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It's not stopping, is it? If there's one thing you can say with confidence about English football as it approaches the end of 2021, almost two years into a pandemic and with Brexit clearing the shelves and slowing the buses, it is that football in England goes on and it goes on regardless.
The game's place in the national psyche is well-established, as is recognition of the fact. Go back over 50 years and the great Arthur Hopcraft wrote of football in England: "It is a phenomenon; it is an everyday matter. There is more eccentricity in deliberately disregarding it than in devoting a life to it."
We know this. Even so, there are spells when football's prominence, particularly in the Premier League era, hits acceleration and roars its way through, scattering everything else into a ditch. Environmental catastrophe? What about 3-4-3?
Football’s everyday matters come dressed in drama and noise and again and again you are taken aback. For some, for example, the end of August may seem a long time ago, but it isn’t really.
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Way back then Arsenal travelled to Manchester City and were trounced 5-0. There was drama and there was noise: here was Arsenal's third Premier League game of the season and they had lost the previous two. They had not scored a goal in any of the three. Their manager Mikel Arteta was pronounced an inexperienced foal sharing a touchline with the Arkle of coaches, Pep Guardiola. And that was from Arsenal fans. Arsenal were - in capital letters - in crisis.
Seven league games on - and that's all it is - Arsenal are three points off a Champions League place. They have won five and drawn two. The volume has dropped and the crisis carnival has moved on to the grassy edge of another town.
After Arsenal, it turned up at Manchester United. This was unexpected as United had already staged a late summer festival known as the re-signing of Cristiano Ronaldo. The hullabaloo around this move was Cantona-esque, Beckham-esque. Sure enough, Ronaldo turned up on his debut, a Saturday afternoon against Newcastle United, and scored the opener. Then he got another. Old Trafford stood gasping at the mushroom cloud of optimism on the horizon. Then three days later United lost to a team called Young Boys Bern and the crisis carnival turned on its lights.
Over the next few weeks United lost to West Ham in the League Cup and to Aston Villa and Leicester City in the league. There were last-gasp victories in Europe over Villarreal and Atalanta courtesy of Ronaldo, but all the while Ole Gunnar Solskjaer began to receive the Arteta treatment. Ole out, Ole in, a circus.
And then the music stopped. Manchester United 0-5 Liverpool.
There was the Lowry-esque leaving of the ground. All jokes were set aside. It was serious, dark. Unless you do not support United, in which case it was a hoot.
The day after brought an avalanche of coverage and the day after that brought another one. On it went until last Saturday when Solskjaer turned up at Tottenham Hotspur and so did his team. Unfortunately for Spurs fans, theirs chose not to. As soon as you could say 'Conte!', the carnival had returned to north London.
In the meantime it had taken a couple of detours. Surprisingly one of these had been to Man City, where Guardiola had enraged locals by asking them to attend. This was simultaneously a sparky mini-carnival and one that never quite leaves town.
Guardiola had followed those remarks by guiding City to a massively impressive 1-0 win at Chelsea, quelling some of the fuss; but City had the audacity to lose a home game to Crystal Palace last Saturday and today they go to Old Trafford. What if City lose? Where will the carnival be?
On its way to Tyneside perhaps? Or back to Tyneside where, again, it feels like it has a permanent residency at Newcastle United. The richest club in the world without a manager spent the start of the week wooing Unai Emery as he prepared Villarreal for a Champions League game. Emery, it turns out, thought this was poor timing. Just as Newcastle were announcing Emery’s arrival, the man himself was saying he was not ready for departure.
And so yesterday came with Eddie Howe in the air, but maybe not in the air. The first question to Newcastle's stand-in Graeme Jones began: "Hello, Graeme, even by Newcastle standards it's been a crazy week."
Jones, a Geordie, replied that everybody needed to “catch wor breath”.
This was not an isolated sentiment. When finger-wagging Solskjaer's charges made it 3-0 at Tottenham last Saturday, it was the end of the beginning of the end for Nuno Espírito Santo. After Xisco Munoz and Steve Bruce, Nuno became the third Premier League managerial casualty in 28 days.
By Monday everyone was re-assessing Antonio Conte’s two seasons at Chelsea and what impact he could make at Spurs. Monday also brought a third straight defeat for Everton and that could make some blues even more uncomfortable with Rafa Benitez. Tomorrow they host ‘Conte’s Spurs’, which will be interesting. Everton’s next home game is Liverpool and in between they have City and Brentford away. This is carnival talk.
Tuesday and Wednesday meant Champions League fixtures. Football used to be a Saturday game. But on Thursday night Tottenham were playing again, this time in the Europa Conference League. As the clock showed it was approaching 10 pm in households across the land, Sergio Reguilon was sprinting into Vitesse Arnhem's half even though his team were winning. The Conte effect in action.
Friday morning broke with news that the owners of San Francisco 49ers had upped their stake in Leeds United to 44%, which does not suggest they see English football stalling, and that was before Villa appeared at Southampton with pressure swirling around Dean Smith. Another man down?
Catch your breath? Imagining a quiet day in English football is like trying to find a friend on Oxford Street.
The fanaticism fuelling it is there far away from the top. Sunderland took 4,000 supporters to Sheffield Wednesday in League One on Tuesday night; today Stockport County, ninth in the National League, the fifth division of English football, will take 5,000 to Bolton for an FA Cup-tie.
It's Bill Shankly time. "Whilst you love football," Shankly once said, "it is a hard, relentless task which goes on and on a like river. There is no time for stopping and resting."
The river keeps rolling.
Shankly retired aged 60. “I was satisfied,” he said, “and I was tired.”
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