The bottom line is top dollar

Saturday morning brought with it the revelation that the real reason a young man called Carl Asaba had seen his proposed £750,000 transfer from Gillingham to Crystal Palace fall through was because his agent had built "image rights" into the costs of Asaba's wages. They were so high that Palace's young and outspoken new chairman, Simon Jordan, labelled them "ludicrous", and when the agent raised the image question Jordan said he was forced to respond: "I'm sorry, but what bloody image?" Quite.

Thus ended another big dipper ride of a football week which, depending on your outlook, is either the new normality or a helter-skelter ride that will deposit most of its occupants on the turf and will one day soon arrive at a staging post named Rollerball. That sci-fi fantasy moved a step closer last week when Manchester United forged an economic alliance with the New York Yankees baseball club, bringing us nearer the day when Manhattan United face Tokyo Rovers in the Global Domination Trophy.

Meanwhile, in Hull, Brian Little said: "The players aren't sure they can afford a tank of petrol." David Beckham isn't sure if he can afford a tank. But, yeah, probably. He'll take a division.

It all meant that once again the image of professional football, which so concerned Carl Asaba's agent, came across as essentially a sprint for cash. You don't need a football in such a race, and that is handy if you are part of sport's new executive class. Strangely in a sport, or industry, with ball in its name these people never seem to have their eye on it. All they look for is the bottom line and the top dollar.

Consequently we had the most dispiriting image of the week, maybe of the season, Roy Keane posing in a Yankees outfit holding a baseball bat - who was thinking of his image rights then? - and yet as those photographs flashed around the planet you can be sure that Old Trafford's plc men were slapping backs as publications from Beijing to Buenos Aires featured Keane in peaked cap and striped pyjamas.

United's share price rose immediately after all, the latest venture merely consolidating the £30 million sterling Vodaphone shirt sponsorship and the £302.9 million 13-year Nike deal, both of which have been signed in the last year. No wonder Martin Edwards once spoke of football as United's "core activity" as opposed to being its raison d'etre.

The brand of Manchester United is now the equivalent of Starbucks or McDonald's or Microsoft, and there are those who think this a good thing simply because being a football club should not preclude a business from making money.

That is a reasonable position when United are taken in isolation. The problem with this arises when United are placed in the broader context of English football. The hideous cultural imperialism that has seen Starbucks open a shop in the Forbidden City, and which sees ever more of United's "Red Cafes" dotted around the world, derives its strength from a fierce and unforgiving monopoly at home. As Mick McCarthy said of the Hull-United comparison: "It's like the local chemist taking on Glaxo."

In purely football terms, Alex Ferguson should never have to apologise for his club becoming more than that - Ferguson called it a "corporate monster" as early as 1997 - but those who have exploited the on-the-field success off it deserve no praise from the cheap seats. These people get their dividend elsewhere anyway.

How great they must have thought themselves when the Yankees deal was tied up. Yet on the day of the announcement one of the key figures in the rise of Manchester United plc, a player called Eric Cantona, told France Football: "Because of the financial interests at stake, the sport is turning into a mafia. I left it because it no longer fitted with the picture I had of soccer."

The declining image of the game in Cantona's eyes would have been worse had he been in Glasgow last week. No matter the day, the year or the season, it is still always 1690 there for some. Wednesday night's stabbing was another reminder.

But at least it was heartening to at last hear an Old Firm player stand up and say so. Jorg Albertz may have stubbed his ankle yesterday, but he had made better contact the day before when he said: "If someone's getting stabbed because of a game of football, it's beyond me. I'm sorry, I'd rather play cards. People being brought up here Catholic or Protestant, that's fair enough. But getting stabbed because of football? I don't think that's right."

Albertz didn't even get paid for uttering commonsense. But any more of that and football might earn itself the wrong image.