Whisper it, but we might just have a Premier League title race on our hands

Hold the back page, batten down the hatches, holy smoke, by Jove, by George, cripes, golly gosh, good grief, jeepers creepers, Jiminy Cricket, OMG, bloody Nora, flippin’ heck, goodness gracious! Whisper it, but we might just have a Premier League title race on our hands.

In England, of course, this is something of a rarity, with Manchester City romping to the title in five of the last six seasons, a fact conveniently forgotten by many little scamps on the various Social Media Disgraces that accuse every other domestic competition north of the border or across the channel of being a Farmer’s League. But no, genuine excitement in Blighty! Bring out the Battenberg! Ring a Ring o’ Roses! Somebody go and check on Richard E Grant to ensure he hasn’t imploded with glee. England is back, baby. The catalyst for all of this hysteria, of course, was one of the dullest games of association football history as Gabriel Martinelli decided a clunky contest between Arsenal and Manchester City with a fittingly horrible deflected goal.

Not that the Gunners will care about who and how, with the club joint top of the table alongside north London pals Spurs, who apparently are good now, having shipped out the deadweight Harry Kane to perennial strugglers Bayern Munich and shipped in Big Ange, Micky van de Ven and a backbone. As for City, who now (embarrassingly) sit in third, is this enough to call it a crisis? Probably not. They have state-level wealth, the best manager in the world, Erling Haaland, a returning Rodri (from the naughty step) and a returning John Stones (from knack), while Kevin De Bruyne’s comeback is due “hopefully sooner than expected”, according to Pep Guardiola. Uh oh, don’t poke the juggernaut.

Still, two consecutive City league defeats is still something to celebrate – for the rest of the country at least. The last time that happened was December 2018 (!), with the losses to Crystal Palace and Leicester devastating City’s seaso … [Football Daily checks notes] … ah wait, they won the domestic treble, and finished the league campaign with 14 consecutive wins to clinch the title with 98 points. Ah.

“The club has decided to honour his performance in its last line of defence [in the 1-0 win at Genoa] by putting him in the list of goalkeepers. Additionally, fans can now purchase the goalkeeper jersey and customise it with ‘Giroud 9’” – Milan suits are quick to spot a money-making opportunity when they see one and get to work flogging some unlikely kits. For some further reading on the French John Burridge, read Nicky Bandini’s Serie A blog.

If you want to look at what the future brings for football (or golf, y’know, if you care), with where the money comes from now, whatever you think of that, look at what happened when that same money came to Formula One. It must be good, mustn’t it, because it’s so expensive, and brilliantly technically executed, and you are sharing the lifestyle. Yet despite this, it’s tedious, repetitive, predictable and empty, cares little for the concept of ‘underdog’, it has the authenticity of a baseball cap with a Louis Vuitton logo, and the joy of trudging through a gilded mall looking at the same shops as everyone everywhere, thinking you must be big-time because you are being fleeced of so much cash. Perhaps, you start to feel that someone else is taking this thing you love from you and is making you pay just to press your nose against the window of their private box. And they aren’t even watching the game. Very odd that Manchester ‘just keep it in the corner, lads, we could still stay up’ City were the Trojan horse in all this. I say ‘you’ because I support Bradford Park Avenue, and that can’t get much worse, tbh” – Jon Millard.

It’s good to see that the Football Weekly podcast has managed to get some well-deserved coverage on … Big Website. Perhaps they will also manage to get a Big Website audio long read of the article about the podcast and potentially Big Website could even do a Big Podcast on the audio long read of the article about the podcast, especially given that Big Website’s podcast currently seems to have an entire episode on a tree” – Noble Francis.

Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Noble Francis.