“It used to be that men were men, thighs were fierce, kits were muddy, fields were gouged, and every match was a wet November night away to Scunthorpe. It wasn’t pretty, but English football knew what it was. If you saw a ball, every fiber of a being that had been handed down to you through generations of hard-kneed public-house titans cried out to kick it as far as it could sail. If you saw the Mona Lisa, well, tosh, you’d knock her over once just to let her know you were there.” (Run of Play)