I hate football so much these days that I can hardly bear to report it

The message was brief and the writer got straight to the point. ‘I’d just like you to know that you are a fucken cocksucker,’ it read, ‘and that your article on Leeds supporters was a load of absolute fucken bullshit. You’re a stupid fucken predjudice [sic] half-wit.’ After more of the same (yawn) it was signed ‘Angry and dangerous’.

If you were looking for the authentic voice of the football supporter, at the start of another season, Mr Angry would make a fair representative. No matter what the well-scrubbed ‘experts’ tell you on the telly, no matter how seductive are the endless puffs on Radio Five Live, the game relies for much of its support on the kind of illiterate who sent that email.

He was not alone. Another message read: ‘What a load of bollocks you sad t**t. We are Leeds and we’re proud of it.’ There were dozens of others, written with similar command of the language, as well as some that made reasonable points.