David Jeter: The Yankees' Beckham

I like football. Quite a lot, but not enough to prefer it to a number of other sports and certainly not enough to see football through Keano's red mist. If I support any team, it's England.

Just so you know.

On to this Manchester United tie-in with the Yankees.

The newspapers enthusiastically headlined the prospect of a Stock Exchange investigation into the timing of the announcement and enjoyed Sir Bobby's news conference failure to name the Yankees' superstar equivalent of David Beckham. (David Jeter...but then you knew that didn't you?).

But the papers have caught the mood. Everyone is outraged. Especially United fans, who are now freely making as many disparaging remarks about hot-dogs as prawn sandwiches.

Naturally, the news is beyond contempt for non-Manchester United fans (ie everyone else) ...and there's also BBC commentator Alan Green. He was quoted in Thursday's "Daily Star" newspaper.

Words like "greed" and sickening" were liberally sprinkled throughout an inside back-page piece, which drew a timely distinction between United's entrepreneurial adventure in the Big Apple and the still distant prospect of Hull City avoiding one million pounds worth of financial collapse.

Alan Green: Utd's sickening greed

So what's to be done to destroy this unholy domination of world football by the Red Devils?

Easy. If you're a United fan, withdraw your support. Don't buy an Old Trafford ticket, don't buy the merchandise, sell your shares, churn your subscription to MUTV.

If you're a Man-U hater...mount a campaign. Start spreading the news....this New York, New York deal is bad for the football business.

Letters to the papers, calls to Littlejohn, bore your MP, but above all, lobby your own club chairman and get him to force through a more equitable distribution of money throughout the English game...Premier League plus Football League.

That's what American sport does...that's what we should do here, and probably will one day, given that America sets the trends in entertainment and media that Britain invariably follows.

And make no mistake, the entertainment and media business is what we're dealing with here, not sport. And that's not by any means just United's fault.

And if a Premier League central economy scares United off into a European League, so be it.

They'll be back when the fans, bored with interminable, meaningless games against Barcelona and Juventus in half-empty stadiums, demand gritty games against City, Liverpool and Leeds.

And when TV executives demand it too!

MUTV: Fans can switch off

Naive maybe, but the point is simple and serious. United are only successful because fans consume the product.

Presumably they do this of their own free will. Presumably because they like it.

If they've now decided they don't like it - or at least what it stands for - then their free will can also, presumably, allow them to stay at home on match days and zap the United match with their remote control.

Falling gate receipts, TV ratings and pay-TV subscriptions would have an immensely sobering effect in football's market economy.

Sure, there'd be withdrawal symptoms, but they'd get used to it. They might even end up with a soft spot for Norwich!