Manchester United have picked the right Premier League season to be at their very worst

There is that scene in Mad Men where Roger Stirling, with a cube of LSD dissolving on his tongue, rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "Well Dr Leary, I find your product boring."

The product then takes effect and Roger is later in the bathtub reliving the 1919 World Series. The product was not boring. The Premier League product is.

Pep Guardiola billed Tuesday night's fixture between Manchester City and Aston Villa as "a final". Perhaps I'm getting old, but I dozed off during the second half.

That match was only significant for Champions League qualification, whereby half of the top ten teams will enter the pot for Uefa's annual draw in August. Back in 2001, the cover of When Saturday Comes derided Liverpool for celebrating a third-place finish to secure a Champions League pre-qualifier.

It was such a big deal that Liverpool's final-day win at Charlton Athletic was first in the Match of the Day running order. That season was another one-horse race for the title with relegation boxed off before the final day.

Sky Sports' Premier League bubble has burst. It is not a league that is alive and kicking, as Simple Minds sang in that 1992 promo. They have not had a title race and the only relegation battle has been for Southampton to get more points than dire Derby County did in 2007-08.

In the absence of much excitement, we have been subjected to inorganic punditry. Sky and TNT need to earn their coin from the £6.7billion they forked out for the rights in 2023. One pundit is reputedly paid £25,000 per appearance for a Premier League match.

Sky's pundits are now so ubiquitous their words do not carry as much weight. Gary Neville's appearances on Monday Night Football are scarce and that is no longer must-watch television.

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