Let us go then, the reserves and I,
When the afternoon is spread out against the sky
Like Newcastle etherised upon the league table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted stands,
The muttering fans
Of Amsterdam,
To restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And headlines about who our owner sells:
Tweets from followers like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question.

I met a cannoneer with sunken eyes

Who said: Two vast and glassless rims of stone
Stand in north London. In their shadow lies
A battered puffer-jacket, cursed and thrown
Aside, as yet another season flies
Athwart the sun, then melts, then falls, then sags
In baffled error.

Arsene's on the TV, moanin' in the microphone,

I'm on the cell phone, talkin' like a megaphone.
The man in the black shirt, flag out, played off-
side; I got a red top, I wanna knock his fade off.

Look out, Joe,
it's somethin' you know.
God knows what, but you feel it in your gut,
you better duck through the changin' room,
lookin' for a shortcut,
the man in the sharkskin suit with his back up
wants a shiny silver spoon, and you only got cups.

"Sort of King Lear-esque twilight scenario on the cards for Lord Ferg, then." James Richardson, Football Weekly

Britannia, AD 600. Ferguson is king of Britannia, lord of all he surveys. A firebrand Celt, his armies have marched as far south as Barcino in Hispania and towards the rising sun as far as the banks of the Volga.