Displaying the innate common touch for which his byline has become a byword over the years, Foul Play feels compelled to add his sonorous voice to the chorus of disapproval proclaiming this year's Premiership to be the worst of all time. One hesitates to even refer to it as a procession, since a procession usually involves more than one participant being involved.

The Arse have taken six points from their last seven games, a run of form which would shame Manchester City. Before the season, to the ABU lobby they represented the only real hope of salvation for mankind as we know it. Now they are playing like pigs.

Sunderland, a moderate side who are not so much all thumbs as all elbows, are odds-on to finish runners-up. Liverpool are congenitally incapable of winning three matches in a row. Chelsea and Leeds will do well to finish in the top half.

What really brought it home to this individual was the Leeds-Liverpool FA Cup clash, a shockingly poor match which will have confirmed anyone's prejudices about the general ropiness of Premiership football outside Old Trafford.

I surprised myself by even getting out of bed on time for Leeds v Pool. Both teams lurk closely behind Rangers in the league table of footballing institutions that I have the least time for, meaning that I was at a loss as to which of them I should root for.

But the issue was settled when Emile Heskey came on as a substitute with 15 minutes to go, and had his first few touches booed by the seemingly sizeable contingent of Cro-Magnon Man in the home crowd, prompting me (and, one suspects, a few others) to divest myself of the immortal sentence, "Come on, Liverpool."

It was that sort of crazy day. However, having uttered the unutterable, Foul Play allowed himself a wintry smile when Heskey thundered in the second of Liverpool's goals in stoppage-time.

The match itself was a shambles. The ball was given away so often, so spuriously, that Foul Play wouldn't have relished being the poor sod compiling the percentage-of-possession statistics for Sky Sports. The guy must have needed five different stopwatches and the manual dexterity of an octopus to keep up with the efforts of Murphy, Bakke, Carragher et al.

The wider point is that these two clubs, because of the age-profiles of their respective squads and Arsenal's obvious decline, arguably represent the best long-term threat to Man United's stranglehold. Yet neither of them can hold on to the ball for more than ten seconds at a time. When even United supporters like myself are getting pissed off with this state of affairs - and frankly who cares about the cup aberration against West Ham? - you know we've reached a sorry pass.

North of the border, the Scottish football hacks are in restless mood. With nothing to write about over the winter break, and needing to fill a minimum of eight pages a day (pick up the Daily Record and you'll see what I mean), some of them have lately taken to churning out pieces on the respective strengths of the English and Scottish leagues, spurred on by what they perceive as the false glamour of the Premiership.

The SPL, of course, is fairly sad and sorry stuff once you get outside the Old Firm and whichever of the Edinburgh sides is currently putting together a decent run (this year, Hibs).

Yet there is still less of a quality gap than some might think. The Premiership has deteriorated to the point where there isn't that much to choose between the top few sides in each league.

Surely, both of the Old Firm would be comfortable top-six finishers in the current Premiership (though, in a year where Sunderland are probably going to get a Champions League spot, that ain't saying an awful lot). Would you fancy the Roker Park outfit, for instance, to give the current Celtic team a good rogering?

Only four of their side would have a prayer of getting into Martin O'Neill's line-up. Quinn and Phillips is probably a marginally inferior partnership to that of Larsson and Sutton, though it's a close one. Celtic could probably do with the impressive Thomas Sorensen in goal, and you wouldn't say no to Don Hutchison either. But that's all. And these guys are, I repeat, second in the Premiership.

Rangers, too, have their weaknesses (an unconvincing keeper, a defence with low concentration levels, etc), but their midfield quartet - Claudio Reyna, Barry Ferguson, Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Jorg Albertz - would leave most English teams for dead. And that's before we mention the potency of their striking duo, Tore Andre Flo and Michael Mols.

The Gers also have one genuinely world-class footballer (van Bronckhorst) in their ranks; that alone puts them ahead of at least fifteen Premiership outfits.

At the present moment in time, too, I would fancy Hibernian to "take" any of the current

bottom three in England. They have more

footballing talent than Man City, more bottle than Coventry, and a more craggy-faced, unintelligibly-accented manager than Bradford (which takes some doing).

Meanwhile, Man United fans are so bored with their heroes' hegemony that they have taken to ringing up radio phone-ins masquerading as Man City supporters, and staging impromptu contests between themselves to see who can refer to City being a "massive, massive club" the most times before being cut off. You've got to sin to keep from crying, as they say.