Introducing the social back-of-the-net-work

Because if you don't talk with someone about Joey Barton's amazing strike immediately you'll have to punch yourself in the kidneys, there's Bantr: billing itself as the "social network for football fans", its interface allows you to exchange real-time beautiful-game musings with fellow supporters, opposition, and neutrals, who might nonetheless be vehemently pulling for Switzerland. On sign-up, simply plug in the team you support (they're currently repping the top four UK leagues), and your profile page will then display their fixtures, results, tables, etc.; you'll also be asked if you "have faith in your manager", with your answer contributing to an overall measurement of fan support, a insightful stat to everyone except Roman Abramovich.

During each kickabout, just check in to start discussing the proceedings, and to participate in the interactive game panel, which enables live voting on the manager's decisions (team selection, substitutions, etc.), game quality, and the ref, who, due to his deplorable optical condition, won't even be able to see the voting results. In the vein of Foursquare, the site's also been game-ified, with points awarded for posting "liked" comments, predicting results, etc., all going towards the goal of becoming "chairman" of your team, much better than calling yourself the Mayor of McDonald's, a title Joey would consider a strike against you. Because he's just beating the crap out of you.