VIEW FROM THE STANDS: Off-pitch scenario at Liverpool a nightmare

We're also being touted around like a second-hand Mondeo - again. Talk about one step forward, three steps back.

Worst of all, whatever happened to DIC? Just cast your mind back a couple of years, to when the financial future seemed rosier than Alan Titchmarsh's back garden. We were looking at new owners who made Abramovich look skint. The world that now beckons Manchester City - of all people - was ours for the asking.

So what did we do? Get side-tracked by the spiel of a couple of snake-oil salesmen. Indulge ourselves in decision-making of a calibre to make Douglas Haig look like Napoleon. Lions led by donkeys isn't in it. This was arguably the single most catastrophic blunder in the entire history of professional sport. And no, I'm not being hyperbolic.

When Maggie Thatcher ushered in our current era of unfettered greed, she sold it to us by saying that the obscene rewards would only be for those who actually made good.

Yet I see our revered chief executive actually picks up over a million quid a year while he's at it. Yep, a million pounds a year.

For ruining a cherished British institution.

Nice work if you can get it.

By the way, Fulham today could be tougher than we think.