Ref, you're having a laugh!

Football has always been funny. Full-grown adults chasing a ball around is quite a silly thing to do, when you think about it. Even the people who take the game most seriously, the die-hard, never-miss-a-match season-ticket holders, will also sing humorous anthems about certain players to the tune of hymns, folk songs and random hit singles from the seventies.

Then there's the newspapers. Even when they're hounding a struggling manager out of work, they're making puns. Flick through a tabloid football section, check the headlines and it's almost like looking at a bunch of Edinburgh Fringe posters. And certain people in football are a gift that keeps on giving in that respect. Like Liverpool's new Dutch manager, Arne Slot, whose team have started well: hence you're currently hearing the words 'Slot machine' as much in the football media as you would at an online casino.

Maybe it's the Gary Lineker influence - he loves signing off with a pun - but the broadcasters do now often finish with a jokey flourish, and that end up as Pun of the Season. TNT Sport went big on it after Liverpool beat Aston Villa - 'the Slot machine in full flow as Liverpool hit the jackpot', or words to that effect.

That's a pretty obvious bit of wordplay, but occasionally the newspapers come up with an admirably niche effort. When an unhappy Brazilian midfielder decided to stay home rather than return to Middlesbrough - can't think why - amid interest from an Italian club, the Guardian couldn't resist a prog-rock gag: 'Emerson Late. And Parma?'

Probably the greatest football headline ever, however, is a Mary Poppins reference. When Scottish minnows Inverness Caledonian 'Calley' Thistle knocked one of the big Glasgow giants out of the cup in 2000, The Sun had a rare moment of comic genius, the wonderful 'Super Calley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious.'

Sometimes a memorable headline is completely unintentional - or hopefully it was, anyway. In 2003 Manchester City manager Kevin Keegan replaced one goalkeeping legend with another. The Sky Sports headline? 'Keegan Fills Schmeichel's Gap with Seaman.' Matron!

Those fan songs can be pretty rude too, of course, particularly in regard to rival fans and players, but there's often wit when it's one of their own. Liverpool fans came up with an affectionate ode to a couple of lanky signings, back in the mid 2000s.

First, a full-back named Djimi Traore who wound up with a European Cup winner's medal despite being famously accident prone. They serenaded him to the chorus of the Jackson Five's Blame it on the Boogie, but with an appropriate finale "...blame it on Traore. He just can't, he just can't, he just can't control his feet.'

And then there was the big striker who went on to co-host a lockdown show with Alex Horne called Save Our Summer, and who you'll now find doing jokey Paddy Power commercials with Shaun 'Barry from EastEnders' Williamson. The song for him - like Liverpool's tactics when he played - was very route-one: 'He's big, he's red, his feet stick out the bed, Peter Crouch, Peter Crouch...'

It's a funny old game.