A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to attend a talk by the mega-historian Professor David Starkey, during which the characteristically flamboyant expert on the British monarchy (and self-appointed ‘rudest man in Britain') broke into a somewhat controversial massacre of contemporary culture with a provocative alignment of 21st-Century life with the more insidious aspects of Imperial Roman society.

"Football was taken from the working class in the '90s and passed to the middle class. Just as food was fetishised as an instrument of snobbery, now football is being snaffled by the poseurs."

Alexander Netherton, ESPN Soccernet

As I read this stirring conclusion to a nigh-on Scargillian tract railing against football tactics websites, I got to my feet, punched the air in an unquestionably heterosexual way and yelled, such that Bobby Moore himself might hear, "GET IN!