Is Football Tart? - file

Which should swiftly be distanced from other, similar but (equally) preposterous, questions such as is football a tart? Are footballers' tarts? Or even is football art?

Is it sour is it sharp, is football tart?

Each game is its very own TV dinner portion of sweet and sour stir-fry pineapple and bitter capsicum, plump chicken breast and sharp spring onions. Each tackle, each, cross, each goal, each mouthful is both dolce and amarone in the mouths of the be-eaters, one mans nasty is another mans nectar depending on their faith in Ronaldo or in Nesta.

Every season is a swashbuckling smorgasbord of perceived and individual delicacies and this one has been no different. The salty caviar of the MU Roma win, the dry and grassy Sauvignon Blanc of Steve Coppell, the wafer-thin slices of pink Sir Alex garnished with tangy Rooney horseradishes, the frankly bizarre smokey bacon flavour goings on at West Ham.

How was your season? Cod and chips and a Cornetto, smoked salmon canapés and papillote of rascass, or sushi and steak tartare? When you burp now what's the overriding flavour? Is it tart?

Sometimes I feel as if I can really taste peoples gastronomic auras, every time I listen to Wourinho I get the strongest bite of green gooseberries, Wenger – prunes, Mark Lawrenson – Heinz tomato soup

I've even started to categorize, it's important because the saccharine experience of a Stevie G volley for a 'pudlian is different again from the thick syrup of an Essien recovery for a pensioner. If one event smacks of ripe mangoes then the other is surely molasses. One Pompey fans gritty trip up to St James's Park is altogether other than the saltiness of a trip across Landan to watch your former manager's new and present manager's old team beat you 4-0. Ready salted crisps and anchovies seem to have been seperated at birth.

Some folk have slipped down the bittery slope of resenting those lucky rich clubs and to them everything they do tastes of cold black coffee and cloves and while it's true that the capitalist gorgon has turned all those unsuspecting blue meanies to stone it is also true that they are as happy as pigs in shit with their eels and mash. But when will they, and all of us, taste freedom from economic servitude? When indeed…

Dave Whelan might argue that footie is not tart enough on rule breakers and it may be true that South American contractual flavours have yet to hit the Lancashire greasy spoons, but it will surely leave a sour taste in his mouth. Can't see how the EPL (Duck Stew) can override an independently commissioned QC (Duck Liver and Port Pate) or how public courts will rule on Premiership points or regulations (Duck Fricassee).

What taste was in De Nilsons mouth after Fererros dainty amuse bouche on Sunday? The sweet peachiness of a run out at the Emirates or just raw rhubarb. What about Alfe Inga Haalands palate or Roy Keanes, cold quiche or vicious vol-au-vent?

How exactly does the Dennis and Ken on-again, off-again romance fit on the menu? Dennis Wise reminds me most of a sociopathic Bangkok motorcycle taxi driver of my acquaintance but if I really had to taste him, at gunpoint for example, then mouse-shit chili's wouldn't surprise me. Ken Bates should naturally be kept in cold storage with the other tubs of I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Butter. Leeds is definitely my Pernod. There were, truth be told, some good times but I can't look at them anymore without feeling nauseous.

You've sat at the last supper of the feast of football on the eve of Armageddon, you've eaten the food and drank the wine, some of it was good and some of it was Jean-Alain Boumsong but what was it? Roast beef and yorkies with lashings of English mustard or Meurguez and Harrissa? Sticky rice and tofu or champagne and oysters?

For me its whisky sour with cherries and tequila lime slammers from rusty baked bean cans – tart.man, tart.