Anguish? You don't know what it means

LockerRoom: There are certain suggestions and conversational gambits which are inappropriate in polite society. Not to get all Miss Manners about this, but a little sensitivity to the plight of others wouldn't go amiss.

I don't badger Waterford Crystal, the company, with commissions for commemorative vases that might have Waterford Crystal, the nag, etched onto them. I don't even ask if the horse's golden samples were delivered into a sparkling decanter made by his name sponsors. Too polite, that's me.

Likewise, I don't expect Shelbourne fans, when in the company of even watery Bohs people like myself, to gloatingly raise the topic of Shelbourne's current pillaging of the Bohs playing staff. I don't invite smart comments from Cork people on the plight of Dublin hurling. Least of all, I don't expect Manchester United fans to attempt to engage me in conversations about the current state of things at Old Trafford.

Yet people keep cornering me and wondering if I share their fear that Wayne Rooney's temperament may eventually diminish his worth. No, I don't, and why do you keep mistaking me for somebody who is interested?

While we're at it, I have to confess I don't lose a nanosecond's sleep worrying over whether an American millionaire will buy Manchester United from those two Irish millionaires. I'm blissfully indifferent as to whether Man U can make up in Europe that standing they have lost at home. I spend approximately, oh, zero seconds of my day pondering which combination of Saha, Smith, Rooney, Solskjaer and van Nistelrooy will eventually work best for Sir Fergie.

Yet every day some grinning Premiership mindslave will accost me and asked if I don't think this is Sir Fergie's last season, or do I know when they are bringing out the DVD version of the new Keano "outburst" on MUFCTV, or which of the Nevilles is the less ugly, or why doesn't Scholesy score so much anymore or isn't it true that they don't miss Beckham/that they pine for Beckham.

Listen, I'm a Leeds fan. I worship at a minority church. Through thin and thinner. I have to worry about Brian Deane. He scored four on Saturday (hah Ruud!), but the fear is now that he might go all Mutu and let the glory go to his nose.

Which would be a mistake on Leeds United wages. That's not the big worry, though. Let's face facts: Deane never really cut it on the way up, how's he going to do it on the way down?

Speaking of the way down, I have to worry about Leeds being hopelessly adrift in a league division led by the galacticos of Wigan. I have to close my eyes and envision Elland Road with a giant "For Sale" sign posted outside. I have to go to my room and count all the loose change in my pockets and in the jam jar and then seriously consider whether I should buy the club for myself.

It's a lot more than that. I am consumed by a wasting disease from having to look at Leeds United team sheets and wonder where these people came from. Are they all part of some reality show running on Sky Three? The name Gary Kelly still crops up on team sheets and makes me wonder why a man would give up international football to concentrate on all this squalor. I have to wonder, too, what has happened to Lucas Radebe and Michael Duberry. Players like that don't merely play in the reserves. No, they languish.

Speaking of anguish. I have to screw my eyes up tight and make myself believe that the Paul Butler who is playing at centre half for Leeds isn't the Paul Butler who once played for Ireland. Haven't we been punished enough?

Can there be a God who would let me get up on Sunday after Sunday to mull pathetically over the papers, working out how my fantasy football side of recent ex-Leeds players is performing. Robinson in goal, Danny Mills and Hartey in the full back spots. Woodgate and Rio Ferdinand at centre back. A midfield with Kewell, Dacourt and Milner, and then, to complete the fashionable 4-3-3 line-up, Mark Viduka, Robbie Keane and Robbie Fowler up front. Bowyer and Martin and, erm, Seth Johnson sit on the subs' bench.

Then I check to see how my fantasy football line-up of players who declined to come to Leeds is going. You haven't known grief, those of you who have never done that.

Me? It so happens that I am condemned to lie awake at night wondering how a soccer club could buy Rio Ferdinand for £18 million, then sell him 19 months later for just over £33 million and yet find itself worth less than the difference between those two prices just two years later.

I toss and turn and make the sheets sweaty worrying about guys like Simon Johnson and Simon Walton. Somebody has to worry about those kids. Nobody asks if they have the temperament or if they will burn themselves out visiting oul wans in brothels.

At least Rooney can afford young ones.

Then there's Jamie McMaster. I worry about him, too. Not a name to conjure with these days, is Jamie. So you remember him? Once there was such a tug of love over him after he arrived from Sydney. He was soooooo hot that England, Australia and half the footballing nations of Europe wanted to cap him. Leeds leaned on him. They didn't want him flying far when his international career blossomed and he became a global superstar.

So, he opted for England. He's 22 now and he is not setting the lower reaches of what we used to call the second division on what we Leeds fans remember as fire. He's just back from a loan spell at mighty, mighty Swindon. He says it went well. Phew!

Then there is Clarke Carlisle. Who is he? Why is he playing for Leeds? The Leeds website says he was once described as the brainiest man in British football - which is like me being named the thinnest man in sumo. If he's so smart, how come he's at Leeds?

I try not to go near the Leeds website. Not during this sad time. You can hear the wind whistling through it like a ghost town. On the little profiles of the reserve team (how come Larry Farren can be Irish from Donegal but Sean McDaid can't be?) there aren't photographs, but silhouettes of the boys' heads. Is this so as not to embarrass the players, or because the club can't afford a trip to the photobooth?

My nails are bitten to the quick worrying about all those consortiums who drive slowly along the kerbside asking Leeds if they are doing business, before rolling up the electric window and driving away with a cackle. Fifteen of them have cruised Leeds at last count. Sick, perverted bastards.

Everyone of them approached with a handful of loose change and some currency left over from their holidays in Playa del Ingles. They said they'd take us away from all this.

Why are there no rich fools out there willing to buy Leeds? Perhaps because if Leeds were a national football association they'd be the FAI.

My point is that, yes, I worry, but my life is a whole lot more interesting than the life of a Manchester United fan. I worry about which combination of misfits, has-beens and never-will-bes work best for Leeds. If your reserve team plays for you in the League Cup you know that life has been stripped of its meaning. If you keep getting to FA Cup finals almost by accident, you're following a PLC, not a team.

If all you do with the other people who follow your team is roll your eyes and say nothing when you meet on a Saturday evening, the chances are that there is hope for you yet. You're not a cliché.

The Championship is a lot more fun than the Premiership. It has some semblance of competitiveness. It brings a team to places that they might never see on their holidays. You learn to love it. I swear.

Plus, it's full of teams who were good and glamourous back when you were a kid and Manchester United thought Gordon Hill was something special. On Saturday, QPR were putty in Leeds United's hands.

It was like two tribute bands vying with each other in the lower reaches of the charts, and at the end of the day you'd rather have a second-hand Rolling Stones before an expensively assembled boyband any day.

Wouldn't you?