At the present moment in time, Foul Play's fingernails are as long as they have ever been. Not because I finally got round to buying one of those little bottles of nail poison, but because virtually every football team dear to my heart seems to be well nigh invincible at the moment.

In the Premiership, Man United are motoring along at their fascistically dominant best, or at least 80 percent of it, which seems to be enough.
On the international front, after a string of astonishing results (okay, two), the Republic of Ireland are well on their way back to being everyone's second favourite team, at the precise moment that England are sinking ever deeper into a fetid pit of their own making.
And finally, one notes with a wintry smile while perusing the Sunday papers that up in Scotland, almost surrealistically, Celtic have accelerated twelve points clear of the Huns.
I got up early at the weekend to watch United brush aside Leeds, an outfit recognised as one of the better sides in England, and making reasonable headway in Europe; yet on Saturday, still putting up all the resistance of a week-old piece of squashed roadkill.
After their 3-0 hammering, much was made of Leeds being deprived of virtually half their team, due to injuries, suspensions, acts of God and all the other myriad ailments that have dogged them, almost karmically, in the aftermath of the Bowyer and Woodgate affair.
The argument would have carried more weight if Man United themselves had been at something resembling full strength. Certainly, the myth that any United line-up Ferguson cobbles together should be good enough to see off any opposition was well and truly demolished by the debacle in Eindhoven a month ago.
In fact, rather than mentioning all their absentees on Saturday, it would be quicker merely to list the first-choices who did line out for United against Leeds: to wit, Barthez, Gary Neville, Johnsen, Scholes and (for half an hour) Roy Keane.
For the casual observer, United's trouncing of Leeds was made all the more piquant by the recent publication of a spotlight investigative piece by the Guardian, in which it was reported that Leeds had made strenuous representations towards Mr Justice Henriques to have the trial of Bowyer and Woodgate delayed even further. The original attack took place over nine months ago.
Then, just when you thought they couldn't sink any lower in the eyes of the world, they bought the wretched Mark "I never give it anything less than 70 per cent" Viduka and his accompanying girth.
There won't be any title for Leeds now, not after three losses in the first ten games. Nor for Liverpool, one suspects, even though Emile Heskey has just knocked the footballing cosmos off its axis by somehow scoring in consecutive games.
The Gooners look in fearsome fettle for the time being, but given the way they imploded so miserably over Christmas last season, we shouldn't hold our breath just yet. As a United fan, I still can't make up my mind whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. How must the rest of you be feeling?

And what about Celtic, too, seemingly romping away with the Scottish title, and virtually earning the right to call themselves champions elect? In October?
The current Bhoys side bears eloquent testimony to the difference that a decent manager can make. It seems like only yesterday when Foul Play was sitting in Barry Glendenning's living room in London, watching through his fingers as Celtic went down 4-0 to their rivals at Ibrox last March, in surely the lamest Old Firm performance of all time.
Five months later, eight of those players line up against Rangers and stick six past them, ostensibly after only a few weeks of pep-talks from Martin O'Neill. I'm fucked if I can make head or tail of it, and if I had to guess, I'd say quite a few of the Celtic players are of the same mind.
Celtic are doing it in reverse this year, with noticeably fewer of the pointless annihilations of the smaller fry that have been their stock-in-trade over the past few years.
Instead of putting seven past Aberdeen one week, and then cursing the fact that they didn't save a couple for St Johnstone the following week, the Bhoys are doing it the smart way this time around. They do just enough in every match a 1-0 against Motherwell here, a 2-1 against Dundee United there and then save their best for the big occasion, letting it all out in a six-goal splurge against the Huns.
With United so dominant, the Republic sitting pretty in their World Cup group, and best of all, the Celts finally bearing a disturbing resemblance to a decent football team, in a perverse way some of the fun has gone out of the whole experience. Part of Foul Play's psyche is paralysed with apprehension, wondering why it is all going so right at the moment, and waiting for the instant where it all starts to break down and fall apart.
It calls to mind that old joke about the British colonial explorer creeping through the bush in Africa, to the incessantly beating jungle drums in the background. After what seems like an eternity of percussive accompaniment, the intrepid Britisher turns to his companion, and rages, "Why don't they stop hitting those blasted tom-toms?"
Presently, the drums cease beating; and the explorer says to his companion: "I don't like it. It's too quiet."