver and replaced it with zinc, silver-plated), but no-one cares anyway. Its the team wot won the league (that’ll be Chelsea then) playing the team wot won the FA Cup (Arsenal). Meaningless. Worthless.

Yet tomorrow the press will be ‘convicting’ one of the managers. The losing one, to be precise. Even with the proper season a week in the future, the entire season for either Conte or Wenger will be assumed from today’s result. If Chelsea win Wenger will be right back in the firing line. Though having lived in it for the past 5 years, he won’t even hear the boos or notice the inevitable ‘Wenger Out!!’ signs that will be in the back pockets of half the Arsenal fans before they set off for the match. I Arsenal win then they’ll be attacking Conte for spending 130 million on ‘worthless’ players.

All of which is destabilising for the players. Fortunately though they don’t read newspapers. The foreign ones don’t read English and the British ones can’t. Though they all have ‘people’ to read for them. Who generally edit out any bits that may cause upset or temper tantrums and cost them their jobs.

Man City have spent 218 million on players last month, Man United 145 mil. Even Everton have spent 95 mil, but having cashed in 75 for Lukaku, their ‘net’ is modest. All the lower teams have spent 10 to 40 mil on several moderate players. How is this fair?

Never mind the quite ridiculous Neymar ‘affair’, which is nothing to do with football, everything to do with a tiny but obscenely rich and terribly evil nation, (how ‘bad’ do you have to be for Saudi Arabia to find you immoral?), showing the world… something. That its rich? That its stupid? That it just wants to make a statement to go with their other statement when they ‘bought’ a World Cup. That enough money will find the necessary corruption anywhere to enable it to do what it likes.

Qatar should not be allowed to ‘buy’ Neymar. Salaries of 300,000 pounds a week should never happen. And its not about ‘the money men’, its about those who rule the ‘beautiful game’ (phah!) allowing it to happen. The manage to ‘cap’ things in the NFL, the richest game in the richest, most capitalist country in the world. Why can’t Europe manage the same thing here? Its positively obscene that no efforts are made to ‘level the playing fields’. Its sickening.

Happy Charity Shield Sunday

A xxxx