Benjamin Franklin didn’t have any concept of off-shore holdings, hedge funds or corporate tax evasion. His certainty about death and taxes is less of a lock these days, mainly due to the aforementioned financial fugivity, although it’s probably just a matter of time until we sync our souls into iConsciousness and live forever in a borg-esque electronic collective. On iCloud.

A one-off certainty was that the man taking up the reins at Manchester United after Sir Alex Ferguson was going to have a difficult time of things. Also certain is that David Moyes will not be afforded the same amount of time that Alex Ferguson had starting out in 1986. Whether or not he’s the right man for the job, there is major reconstruction ahead, and his predecessor must take some of the blame.

Man Utd’s transition from title winners to early season mediocrity can’t be seen as too much of a surprise. The cracks in the United side had been there for a while, gradually deepening, but constantly and cleverly papered over by Ferguson, who became something of the master plasterer in that regard towards the end of his reign. The groomed successors to the once great centre back pairing of Vidic and Ferdinand: Smalling, Evans, Jones, none of them have shown consistent quality needed to become a fixture in a top side. Last season’s finale, a 5-5 draw with West Brom where Jones and Evans started at centre back, was, in the words of the great Kent Brockman, a chilling vision of things to come for Man Utd fans.

For so long reliant on Scholes and Giggs to fill in in central midfield, now only new signing Fellaini brings any real impetus amongst a sea of drifters: Carrick, Anderson, Cleverley, an ailing Fletcher – there’s no real backbone, there. Not for a side with title winning aspirations. Elsewhere, Ashley Young continues to offer very little, Nani flatters to deceive while the hungry and hugely talented Wilfried Zaha gets no look in. No long term successor to Patrice Evra has been locked in, though that may change with a silly money move for Leighton Baines in January.

Keeping Wayne Rooney and keeping him motivated becomes an increasingly difficult task as each year passes. Van Persie has only 2 or 3 more years before his powers will start to wane. Hernandez is a good poacher, but doesn’t have the all round game that would make him a starter on a regular basis. Welbeck is by no means a proven striker.

None of this is really new. There is a distinct lack of quality in the United squad, and it has been that way for a while. Ferguson was able to hide the problems for so long because he was a great motivator and a great tactician. He made a fairly good side into title winners. But now with a more limited manager in charge, these problems have come to the fore. Today’s defeat to West Brom was no smash and grab fluke. The baggies were able to expose United’s weaknesses and fully deserved their win. The fluid movement and slick passing that led to the winning goal was a move of greater quality that anything the home side produced over the 90 minutes. There was no inevitability during injury time that Man Utd would equalise – not like in times past – West Brom stood firm all too easily.

Ferguson had to have been aware of the lack of true quality in his squad – why else would he have chosen Moyes to replace him, a man whose trademark has been getting the best out of less than stellar quality players? There isn’t much else on his CV that can have got him the job.

Man Utd have the financial clout to bring in better players, and there will surely be 2 or 3 fairly expensive signings in January. But whether the board of this multinational corporation will have the patience to stick with Moyes remains in some doubt. But the architect of all his problems was the man who chose him for the job. It will be of little consolation when he’s out the door.

It’s somewhat unlikely that Sunday’s match between Liverpool at Manchester United will live long in the memory. Liverpool fans sang, “We won’t do that chant.” Luis Suarez buzzed around a lot and showed glimpses of the behaviour that has endeared him to football fans the world over. Man Utd were the beneficiaries of ludicrously weak refereeing. Just another weekend in the mighty, mighty Premier League.

I actually thought Mark Halsey started the game pretty well. It’s easy for these hotly-contested games to spiral into bitty yellow card bonanzas, but he was lenient on a couple of challenges, one from either side, that would have ordinarily brought a yellow card. Then in the 39th minute, Jonjo Shelvey went into a challenge with one foot, and Jonny Evans went into the same challenge with two feet. Shelvey, after some helpful advice from the ever considerate opposition players – no referee should ever make a big decision in a Man Utd game without first consulting Rio Ferdinand – was shown a red card.

Whichever way you look at this, it’s a poor decision. If he was in the right position to see Shelvey’s studs were raised, then he would also have been in the right position to see that Evans’s studs were also raised. If he was in the wrong position, then a) it’s poor refereeing, and b) he’s making a game-changing decision without being 100% certain that he’s correct. And given his earlier leniency (presumably) in the hope of letting the game flow better, why stymie what was, up to that point, an excellent contest?

Man Utd had been given a stern examination in the first half, conceding over 60% of possession to their North West rivals. Van Persie looked isolated, the midfield was disjointed, and young Raheem Sterling was causing no end of grief to Patrice Evra down United’s left. A side with greater conviction and cutting edge would have been 2 or 3 goals to the good before half time, before the red card, even.

So despite Gerrard’s well taken goal, it always felt like United would come back into it, and so they did a mere five minutes later, Rafael’s excellent curling finish levelling things up. And with 15 minutes to go, Antonio Valencia’s jelly legs took a tumble under the weight of expectation – I presume it was that, seeing as there was eff all other contact – and RVP shrugged off a five minute injury delay to squeeze in the spot kick past Reina. Credit Ferguson’s reverse psychology in his throwaway comment before the match – “We never get penalties there” – but a plague on Halsey’s house for facilitating such an atrocious decision and handing Man Utd a victory they did very little to deserve.

The Man Utd fans sang “You’re getting sacked in the morning” to Brendan Rogers, who must be feeling a little down on his luck. He’ll wait a long time to see his team play as well as that again and lose, and a narrow defeat to Mark Halsey will not give John W. Henry a reason to wield the axe just yet.

Over in the Fox Soccer studio, it down to Warren Barton and Eric Wynalda (who looks like a taller, less menacing version of Dennis Wise) to argue about the sending off. Barton – whose tan makes Gary Lineker look genuinely pasty – maintained it was a sending off. Wynalda disagreed, desperately trying to find a way of saying, “But it’s a derby game!” in a less colloquial manner, and giving it all the hand gesturing he could muster. Finally, he grabbed Barton’s arm and stared him the eyes before making one final impassioned plea that it wasn’t a red card. Barton didn’t respond. Pools panel result: Away win. (Barton is always away because he’s English).

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35 miles back up the M62, Financial Extravagance’s City laboured to a 1-1 draw with Financial Prudence’s Arsenal. Craig Burley may not be on Sky, but there was an altogether familiar feel to the Scotsman’s haranguing of Arsenal’s zonal marking system. “Statistically, they say that teams using Zonal Marking concede fewer goals,” he said. “But every time I’ve seen it, it never works!” I like to think a part of Andy Gray’s soul was filled with joy at that moment. Burley is the living embodiment of the phrase, “Because fact into doubt…won’t go.” Anyway, it was more to do with playing a keeper that hasn’t got a bloody clue at corners than it was about the relative merit of different marking systems.

Arsenal probably should have been ahead before that, but when put through one-one-one with Joe Hart, Gervinho’s first touch not only deserted him, but seemed to have left planet earth entirely. My nightmares are filled with alarmingly similar situations leading to alarmingly similar outcomes. That and spiders.

And I leave you with news that the UN’s race relations ambassador John Terry has retired from international football, making England a 372% more likeable team.

There are many reasons to reminisce about home when you’re a few thousand miles away from it. Often, it’s not what you might have expected before you left. A chill wind. Peering out at the pissing rain during an English summer. Less flagrant use of car horns at junctions. And of course, for those of us afflicted by an obsession with a particular game involving a spherical ball, the UK’s coverage of professional football.

Now, while the UK is somewhat of a cultural sponge in regard of the US, you’re hopeful it’s still some way away from introducing any sort of “banter zone” into it’s football programming. 606, You’re on Sky Sports, TalkSport and others may have allowed some more of the more “choice” football opinions a platform to be heard on a national basis, but you feel a certain nadir, some sort of terminal cultural Shark Jumping will have happened once any sort of “Banter Zone” washes up on Britain’s fair shores.

Fortunately, the Fox Soccer Channel compensates for its slightly over-bombastic presentation of the sport by adding a hint of Dour Scotsman to it’s football round-up program; while Bobby McMahon is erudite and highly knowledgeable about world football, the sunny Texan skies have made him a little too optimistic than can be normal for any still-native Dundonian.  And as a man who considers himself a quarter Scots, I feel I can legitimately make a sweeping generalisation about 25% of my heritage, hopefully without being more than 75% hypocritical.

One program my nostalgia wore out pretty quickly for was Match of the Day. Some aspects of the “sameyness” of home are comforting, but the droll semi-interested chat of Gary, Alan & Lawro (as the show should be called) is not one of them. FSC’s Banter Zone may be the most ridiculous title for a segment of a TV show ever, but at least you can tell it’s not taking itself as seriously as you might think. By contrast, Gary Lineker has almost reached a sneering pomposity in the way he way presents MOTD, vaguely complimentary towards the Big 2 while snarkily dismissive of most of the other 18 teams in the league. The self-importance on display has you actively searching for the last known location of Andy Townsend’s tactics truck, before you realise it belongs to Andy Townsend and report it to the police for being double parked.

The BBC’s coverage has such a high opinion of itself that it doesn’t realise how much of an irrelevance it is danger of becoming. Zero innovation in its presentation. The same old faces spouting the same old cliches year after year, while some bright spark at BBC Sport thinks that adding Mick McCarthy and Harry bloody Redknapp to the panel line up is in some way going to freshen things up. Motson-lite stats-obsessed commentators, most of whom deliver with that dash of social judgement on proceedings that is so unnecessary. It’s just not very good. Sky Sports may be the devil incarnate, but at least they don’t treat their viewership like a bunch of total dipshits.

America will never care about soccer in the same way that Britain does, but at least it doesn’t treat it with the same complacency as MOTD. So with that in mind, I’m off to get involved in the Banter Zone on twitter.

The surprising emergence of Gary Neville as an insightful and impartial football pundit has regrettably raised the bar for some of England’s rather more suspect football commentators. “Alan Shearer” has become the punchline to so many jokes about the dire standard of football punditry in this country that it almost seems unfair to pick on him for any misdemeanours.

One could argue that it’s not his fault he is so incapable of forming an independent thought about the game; after all, if someone waved a six-figure cheque in your face to offer your opinions on football, regardless of how inane, bland or simply incorrect they may be, I’m sure you’d snaffle it up like a Gosforth-born former Premier League striker scores from two yards into an empty net.

So mind-numbingly boring has his tenure as a regular Match of the day pundit become, that I can’t remember how long he has been doing the job. It must be at least over 4 years, as that was the first time I ever wrote about being dissatisfied with Shearer’s lack of insight. Though, I find it incredible that I haven’t smashed my head repeatedly into a brick wall after listening to his “thoughts”, so I’m thankful for that small mercy.

You may countenance that I’ve written over 200 words without levelling a single specific allegation of stupidity against Mr. Shearer. Ordinarily, I would argue that it was because he says absolutely nothing noteworthy during the course of a MOTD broadcast. But finally, on the evening of May 6th, 2012, he finally hammered the stupid nail into his moron coffin. He proclaimed that Alex McLeish was only booed and harangued by Aston Villa fans because he had formerly managed bitter rivals Birmingham City.

Now, to anyone that had zero knowledge of football and just a miniscule amount of knowledge about the rivalry between Aston Villa and Birmingham City, this may have seemed like a logical argument. But anyone that has seen more than 20 minutes of Aston Villa this season will tell you that Big ‘Eck’s managerial history has nothing to do with it. They are booing him because of the simple fact that Alex McLeish is a crap manager who has had Villa playing their most turgid football in almost 30 years.

For instance: Villa have won only 4 home games this season. This is their worst ever return from home games over a league season in over 100 years. They have been treated to a whopping 1.05 Villa goals per home game. Let me tell you, Villa fans would not have cared if McLeish had BCFC tattooed on his forehead if he had led Villa to the mid-table finish that their squad deserved this season. The reason that he has been getting jip from the home faithful is because HE IS RUBBISH. There is no other reason. To claim otherwise only highlights the spectacular lack of knowledge of Wor Alan.

And that was what finally sent me over the edge, as Shearer claimed McLeish’s Birmingham heritage as the sole cause of his trouble with the Villa fans. Had I been a man for whom money was no object, I would have undoubtedly smashed my television to smithereens in act of fruitless defiance.

And so high is Shearer’s level of General Ignorance that such wanton destruction could actually be considered justifiable in this case. Had he taken the time to talk to even just 3 or 4 Villa fans prior to tonight’s show, he would have found that his held opinion had absolutely zero basis in fact. Let’s do this in one sentence so The Talented Mr. Alan can understand:

VILLA FANS DISLIKE MCLEISH BECAUSE HE IS A SHIT MANAGER.

There are no ulterior motives. Get it into your thick skull and stop spreading your held opinions as fact on a national basis.

So if I may be so brazen as to say, “He should have done better with that.” Because Shearer hasn’t just missed an open goal, he has quite literally hit the crossbar from 6 yards out and the ball has rebounded into his face and knocked him out cold.

Shearer has been making money from saying nothing for well over four years now. Just because he’s been getting away with it for so long doesn’t mean we should forget he’s been getting with it at all. I’ll leave the final words to the brilliant Cameron Carter, who writes for When Saturday Comes:

“Alan Shearer. Ten years ago those two words meant a ball bursting the net. Nowadays they represent an interval between meaningful events. It’s not just that he sounds like a man sight-reading from the Bible, it’s the poverty of the content. On the same Match of the Day as Jacqui Oatley’s debut, Gary Lineker described Ben Foster’s mistake for Darius Vassell’s goal as summing-up Watford’s disappointing season. Over the replays of Foster’s miskick, Shearer indolently concluded “that goal really does sum up Watford’s season”, like a man in a circle who has been passed an idea and tried it without inhaling.”