ANYONE who has ever written a weekly newspaper column knows it’s not always easy to decide on the subject matter.

It’s not so much writer’s block as a total and utter ideas block.

But then sometimes a God-given idea just lands on your lap. And so it came to pass during Harry Redknapp’s rant about one of his own players at Queens Park Rangers, Adel Taarabt, he asked: “What’s the game coming to?”

Well, as he’s asked, it would be rude not to answer. And if Redknapp thinks one player’s shortcomings is the sum total of football’s ills he couldn’t be more mistaken.

Let’s start with the players. They dive and cheat as a matter of course, to the extent that the issue is regularly a major debate as it was last weekend following the Stoke v Swansea match.

Then there’s the grappling that takes place at corners, as it did in the same game – a practice which is ridiculously allowed to take place, and even more ridiculously criticised when a referee gives a penalty for it.

The speed and frequency with which clubs change their managers wouldn’t happen in any other business, and rightly so. The average tenure of a manager is around one and a half years, barely time enough to learn the names of all the employees.

Hiring and firing is costly, and someone has to fund those hundred grand a week contracts the players are on. Who pays for all this? The fans, through sky-high ticket prices, satellite TV subscriptions and replica shirts at £50 a go.

Identikit stadiums have little or no atmosphere compared to the every-one-is-different grounds of old with far too many spectators partaking in the baffling practice of leaving five or 10 minutes early.

But at least they occupy a seat for the best part of 90 minutes, unlike the corporate spectators whose seats lie empty en masse while they slurp the sparkling wine in the private boxes.

We never know how many people are actually in a ground because official attendances include season ticket holders whether they are present or not, resulting in misleading figures.

Gambling and payday loans firms have attached themselves to the sport in recent years and pundits speak in strange tenses – “ he’s came in at the far post” – while, for the most part, stating the blindingly obvious.

Club academies ruin childhoods and, in some cases, lives, by tossing them aside with zero support structure after dominating their lives from aged eight.

When pondering the development of football Harry Redknapp should take a look at his own club who are bottom of the league with a higher wage bill than Spanish champions Atletico Madrid and German giants Borussia Dortmund, 128 per cent of the club’s turnover.

That, Harry, is what the game’s coming to.