Some of the BBC football pundit's thinking may have been lost in translation
According to BBC football expert Steve Claridge, the key to the football manager's job is "setting his team up right". That at least is how most people interpret what the former Portsmouth forward is saying. I believe, however, that Steve is not mashing up his grammar accidentally, but speaking deliberately. What he is actually telling us is that the coach needs to make sure his players are set "upright". This may seem basic, but football is a simple game, and what football club could hope to win football matches with its back line in a recumbent posture? Well, OK, but when they're not playing Wolves?
Making sure an entire team is upright is a far from easy task given the modern pro's propensity for falling over, which is why we frequently heard Claridge bemoaning the fact that Fabio Capello had "not got his team set upright". Of course there is more to it than that. Steve also bangs home the point that players need to be in positions in which "they feel comfortable".
We can judge from this the delicate balancing act the football manager must perform. Because, though admittedly the court order and the confiscation of the night-vision goggles now prevents me from observing him quite as closely as I once did, my sense is that Rio Ferdinand remains the sort of chap who would feel most comfortable sprawled on the settee with his arms outstretched and his feet on the coffee table. Stewart Downing often gives the impression of someone who'd be best at ease sitting cross-legged inside a wardrobe with his hands over his ears.
Finding a man who can square these contradictory yet immutable truths to produce a team that is standing, yet relaxed, is now apparently a "major priority" of the Football Association, secondary in importance – I am told – only to the need to work out an equitable way to slot new recruit Sir Trevor Brooking into the international committee's biscuit-buying rota.
Blazer-in-chief David Bernstein last week announced that when it comes to appointing a new coach the FA will not rush into anything – a huge relief to those of us left breathless by the traditional whirlwind pace of the organisation's decision-making.
Harry Redknapp is the people's choice, though not apparently in Portsmouth where some fans irrationally blame him for the club's current financial difficulties. What utter nonsense. The fact that every club Harry has ever been in charge of – Bournemouth, West Ham, Southampton, Pompey – has stumbled into a financial quagmire after he left is actually the surest indication there could possibly be of the canniness of his stewardship.
To suggest there is any connection between the fact that dire warnings of a possible downgrading of Britain's international credit rating were sounded in the same week Redknapp was made favourite to become England coach is ludicrous. So let's hear no more about it.
Amid all the Harry-clamour it was good to see Peter Shilton heartily endorsing another candidate for the England job: Martin O'Neill.
The last time I can recall the bubble-permed former custodian championing anything with quite such enthusiasm was back in the days when he advertised the Bullworker in Shoot.
The Bullworker was a spring-loaded muscle-building contraption that in my experience was even more likely to jump out and smack you in the gob than the bullies it was supposed to help you hit back against.
Shilts's reason for getting behind O'Neill was that – as well as "galvanising the squad" – always important to prevent your midfield corroding after a shower – the Sunderland boss would "get us away from all this pass, pass, pass". The ex-goalie expressed disquiet about England's recent attempts to play possession football (What do you mean, you didn't notice?) and suggested it was high time the national side stopped going all continental and got back to something more greasily British.
Shilton would, I suspect, have been delighted with what I witnessed on Sunday, when I went with a friend to watch his 10-year-old son play in his first match. There is refreshingly little room for anything Latin in such games, and not just when it comes to parents yelling the names of body parts at the ref. Asked if they know what 4-4-2 is most primary-schoolers stare at you with narrowed eyes for several minutes, then, their faces suffused with the joy of accomplishment, yell: "I know. It's minus two, isn't it?"
Instead of complicated, patient buildup 10-year-olds stick by the medieval method of kicking the ball as far as possible down field and then all charging after it (all that is save for the goalkeepers, who stand apart and brooding, building up their paranoia). It is all more Rin Tin Tin than tiki-taka. As a result watching 10-year-olds play football is a bit like viewing one of those wildlife documentaries in which a herd of antelope are observed from the air swerving about in a homogeneous and apparently directionless glob.
Except, of course, that in the case of the football match the commentary is supplied not by Sir David Attenborough, but by the watching parents. This is a major difference indeed. Because while I can't say that I have seen Sir David's entire output, I think it is a reasonable bet that the veteran zoologist has never interrupted his breathy description of a big cat's hunting habits by pointing at an elderly gnu and bellowing: "Away, Leo, get up his arse, my son."
Both teams, I was pleased to note, were set upright by their coaches.
But then children are much lighter than adults and lifting them off the ground is comparatively easy.