IS IT SAFE to talk about football again?

Rather than being dragged into the ever-growing clamour for transfer news – fake or otherwise – that seems to have morphed into a dangerously vacuous cult. 

Everywhere you looked this month, you were assailed by the wailing and gnashing of fans – vapid and superficial fans at any rate – who acted as if the world was ending simply because their club couldn’t borrow more money they hadn’t yet earned to purchase a reserve right-back simply because their cousin-in-law’s next door neighbour told them that their first choice right-back was keen for a move because he wasn’t earning enough money. Or something like that.