Peerless Wigan

Wise guys steer clear of soccer till the clocks go back. The long muddy slurp and slog of winter are now properly under way. Mind you, this time autumn’s warm-up lap has offered an instructive preamble if not, as we shall doubtless see by Easter, a necessarily telling one. In England, the cosmopolitan London strut of Arsenal and Chelsea heads the Premiership parade (in Scotland — yawn, yawn — it is already Celtic and Rangers ahead by a street). It could yet be significant that the three moneybags clubs which traditionally fancy themselves — Liverpool and the Uniteds of Manchester and Newcastle — are already lurching, vaguely insecure, nine points adrift of the leaders and behind such a historically stalwart but lately unfashionable trio as Everton, Middlesbrough and Bolton Wanderers, each of whom have jumped keenly from the traps.

I know The Spec’s host of subscribers abroad occasionally enjoy keeping up with these passing matters. They must be told as well that I fancy the overblown British soccer boom is gently deflating. Many cry ‘mercy’ for that, although the concurrent pop-media tittle-tattle of players’ private lives and managers’ vendettas is yet, alas, to show evidence of running out of steamy revelation. League football attendances are already down on corresponding figures of last season, and so, dramatically, are the viewing figures for televised matches. Up to this week, Rupert Murdoch’s Sky subscription channel had already broadcast 25 live matches (of the 138 it had bought for the season) and its viewing audience average was down a whopping 16.23 per cent per match. Not that the BBC can gloat: with strident trumpeting, they took over the Saturday night highlights’ package from ITV this autumn, but up to last weekend Match of the Day audiences were down by an average of 8.9