Welcome to this week's Off the Ball, which is still wondering whether Peter Kay was tipsy on Friday's Jonathan Woss show.

Sing us a song
Earlier this summer a team of academics from Liverpool University, clearly with nothing better to do, like find a cure for cancer or discover the secret of time travel, researched the football chant. They came to the conclusion that there is actually a mathematical formula for the perfect chant, involving Contribution, Intensity, Aggression, Performance in Adversity, Spontaneity, Humour and Topicality. The actual formula they devised is (C x I/A) + P (S + H) + T squared. Or as Off the Ball puts it, what a load of C + Rap x Bo(****)s squared, with knobs on.

Nevertheless, the good old chant is definitely a valid art form. Indeed, whenever a new player arrives at the Abbey, within hours the website message board is full of suggestions for new chants with which to greet him.

The latest example, of course, is Amadou Konte (left), who should naturally run out to chants of 'Am-a-dou-dou-dou'.

In fact, I'd say that few things in life are as funny as a good football chant. True, many are little more than obscenities hurled at despised opposition, but every now and then someone comes up with a chant that is little short of genius.

Indeed, the best football chants are the popular poetry of today, combining razor-sharp, albeit often cruel, wit with topicality, satire and a hefty dose of sarcasm. For humour they're right up there with The Office, Phoenix Nights and The Simpsons. Well, maybe not The Simpsons, but you get my drift.

For example, when Wayne Rooney recently jumped ship and joined the Red Devils, the Old Trafford faithful immediately pounced on the reputation of Liverpudlian scallies and burst forth into song (to the tune of Coming Round the Mountain):
"He would rather be a devil than a Scouse
So there's no more robbing grannies or your house
Rooney'd rather be a devil
And play with Gary Neville
Rooney'd rather be a devil than a Scouse."

Opposition fans, however, less impressed with the wunderkind, responded with a nice twist on an old favourite:
"Score in a brothel, you only score in a brothel!".

Taking old songs and adding new words to them is a favourite trick of many chant-writers. Perhaps the best example in recent years was the inspired gem penned by a Brighton fan, and based on the old Dean Martin hit 'Amore':
"When the ball's in the goal
It's not Shearer or Cole
It's... Zamora."

Glee at opposition misfortune is, naturally, a staple part of the football chant. A particularly excellent example was dreamt up by Celtic fans in the mid-90s, when then-Rangers forward drunken Duncan Ferguson was facing a prison sentence in Glasgow's notorious Barlinnie prison for headbutting an opposition player (from Raith Rovers - I mean, was it worth it?):
"He's tall
He's skinny
He's going to Barlinnie
Ferguson, Ferguson&"

Meanwhile, Essex Girl look-a-like Diego Forlan was greeted with cries of
"One Sally Gunnell,
There's only one Sally Gunnell&"

Though sadly, as far as I'm aware, no athletics meeting ever got held up because our Sal had taken her top off and couldn't get it back on again.

For pure, relentless cruelty, though, you have to take your hat off to the entire songbook that was written when Phil Thompson became Liverpool's acting manager after Gerard Houllier's heart attack. Mr Thompson, you see, is somewhat well endowed in the proboscis department. Or, as a character in Monty Python's Life of Brian put it more plainly, "He has got a very big nose!"

Leeds fans set up their own particular chant of
"We've got Dom Matteo,
You've got Pinocchio"

Elsewhere, fans greeted Liverpool's assistant boss with rousing choruses of:
"Get your nostrils
get your nostrils
get your nostrils off our pitch"

and
"He's got the whole world, up his nose
He's got the whole wide world, up his nose
He's got the whole world, up his nose
He's got the whole world up his nose."

Not to mention the sublime
"It's here, it's there, it's every f***ing where
Thompson's nose, Thompson's nose"

All good stuff, and in next week's edition we'll be featuring special chants for our very own Cambridge United. If there's any you'd like to see featured, e-mail them to me at the address below.

What a lot of balls
In the past, the FA have allowed yellow balls, rather than the conventional white ones, to be used when the snow's been thick on the ground. After all, white things tend not to show up too well on a white background, which is why anyone in a Leeds or Real Madrid kit is particularly tricky to mark in mid-winter games.

But with temperatures currently in the mid-teens and snow about as likely as Cambridge winning promotion, why did the FA introduce a new yellow 'winter ball' last weekend, to be used in every Premiership match between now and February?

The official excuse, sorry, explanation is that the yellow ball is easier to see in 'low-light' conditions. Really? So why is it then, that when a yellow ball was tried in non-snowy conditions before, it turned out to be harder to see than the traditional white version? Have the FA got researchers from Liverpool University to discover a new form of yellow that's better than the old one? Or have they bought a job lot of dodgy luminous railway paint from Trigger out of Only Fools and Horses, and painted all their balls so they glow in the dark?

Or could it be that, with Christmas fast approaching, someone's decided that a new coloured ball is the ideal way to fleece hard-pressed parents of yet more cash as little Johnny and Jill put it at the top of their Christmas list?

Back in the 1970s, the Prime Minister of the day called a particularly greedy company "the unacceptable face of capitalism". Thirty years on I can't help thinking that the football industry has taken on the mantle.

Line of the week
Comes, for a change, not from Radio 5 but from regular OTB reader Steve Broomfield, who e-mailed me this particular comment from a grizzled veteran during a Luton v Cambridge match at Kenilworth Road:

Fan 1: "This pitch is in good condition"
Fan 2: "It should be, it has enough sh*t on it".

Nice one Steve!

A model player
OTB is delighted to see that Manchester City now have a player called Jordan in their ranks. Should fit perfectly into a Kevin Keegan line-up - after all, he's always keen on having loads up front.

And on that (blonde) bombshell, it's goodbye till next week - but don't forget, you can e-mail your favourite Cambridge (or other) chants to me at cufcofftheball@aol.com

Neil Cole

If you missed Neil's previous 'Off The Ball' columns, you can find them here

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