Back in the day, it was customary growing up as a football fan in Scotland to have an English team to support. It didn’t matter a jot which Scottish team you preferred, you had to declare an allegiance to a club south of the border if you wanted to be part of the in-crowd.
As the transfer window prepares to slam shut until 2013, managers all over Europe are putting the finishing touches to their squads for this season. While there is still plenty of business to be done, a lot of the so-called inevitable transfers have already taken place.
A few weeks have yet to come and go before the autumn leaves begin to lie thick and still, but you can’t help but feel that the Scottish football season has already offered sufficient glimpses to enable a solid prediction to be made of what lies in store between now and next May.
David Moyes, how does he do it? How does his Everton team continue to impress year after year? How do Everton keep up with the competition when the cash-strapped club have to sit idle and watch while others strengthen?
In recent seasons, Spanish football has almost certainly assumed the mantel of European top dogs. This is nothing new as such – Real Madrid and Barcelona are hardly merely recent additions to the European trophies roll of honour – but the standard of football, as exemplified in the national team’s success, has been raised to a level that has left fans and commentators gushing and fast running out of superlatives.