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I HAVE a certain sympathy for Manchester United players who have come up with the wondrous excuse for being mid-table yet again: Their kits are too tight!

Sympathy because I’m sure my washing machine has shrunk all of my clothes over the past 10 years too, everything feels a little small for me.

And I’ve often wondered why, during my afternoon break of six Jaffa cakes, a KitKat and a vat of caramel latte, why they can’t just manufacture one that doesn’t do this to our shirts.

Let’s not forget at this time, the service that Manchester United are providing the nation. The nights are getting long, the rain won’t stop, an evil meter thing in the hallway is taking all your money and that’s before the desolate experience of watching any news broadcast right now for more than a minute.

And yet here are United, generously offering a couple of hours of blissful escapism for all of us every weekend.

Who would have thought 25 years ago, we’d be here? Who’d have thought that the bullies kicking sand into the faces of everybody else in the Premier League would become so embarrassingly fragile? The champions of a fading time left pleased about winning the Carabou Cup and reaching for the “kit doesn’t feel right” excuse.

They’ve been eclipsed by their city neighbours – a team who they could never have imagined would rise like Godzilla to gobble them up and complete a more convincing treble. They’ve been left with a team of egotistical midfielders resolved never to pass.

There are people in their 20s who have completed their school days, got a job, had children and the rest, and never realise what we had to live through.

As they watch Roy Keane tutting and Gary Neville trying to be critical without upsetting any friends, 20-year-olds can’t know what it was like when they were on top. Ugly winners always.

I said this to a United fan recently, that their team was now lifting spirits all around with their continued ordinariness. You’re obsessed I was told, before that corny phrase: We’re living rent free in your head.

Yes, United, you’re in our minds all the time and it’s brilliant. More Maguire please, more McTominay, more Martial.

• SOL Campbell said this week that the Invincibles should have been given a special trophy or medal for going unbeaten, suggesting more fuss would have been made about the achievement of going through an entire season unbeaten if it has been done by United or Liverpool. Not true! I never stop talking about it.