Now is the perfect time for Fergie to retire.

It is now time for Sir Alex to retire. I have no doubt that the man who will go down as the greatest club manager of all time should step away at the end of this season. It is the perfect ending to an amazing tale.

All the great stories end at the right time. Lord of the Rings, The Office and Fawlty Towers to name but a few. Going on too far is only guaranteed to sour your legacy. Muhammad Ali is the greatest sportsman to have ever lived yet I challenge you to think of him without thinking of the sad sight of the great man defeated by Trevor Berbick in his final fight. Fergie deserves a better ending.

With United’s historic nineteenth title sewn up he has taken the club to the top of the pile, the front of the history books. He has succeeding in creating the most powerful footballing dynasty that this country has ever seen. He has seen off challengers, conquered Europe twice and has created no less than four separate great teams.

I know that there are those of you reading this of a red Mancunian tilt that wish the old master to go on forever but it can not happen. One would excuse United fans the occasional anxiety attack over what comes after him. Looking into the future and seeing uncertainty where for decades there has been for clarity is unsettling for all concerned. But that should not ruin Fergie’s ending, it is a question for later.

The chances of United improving on this season’s outcomes next year must be in doubt. They will surely face better opposition in Europe than they have this campaign whilst even if they win the league it will not be as special as this title has been in terms of what it means to the club’s fans. Fergie will forever be the man who overtook Liverpool.

For all that it is worth, I think that all this is pointless pontificating. I am almost certain that he will carry on beyond the end of the month because of the same reason that has got him to where he is now. He is so competitive; he does not know when to give up. Without this quality he would have never become what he is today but it does threaten to damage the way that he is remembered in decades to come. Fergie, please stop now.

I'm back and with a radical idea.

First an admission. I haven’t written anything for a while. The last few months have been hectic for me. I have got engaged, started a new job and started the process of moving house. As a result I would say that this season has probably seen me watch less football than I have done for quite a while.

And yet I feel more passionate about the game now than I have ever done. Which got me thinking, are we suffering from football overkill? Can we actually have too much football?

I realise that maybe your natural reaction to such a question is one of incredulity. How can you have too much of the best sport in the world? But I am certain that the relative break I have had from the game has helped my appreciation of it deepen.

The simple fact is that because I have watched fewer games I have appreciated much more those that I have managed to see, a principle that could well benefit the game as a whole.

Football is by far the most dominant sport in our society. The papers are full of it, it dominates the sports bulletins and its big events are written into our national calendar. Sometimes it appears as though we all get so caught up in the stories around the game that sometimes we forget about the beauty of the game.

I am not saying that there is anything wrong with following all the off pitch stories and season-long narratives but the reason we all fell in love with football is the simplicity, the pure beauty of watching a team in full flow. Sometimes all the extra stuff that we are treated to comes in between us and that truth.

In my utopian view of what football could become there are less games in the Premier League and no top flight involvement in the League Cup, leading hopefully to a greater appreciation of the best that English football has to offer.

There is another, more practical reason why I believe a bit less top flight football would be a good thing. We all know that lower league clubs are struggling to survive. How many people would go and see some local lower league football once in a while if there were fewer games at the top? Maybe we might see a return to real localism within football. Fans could form an attachment to their local side as well as following a side in the top flight without being force fed an endless amount of top flight football, a lot of which often means very little.

There is precedent for this idea. The NFL has only 16 games in the regular season and fans of the sport appreciate hugely the short time they get with their team every year. It is a successful league with passionate fans and a successful commercial history. Meanwhile college and high school football thrives on a more local level, bringing together communities around sport.

Frankly, football could well be getting too big to sustain itself. A radical solution may be the only way forward for the sport whilst radical rationing of your own football intake may well produce some very surprising results in your own lives.