Peerless Wigan

Wise guys steer clear of soccer till the clocks go back. The long muddy slurp and slog of winter are now properly under way. Mind you, this time autumn’s warm-up lap has offered an instructive preamble if not, as we shall doubtless see by Easter, a necessarily telling one. In England, the cosmopolitan London strut of Arsenal and Chelsea heads the Premiership parade (in Scotland — yawn, yawn — it is already Celtic and Rangers ahead by a street). It could yet be significant that the three moneybags clubs which traditionally fancy themselves — Liverpool and the Uniteds of Manchester and Newcastle — are already lurching, vaguely insecure, nine points adrift of the leaders and behind such a historically stalwart but lately unfashionable trio as Everton, Middlesbrough and Bolton Wanderers, each of whom have jumped keenly from the traps.