‘We’ve had a good run’ conceded a rather solemn looking Trevor Brooking, the Football Association’s head of football development when asked whether football was set to implode in 2010. ‘Everyone knew it would come to an end at some point; it’s just amazing that it has lasted as long as has,’ Brooking continued.

18-years after the foundation of the Premier League, 55-years since the first European Cup and 139-years since Wanderers first lifted the F.A. Cup back in 1872; Britain has fallen out of bed with its favourite bedfellow: football.

At the grass roots level the kids simply aren’t playing it anymore. In a recent report by the F.A., the nation’s governing body in the birthplace of the sport, concluded that today’s youth were in fact more interested in statutory rape, N-Dubz and happy-slapping than chasing a well-crafted piece of cowhide around a field for 90 minutes.

Football’s imminent demise came to the top of the news agenda last week when Manchester United F.C. issued a £500 million bond. So, what’s that all about then? Well basically, the world’s most famous club was buying debt. Prior to this, the only grouping in society stupid enough to buy debt were students. The Red Devils aside, students are also the only grouping in society stupid enough to continue to doing so.

At one unnamed Premiership club situated on the south coast, the financial situation has become so desperate that the playing staff are being forced to moonlight in blue collar jobs, to supplement their frequently delayed – and sometimes unpaid – wages.

‘The gaffer says it’s all part of his training regime, but I’m not so convinced,’ commented one player smart enough to smell that something is rotten in Denmark. ‘It’s affecting our performance on the field too. I’m always knackered on match days after having to get up at 4:30 in the A.M. to start my milk round out in suburbia,’ the player added.

Clearly one to wallow in his own sense of national pity, Brooking speculated that twelve months from now, everyone will have forgotten about football. ‘Come what January 2011, our ‘national sport’ will be Rugby. Or God forbid something worse, like sailing.’

But stop just a second. Maybe we’re all getting a little ahead of ourselves here. Perhaps the problem isn’t as serious as we first thought, maybe there’s still a way out. Wrong. It seems that in its highest tier, football is guilty of burying its head in the sand, and for far too long. Like Paul Scholes tracking back to tackle, bad times are upon us.

To help trim their wage bills on the last working day of every month, most Premier League chairmen have now been left with little option but to leave their players competing over a solitary Piñata, complete with wages kitty inside. ‘It adds an extra competitive element to the dressing room,’ commented one such Chairman.