Chris Rattue: Can't beat live sporting drama

It's well established that most English soccer premiership teams can, at best, only hope to finish high enough to qualify for a place in Europe.

As for winning the title ... there's more chance of Arsene Wenger inviting Sir Alex Ferguson for tea.

The free market rules in soccer, which goes in for hair-raising salaries rather than salary caps.

A new development, however, is that the hopeless hopefuls include Manchester United and Arsenal. Gulp.

Champions Chelsea are such raging favourites that, as in Manchester United's case, having Wayne Rooney, Ronaldo, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Roy Keane, Ryan Giggs and Rio Ferdinand doesn't give you a title shot any more.

The bad news is that the most fascinating of competitions may effectively be over by Christmas, if you believe the scribes and pundits.

In the category of small mercies, we can be thankful that Rooney became a superstar before Chelsea did, and that the Stamford Bridge mob also missed Liverpool's Steven Gerrard.

The good news, for soccer aficionados, is that the Premiership is upon us again. Even at its forgone conclusion worst, it provides doses of skill, drama and scrutiny that are captivating.

You can bet a sack full of euros that as Sir Alex and Wenger plot Chelsea's downfall, there will be thrills and spills aplenty - and many of them in the newspapers.

For mad English football fans on this side of the world, another season of broken sleep and - for all but Chelsea fans we are told - broken dreams is upon us.

Welcome again to the world of alarm clocks, rugs on the couch, bleary-eyed mornings and operating on British time. Although this is par for the course for many sports fans these days. It used to be that the theatre of sport was largely reserved for Saturday afternoons. This is now about the last place to find anything worth buying a ticket or wielding the remote for.

Saturday afternoon is for rest after a hard night's viewing, or preparing for another onslaught. It's a time for stretching and carbo loading. Somewhere in the memory bank sits a dusty old file of great occasions that were only watched in the dark because the lounge blinds were closed.

This may be an age thing, but the stellar moments now involve the assistance of an alarm clock, techniques which keep the eyes open, are viewed in the horizontal position, and celebrated with acts such as putting the kettle on or spooning a bit more jam on the toast. On a really wild occasion, there might even be a packet of biscuits involved.

It was one of those moments on Sunday night. England's victory over Australia in the second Ashes test ranked with the greats. The irony about cricket tests is that while they set aside five days, you often get the best value when they fail to go the distance.

If the Lions tour taught us anything, it is that you can't script great sporting battles. So it is with the Ashes. The Lord's test was to announce that genuine hostilities had begun. Yet it was to be followed by a series of obituaries, not only for the English team but for the series, what with England about to get another smacking and Chelsea, Gerrard, Sir Alex, Rooney and friends ready to take over.

A transplanted Englishman passed by my desk on the eve of the second Ashes test and revealed he had plonked the entire funds from his betting syndicate on an Australian victory. Money in the bank he said, rubbing the hands together.

But that's the wonderful thing about this sports lark. You just never know when a great Australian fast bowler is going to tread on a stray cricket ball. They should burn that ball and put it in an urn - Glenn McGrath's injury may have saved this series, and put new life into those to come.

There's little point in banging on about what happened in the final hours of the Edgbaston test, except to say that sport simply can't reach a higher place.

Either you were there - in the flesh or glued to the box - or you weren't.

All the magnificent words written about that game can't replace the experience of watching it.

Australian Darren Lehman - who like some New Zealand counterparts is far too close to his former team-mates to be an effective commentator - admitted being lost for words as Australia went close to victory.

A couple of runs in England's favour has halted an Australian avalanche, and may have put England and their fiery new-ball attack in the box seat for the series. For the good of the game, the right team won.

And for those praying there will be more to the Premiership than a procession of Chelsea victories, it was a nice reminder that even the most secure of scripts can end up in the shredder.