at the risk of sounding unpatriotic, isn't it like a little death when the English soccer season ends? I reckon that 60 per cent of my small talk, 80 per cent of my teletext usage and 78 per cent of my trivia store relates to The Premiership. From now till August, I will be a social vegetable. (As if you readers need telling).

I have already being trying out my close season conversational gambits and am honing them for the dark days when the teletext has nothing more substantial to offer me than Leeds being "linked" with somebody's "wantaway" star followed by Chelsea making a "surprise swoop" for said star.

Best small-talk results so far have been achieved by my strident assertion that Liverpool are jammy. They are so jammy that they actually redefine our understanding of jam and all its derivative substances. New university departments must be opened to study this extraordinary strain of jamminess.

I mean . . . c'mon, having played a light programme of what looked like pre-season friendlies to win the League Cup the jam should have ended then. Instead, it continued spreading endlessly until we were all nauseous yet curious about what sort of receptacle was being used.

Some cases in point. Liverpool are playing Everton, about to drop two league points when Gary McAllister gets a last-minute free-kick at a point so distant from the Everton goals that one wouldn't mount an attack without use of sherpas.

He footles a low little free and finds, to his delight, that the Everton goalie has not just built an inadequate wall but is standing on the wrong side of the goal filling out his betting slips.

McAllister's celebrations are almost marred when he comes close to dying from laughter. Houllier is on the pitch with his big jammy grin too. We are jammy. Nous sommes les jamants! they are saying to each other! Bah.

I need not remind you that, while the gods were giving to Liverpool, they had just done with taking away from Leeds. The Wes Brown business cost Leeds two points at the time. Ended up costing £20 million sterling despite Leeds having embarrassed Liverpool at Anfield on Good Friday. The city of Leeds has been a jam-free zone since the mid '60s.

In passing, I like to cite Liverpool's other two cup campaigns when, having been outplayed by an ailing Arsenal side, they won the FA Cup and then the whole ugly UEFA business when, having mounted a conspiracy of boredom with Barcelona, they sleep-walked into a final which unfolded like a Sunday morning seven aside.

They then won it with a jam-topped own goal. So they end up with three cups and a Champions League place with all those former Liverpool defenders who now work as analysts wetting themselves with pleasure.

This usually kindles the conversation, especially with women who like nothing better than arguing the toss over lucky free-kicks from a few months back. "Wow," they gush "talk about needing to get a life."

And by way of demonstrating that they haven't seen anything yet, I segue straight into my "Leeds are the unluckiest team in history" riff, into which I have worked a nice hook, to wit that Leeds fans know the good times have returned because the team are banjaxed by misfortune once more.

FOR appreciative audiences I recall the seminal injustice of the 1970 Cup final against Chelsea, forever known as the Eddie Gray final. I throw in the five runners-up spots the great team got and finish the medley with a little number which takes in the Jeff Astle goal, several cruel end-of-season scheduling tortures and the 1975 European Cup final when Leeds had a cracker of a goal disallowed and Bayern scored twice, once on each visit to the Leeds half.

I then cut to modern times. I keen a lament about the mighty Manchester United corporation getting all the decisions lest their shares slump or Roy Keane says something mean to somebody.

I describe in detail which will be invaluable to social historians centuries hence how a brave group of young babies became so susceptible to injuries that Rio Ferdinand actually strained his leg muscle while watching television with his foot up on the coffee table. Was the table yellow carded? You know it wasn't.

Bravely, the team fought on, in all the great cities of Europe the babies travelled (halffare) and dazzled with their play only to have Lee Bowyer taken from them on the eve of the European Cup semi-final.

Which brings us onto Manchester United., Avoid at all costs by way of small talk. I have found it to be a fairly incontrovertible article of conversation that United aren't the same team without Roy Keane. Indeed, everyone in the world has virtually the same opinion as regards just about anything to do with Manchester United.

Beckham and the Nevilles are gloriously over-rated. They badly need a striker, a creative midfielder and another winger. Even Manchester United fans who have been following their team for as long as two years have nothing to offer here. They are bored, sated, flatulent almost with the good times. Sick of following a club which does everything right.

My hope for this fallow summer is straightforward therefore. That Manchester United be restored to us as an object of derision as they were in the years when Leeds and Blackburn last won league titles.

Let the Ferguson era end in blood and spit and a row with Posh Spice, let their new kit be comically effete, let tonsorial fashions make a cruel joke out of Barthez and Stam, let the drinking club be reinstigated and finally let Alfe Inge Haaland be made player manager.