Funny feeling of fixtures deja-vu
WHEN I was a young lad, one of my favourite comic strips was The Numbskulls. It was in the Beezer I think, though I've a sneaking feeling they staged a comeback, a la Take That, in the Beano some years later.
Anyway, the basic idea was that there was this bloke who, instead of being full of organs, intestines and blood like the rest of us, was full of little people called the numbskulls, who fulfilled all his bodily functions.
So there were numbskulls shovelling food through his stomach; numbskulls pumping blood round his body; and more of the little blighters operating his brain and running messages up and down his body so that he could move around without falling over.
In short, the man who was home to the numbskulls was not a man at all; he may have looked like one from the outside, but inside he was a fraud.
The numbskulls always come to my mind at this time of the year; for this is how I visualise that bastion of football tradition, the 'Fixture Computer'.
On the outside, so legend has it, it's an electronic monster, the most advanced piece of hardware ever seen, capable of running a complex algorithm that ensures all Premier League teams play each other only twice, home and away (having fought off the Scudamore virus) and that any teams within 35 miles of each other don't play at home at the same time, lest the police overtime budget be blown.
On the inside however, my theory has it that there's a load of little men with a copy of last year's fixture list, a pencil and a rubber, and a note of the relegated and promoted teams from last season.
Crossing out the likes of Reading and Derby, and substituting West Brom and Hull, they mess around with the fixture list a little bit to make it look as if the whole thing has been compiled from scratch, and then spit it out of the nearest orifice and go back into hibernation for another year.
You only have to look at Liverpool's newly announced programme for the 2008/2009 season to find proof of this apparently eccentric theory.
Last year our opening away games were at Aston Villa and Sunderland; this year they're at... Sunderland and Aston Villa. Last season our final game was away at Tottenham; this season it's against Tottenham again...but at home! Brilliant isn't it? Surely we're not going to Old Trafford in March again? We are? Who'd have believed it!
And these Premier League Numbskulls are not without a sense of humour; how else can you explain Newcastle v Liverpool and Everton v Sunderland on the December 28?
No doubt they'll throw in a 12.45pm kick-off just to make it really challenging for those fans foolishly enjoying Christmas in the bosom of their family.
Of course knowing their great secret doesn't lessen the enjoyment available from scrutinising the resulting fixture list in fine detail.
The eagle-eyed among you will have noted that by Christmas we will have travelled to Arsenal, Chelsea and Everton with only the visit to Old Trafford to come in March; a much better arrangement than last year when we faced the other members of the Big Four in their own dens in close succession later in the season.
If we're still in touch at the turn of the year, who knows what might transpire by the time we finish our travels at the 'Westies' of Ham and Bromwich.
And then we can pretend to build anticipation of the 2009/10 fixtures, while secretly booking our train trips to Villa Park for the opening day.
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Actually, the Numbskulls only lived in the bloke's head.
Whatever the ones inside Martin O'Neill's head - you know, the ones that are telling him that Barry is worth £20m - have been drinking, must be good stuff indeed.
By the way, the new BS shirt has been premiered by Andy "Where's The Goal" Johnson:
http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/3677/41904442ajeverton416cz7.jpg