Nacho-Chomping Nights

[Above: United plastics in replica shirts enjoy cheering on their team from the comfort of the bar]

Blues just won 4-0 away at Sheffield United in the FA cup and strung together a 13 pass move for the final goal. That.....never happens, or if it does happen, it happens with the same frequency as a certain ex-manager buying or loaning in a flair player, and then playing him. Which, as we all painfully came to realise, is a rare occurrence.

Fantastic news then that the ITV were to show all the FA cup highlights on terrestrial tv - meaning we could sit back, open a few cans and watch Houghton's sexy football beam into our eyeballs. 

Because....a high-quality, four goal FA cup tie between two teams hailing from two of the biggest cities in the UK would command some degree of representation on the ITV's flagship show, wouldn't it?

Well, it might have commanded respect but it didn't get it. Oh no my friends, no, not on your nelly.

We were treated to hour-long footage of games everybody with a face had seen already [as these games had been aired on live tv]; time then stood still, everything slowed down to half the normal speed as Leicester and Swindon were analysed in scrumptious detail. 

Paulo Di Canio was given half the show just in case he uttered something a bit naughty in the post match interview, tee hee, he's so charismatic when he's slamming the tea lady's head with a car door because she used sweeteners instead of sugar in his beverage, what a cad!

And with about 2 minutes to spare, the host [that middle aged guy with the teeth who fronted the ITV digital's doomed football coverage] said something along the lines of:

 'And after the break we'll round up the rest of the games' 

What he meant to say of course was:

'Switch off now if you like, we're gonna quickly show the 'any old shite' before we run a competition and go to bed'.

But Blues/Sheff Utd wasn't any old shite, it was good, apparently. And had on display some real feats of sporting skill and ability, and it was the bloody highest scoring game of the round thus far.

No, the game between a team from Birmingham and a team from Sheffield [two areas consisting of 4 million people] got 30 seconds of muffled footage, and even then the ITV didn't opt to use the commentator but instead had their depressed man in a cupboard spurt out some retrospective nonsense in between contemplating his own existence.

Well, I were angry. Ok not angry, but maybe a bit sad.

On the Internet that they have these days, loads of Blues fans were complaining and many theories were being banded about ranging from the mental to the Stevedog as to why the ITV could be so cruel.

It's quite simple in my eyes. The show, like all football shows, is geared up for the plastics.

You've seen them. Yeh? The plastics? You've seen them in the bars and the pubs. Fat men in replica shirts frantically shoving nachos in their gobs, their fingers dripping with grease. They snarl contempt as they watch their team win its 76th League cup. It's acceptable.

Then they leave the pub and go home and log on the Internet to argue about whether Fergie should stay or go. Their ill-informed opinions enthused with Jeff Stelling stats. 'Carrick's rubbish' they spit, 'He only passes sidewards'.

The ITV's goal show, and any other goal show, is made exclusively for them. 

They don't want to see Birmingham and Sheffield, who cares if there's four goals and captivating play? They want to watch highlights of a game they streamed this morning, and they want to watch it again, and again.....and again....and forever and now.

Maybe you can be too hard on them. You can't really, but I needed to throw in an alternative view for the purposes of this article, maybe you can be too hard on them, I mean...many plastics I know come from broken homes, they grew up without a dad.

The plastics are lost ghost children forever wandering the night desert.

Without a father figure getting you into football, the young immature mind will of course always choose success and glory

Can we blame a 10 year old kid in a single mom household for being mesmerised by Beckham and Giggs? Perhaps not, perhaps yes.

Can we hate them for their weakness of mind?

Possibly

But pity them, for they'll never know that feeling of being amongst your people, watching your unfashionables win their first cup in 125 years, against the odds. Turning to your dad and watching tears run down his broken, once fierce, face.

Leonardio Di Caprio in the Hollywood Film Troy once said: 'The God's envy us for our mortality, every moment on earth is heightened because it could be our last'.

Such is the journey of supporting your home town club. Such is the beauty of it. You might win a cup now, but savour it, for there's every chance that the next 30 years will see you being walloped relentlessly by Stockport, Halifax and co.

And ultimately that notion, that feeling of unexpected triumph is greater than being a fat plastic with access to never-ending footage of today's goals .

Let them have their Nacho-Chomping nights, there's so much more out there.