David Stubbs runs the rule over this summer's musical offerings and finds a distinct lack of national pride swelling in his chest. Quite the opposite

 Time was when it was possible for the relevant authorities to frogmarch the England team en masse to the studio to record the official England song, in which they would assure us, back home, that this time they were going to get it right, their stilted choral tones betraying an appropriate lack of conviction that they wouldn’t come up short around the quarter-final mark.

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This could be a critical summer at Old Trafford. Ashley Shaw looks at the Glazer protests so far and wonders what lies ahead

By the time Manchester United next kick a ball, they could be playing under a benign coalition of wealthy fans, backed by a support confident of a bright future. There would be a fans’ voice at the upper echelons of the club, with a “golden share” allocated to them to ensure that the pillage of the club never happens again. The £790 million debt loaded on to the club will have been assessed and plans put in place to pay it down. Management fees and dividends would be waived in an emergency budget in order that the club return to an even keel. And before an ecstatic crowd, Wayne Rooney’s first act under the new owners would be to take the kick-off, beat every member of the Liverpool team before backheeling the ball into an empty net…

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Ian Plenderleith examines a philosophical approach to the game which could make watching international football more bearable for England fans

As we approach the World Cup and lose all sense of proportion about football’s importance, it’s worth asking just why we follow the game at all. A column by Andrew Guest at pitchinvasion.net asked a pertinent hypothetical question: If England win the World Cup, will their fans be any happier one year from now than if they had been knocked out in the second round by a goal that Carlos Tevez surreptitiously bundled in with his fist?

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Despite the big-name status of Roy Keane, many Ipswich fans have been underwhelmed by their manager. Csaba Abrahall on a disappointing year at Portman Road

Notable mostly for a club-record number of draws, it has not been an exciting season for Ipswich Town. Even the threatened drama of a relegation battle never really materialised and lower mid-table mediocrity has been the ultimate outcome. For a club that has enjoyed an eventful professional career, this could well be the most tedious season ever.

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Mark Segal on the rise of Twitter as the place for fans to keep up with events at their club

In the early part of the last decade when I was running the football service on Teletext we struck a deal with a national sports agency to provide us with news tip-offs from the training grounds of Premier League clubs. We weren’t looking for the big stories which would be splashed across the next morning’s papers, more nuggets of information which we knew fans would be interested in receiving immediately such as injury updates, weekend team news and reaction to transfer speculation

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