'GOING once, going twice, yours... sold to the men in the Armani suits, this 100 per cent genuine promotion place.'

£100 million - that's the going rate, according to the PFA's chief executive, the Premiership clubs should pay to their Nationwide counterparts in return for a switch to two up, two down.

Gordon Taylor's idea is one of the most original yet for getting English football out of the mess it's in.

But why would the likes of Arsenal and Liverpool care about how many teams go down? They haven't finished in the bottom half in years, so they are highly unlikely to unilaterally give up £5 million to help their 'friends' in need at the bottom.

Is having one promotion place fewer just going to encourage first division clubs to be even more reckless in pursuing the prize of a year in the promised land, especially given that Portsmouth seem likely to get away with it.

And what the Nationwide League needs is not a short term patch or a lifeline.

It needs a real, long-term solution.

If that means half the clubs in Nationwide division one going into administration and agreeing to rigorous financial strictures for the next few years, then so be it.

It would just be nice if more players and staff followed the example set by those at Ipswich, who have agreed to take a temporary wage cut until the club can get itself back on an even keel.

Far be it from me to laugh at the misfortunes of Manchester United, (or Mun You as 'supporters' who've never seen the inside of Old Trafford call them) but their defeat against plucky local rivals Bolton was the most hilarious result of the season so far.

And they didn't do much better at Leeds, where Rio Ferdinand looked a little bit too easily put off, and David Beckham was lucky to get away with a moment of petulance that might indicate little Romeo is not as good a sleeper as young Brooklyn was.

What United really need is to go back to the drawing board.

They run the risk, like Liverpool at the end of their glory period, of treating every finish below second as a disaster - it isn' t, really, especially in these days of 'anyone who can fulfil their fixtures gets into the Champions League.'

No team can be champions in perpetuity, and with Arsenal developing into a quality side, United could end up being star-studded also-rans.

What Sir Alex - or his successor, should he choose to stick to rearing horses - needs to do is to offload some of his dead wood and re-build around a core of two or three top quality players, perhaps Beckham, Ferdinand and Scholes.

The next generation of Keanes, Van Nistelrooys and Giggs are out there, and there are better players than Veron to be found for the money United have available.

Personally, I'd like to see our friends from Old Trafford go on embarrassing themselves, but, if Fergie gets the nod from the PLC board, he might just be able to mould a team that his successor can take to European glory again.

The second most hilarious result must be Scotland's 2-2 draw with the Faroe Islands.

'It's terrible - the worst result ever', said one (possibly apocryphal) caller to a radio phone in at the weekend: 'we've had some humiliations before, but it's really come to something when we can't even manage to beat...

Scotland.'

Berti Vogts and his boys are barely capable of raising a team at the moment, having to plunge into England's lower divisions and accept fringe players from the likes of Motherwell and Aberdeen.

What Scottish football really needs is a bit more effort from its two biggest clubs.

If the likes of Liverpool, Manchester United, Leeds, Newcastle, Arsenal and West Ham can develop local youngsters, why do Celtic and Rangers find it so difficult?

If those two clubs can bring through one Scotsman a season, good enough to play in their first team, then Berti's dilemmas will be a thing of the past.