The leg’s better, much better, thanks. The bullet wound is healing painfully slowly, as is the way with someone in the early autumnal stages of life, so the wife (still laughing) assures me. Still no football though. Or running. It’s a bit rubbish.
And the football season’s finished.
Thesimplestgame would like to reticently and bitterly offer a heartless congratulations to the debt-ridden conglomerations who triumphed. Well-done’s must go to both Chelsea and Man (and boy) United.
Though on reflection, there is no need for bitterness or reticence. These clubs actually need our help. Yes, our help. Both squads will need large and exceptionally absorbent towels to dry their eyes after their respective puerile remonstrations and humiliating demonstrations of footballing impoverishment in the Champions League. Winning the Premiership or the vainglorious FA Cup cannot remove the images of forever-tarnished, fat and teary, petted-lips from our collective minds. It only makes their plight, a plight no football fan can afford or ignore.
So here’s thesimplestgame’s end of season charity plea: If anybody out there has a spare £750 million, could you help either of these dispassionate and unemboldened clubs, who, despite having the most expensive and roundly celebrated footballers on the planet, were unable to carry themselves with even a modicum of the decorum expected of professionals in other walks of life.
Maybe I’m bitter because I’d just got myself fit enough to play for the first time in years – a series of bulldozer throwing injuries had kept me from playing the beautiful game in my characteristically horrible and uncouth fashion for almost six years - and I find myself sidelined again. Maybe I’m bitter because the teams I follow lack the strength to carry the weight of these 'giant' clubs' debt-accumulating prowess. Maybe I’m just sick of watching pampered, excessively-paid, over-rated adult footballers kick-off like kindy kids. Maybe I'm just bitter.
Man (and boy) United Striker, Wayne Rooney, at 20 years old, agreed a 12-year contract with HarperCollins to write, that’s right, write a minimum of five books for an advance of £5m plus royalties.(He really is holding a Harry Potter book in his right hand.) If you were ever wondering where the boundaries of football fiction and non-fiction blurred together, thesimplestgame suspects that there would be a good place to start looking.
I have mentioned in passing that things might be changing around the simplest game offices... and then, of course, there were a few erratic posts and it looked like I just couldn't shake it. But things, new things really are afoot 
In the next few weeks the changes will become permanent and the new blog will be rolling like a solid pass down the touchline.
Yes, thesimplestgame has been stripped of its anonymity, among other things.
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