It will come as no great surprise to those born north of Hadrian's Wall that God is most likely to be a Scotsperson.

Indeed, it is possible to be more specific. God is probably a man who hails from the Western lowlands -- and most likely from Govan or the Gorbals. He is pathologically imbued since birth with Catholic/Calvinist guilt and terror, regards the world with a jaundiced eye, is in command of a wit like a rusty cut-throat, and in the terminal stages of chewing gum addiction: in terms of psychic profile, lifestyle and physical appearance, he can most economically be described as a walking heart attack.

Throughout autumn, winter and spring, he spends Saturday afternoons (and one evening in the week) in a plastic box which affords him a token protection from a continuous bombardment of missiles, derision, abuse, and spittle which has been painstakingly collected in a thousand low-life larynxes and lovingly matured into a vintage venom. He emerges from the plastic box with a complexion like Danish salami and shaking with a dangerous euphoria, an all-consuming rage, an overwhelming sense of doom, or, most likely, all three.

Whilst he is most likely to be a Scotsman, it is also possible that God comes from Romford or Dagenham. In this case his psychic configuration will be roughly similar, although greater emphasis will be placed upon personal talismans and the peculiarly Glaswegian demeanour of the laid-back psychopath will be replaced by a fidgety Barrer Boy manner suggestive of a criminal past, present, and future, and imminent collapse of the central nervous system.

Indeed, it is not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility that God comes from West Bromwich, in which case he will view his creation as a Spaghetti Junction of interlocking Viae Dolorosae; or from Yorkshire, in which case he would talk endlessly about "punishment" and "givin' 'em some stick" and be a kind of divine embodiment of denial; or even from southwest London, in which case he will have issued several Limited Editions of Personalised Golf Balls.

But of one thing we can be sure. God is indisputably a football manager. Or, perhaps more accurately in terms of the present zeitgeist, a coach.

Of course, we tend to cast God in our own image. And so, for me, God is neither a rasping Glaswegian nor a wistful Geordie; neither a punitive Yorkshireman nor a doleful Brummie. No, for me, God is represented upon earth in the person of that careworn figure of seemingly infinite sad wisdom, 'Arry Redknapp, lately of the 'Ammers.

John Maynard Keynes, in one of his more upbeat moments, once observed that in the long term we are all dead. But for God there is nothing as reassuring as the long term. Or death. For God there is only the next game. And nothingness. As Bill Shankly once said: "it's not a matter of life and death, it's more important than that." For God, each moment is of supreme existential anguish, each step forward a leap into the dark, fathomless abyss. For God all that matters is The Score: it goes beyond language, silence, time and being. It precedes the Big Bang and survives its last dying echo.

It is said that there is no such thing as bad publicity. This may well be true for mere mortals, but as far as God is concerned, any speculation in the media -- concerning his record, his health, his transgressions and shortcomings, his existence -- is bad news. Should he be caught dawdling in his Mercedes coupé just off the Edgware Road with plentiful packets of tissues adorning the full Morocco hide interior, then it's curtains for God.

God never used to give press conferences. Now he has no choice in the matter. Human beings once used to live in dread of judgement and hell. But they have turned the tables. Now it is God who is doing the dreading. These human demons love to twist the knives, to turn the screw. Oh, excuse me, God, but it would it be fair to say that your record so far is nothing short of abysmal? I wonder if you could expand on the general consensus that the last four billion seasons during which you have been in charge of the squad have been characterised by nothing more than a series of grotesque cock-ups? What exactly do you mean when you say your hands are tied -- surely as God you are answerable for the team's stunningly mediocre performance? Excuse me, God, but is there any truth in the persistent rumours that you don't exist? Or are they just premature?

Generally God is resigned, submissive even in the face of these torments. But -- just occasionally -- God, driven to distraction by the poking, pricking, pinching and chafing, expostulates.

And people are always surprised. Just as they forget that God can be sad, they also forget that God can get angry. At first they are taken aback, even a bit scared. But when they remember that God is actually powerless, they laugh and sneer, and resume with gusto the poking, pricking, pinching and chafing. For God, the laughter is the worst of all. When the laughter happens, he just walks out, shaking his sad old head, on which every wrinkle, every grey hair is the sorrow of a thousand thousand seasons spent battling Relegation.

But only after he has had his expostulation. That is all that is left for God these days: expostulation. All God can do is expostulate and drive back out to Romford or Sale.

And it's always the same-God's expostulation. being God there's only one thing he can say. You wouldn't get God being snide or underhand or nothing.

And this is what he says.

And he's right, of course. Only nobody believes him. They have been brought up to believe that God is all-powerful, that he's got it all sorted, that he can do no wrong. That is why from time to time he finds it necessary to occasionally go off the rails. It's God's version of a Cry for Help. The trouble is that, like so many cries for help, more often than not it backfires. And it usually results in even further humiliation for God. Every time he jogs out of the tunnel in his lucky Wembley tracksuit and performs his pimp's roll along the touchline to the dugout, his eyes like those of a battle-weary fighting cock fixed on the white line, he is accompanied by choruses of inventive blasphemy.

There was a time when the songs were different. "'e's 'ere! 'e's there! 'e's every fucking where! G-O-D GOD!" "There's only one God!" Simple, uncomplicated days. Heroic days. Golden days. But that was before relegation. After that everything changed. After relegation, everyone thought of God as all-powerful and had no respect for him. He got the blame for everything. God became the scapegoat. Nobody else would take no responsibility no more. When the results was bad, it was all down to God and nobody else. And the results is always bad these days. That ain't no credit to God.

And what about the golden days, the heroic years before relegation? Nothing but a few faded photographs. And they're even taking those down now. All they do is demoralise the present team, so the argument goes. Not that the present lot needs much encouragement in that department.

Sometimes God wonders what the point of it all is. He might have been better off if he had stayed under the corrugated iron stand, prancing up and down on the touchline to keep the blood circulating in his toes, shivering in the freezing fog from off the North Sea, watching his words of exhortation turn into fabulous but useless castles of crystal, before dashing down through the gap in the stands past the bogs at the half-time whistle to make the tea.

Simple days. Uncomplicated days. Innocent days. It was alright then -- or so it seems now from the deafening Dolby silence of his full leather interior. It was alright because nobody was going anywhere and -- more important --because nobody expected to be going nowhere. Oh, they made all the right noises. They huffed and they puffed. They cursed and they sweated. They cheered. And they raged. And they had some laughs. And sometimes they even cried. But deep down inside, they knew they was never going to win anything. That they was never going to get out of the Eazisave North Essex League, Third Division. Winning was not what it was about. No, what it was about was the huffing and the puffing. The cursing and the sweating. The rages. The rucks in the dressing room. The piss-ups. The laughter. And the tears. That was what it's all about. As soon as you think it's just about winning, you lose everything else.

But the trouble with God is that he can never be happy. He can never be content to rest on his laurels. He can never sit back, survey what he's done, put his feet up, loosen his tie, crack open a few cans and let the warm glow go right through him. He has to go on to the next thing. Even if he doesn't want to. Especially if he doesn't want to. Right from the early days, people used to say to him: You know what the trouble with you is, God? You ain't never satisfied with nothing. That's what your trouble is. And what's more --you know God, I'm telling you this for your own good -- it can only end badly.

And that's what it looks like doing. Ending badly.

It can't fail to do otherwise. It has to end some day. And the chances are that it will end badly. You can't see God gracefully bowing out on a high note. He'd have to struggle on to the bitter end. When all hope has gone. And all dignity and respect.

In fact, if you were a behavioural psychologist specialising in the treatment of deities, you would undoubtedly conclude that God sets himself up for failure and rejection. It's undoubtedly all down to his crushingly low sense of self-esteem. It stands to reason that God must suffer from abysmal self-esteem and an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. If he didn't, he wouldn't find it necessary to go round creating universes.

Back to that press conference.

The trouble is they don't want to hear. They don't show up to listen to what God is trying to say. They just show up to watch -- and record -- God making an arsehole of himself. And give God a bit of stick. All they want is the headlines. The sound-bite. Gotcha God! Gor Blimey, God! How does it feel to get kicked in the goolies, God? For God's Sake, God -- Go!

But God stands up and gives it one last go.

Yeah, I picks 'em out in the first place from the all the thousands of other possibles, other hopefuls. I puts up with all their funny little ways, with their tantrums, with their craving for Mars Bars, with their other bad habits, with their poor attitude. I even puts up with them going AWOL for a bit. I does me best to look after them. To make sure they don't get 'emselves so deep in the shit that they can't dig 'emselves out. But there's a limit. I can tell 'em alright, but they don't 'ave to listen, an' even if they listen they don't 'ave to 'ear. In the end it's down to them an' there's fuck all I can do about it. When it comes down to it they're free agents, every bleedin' one of 'em. They're free to fuck up as much as they like. That's what The Game's all about really, being free to fuck up as much as you like.

And I can give 'em the benefit of my experience. Again, it's down to them as to whether they listens. I can take their raw skills and hone them and encourage them to use them in a constructive way. I can get them to take all that energy that's inside them an' turn it to the team's advantage- and to their own. It ain't no good if they uses it all up kicking people on the park and making prats out of themselves off it. That don't get nobody nowhere. That ain't what it's all about.

And I can give 'em a proper training schedule. Put 'em through their paces. Make sure they're fit. Tell 'em to make sure what they put into themselves. It's what you put into yourself that determines what comes out. That Feuerbach geezer -- he had it sussed. Man is what he eats. Only he forgot about the Wets. The old Wets is just as important. That's what I tells 'em. But they don't 'ave to listen.

An' I can give 'em all the tactical bollocks in the world. But it ain't no good if all that's going on in their minds is which musical knocking shop they're going to that night and whether they're going to score or not. There's only one place to score as far I've ever been concerned. And you can give 'em the full gen on the oppo. Down to how they do up their fuckin' bootlaces. Which runs off the ball to watch for, and how they're goin' to try an' needle yer.

And then they trot out onto that pitch and it all goes out the fucking window. You crouch there in the dugout -- if you stand up and come too near the touchline you get get binned out by the ref. They're hot on that sort of thing nowadays. You shout an' scream your fuckin' 'ed off. Even if they can hear --and most of the time they can't, or won't -- it don't make a blind bit of difference. They're free agents after all. By the time it gets round to half-time, very often it's too late for words. Sometimes all you got left then is hope. And as for the final whistle -- well, silence is about all there can be. There are some things which are so fuckin' fundamental that you can't put 'em into words. Anyway, you wouldn't wanna go spoiling their weekend.

Of course you can bully. You can soft-soap. You can get on somebody's case like you was a sargeant-major doing a kit inspection. Or you can take them to one side and sit and hold their hand. It all depends on the individual. That's another thing you've got to learn. No two of them is ever alike. If you start thinking that you can treat 'em all the same, then you're fucked from Day One. And sometimes when you know they deserves a right bollocking you can't find it in your heart to deliver one. You feel sick enough as it is. They might deserve one, but it's never really about what's deserved and what isn't. If you thought that you'd top yourself. Only the Gaffer's the one wot can't top hisself. No, it's about getting the best possible job done under the circumstances with as little grief as possible to all concerned.

But God's getting closer and closer to slinging 'is hook. It's not so much the lack of respect that gets to him . It's the lack of response. There was a time when they was grateful just to be here. Grateful that they'd been picked out of all the millions of other hopefuls. Grateful to pull on that jersey. Grateful to run out through the tunnel onto the pitch with the cheers ringing in their ears. But nowadays they want a BMW coupé with full leather before they'll turn up at the fucking training ground.

And there's nothing in his job description that says that God can't sling 'is hook. Quite the opposite, as it 'appens. It was him what started the latest glory run. Let's face it. They wouldn't have amounted to much if he hadn't come along. So it's down to him to call it a day. If that's what it's come to.

But there's the problem of how he'd do it. Would God call a press conference? Would he deliver an emotional performance, full of sorrow and regret, his prepared statement trembling in his hand, his big old eyes welling up with tears, a strange choking sound emanating from that gravelly larynx? Or would he use the occasion as an opportunity to slag 'em all off? Or would he just quietly slip out the backdoor into the executive car park one winter's evening, with a kit-bag full of his most cherished photos, to turn up in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or the Crem in a few seasons' time?

No, that wouldn't be God's style.There's one thing you've got to say about someone who creates Heaven and Earth in six days flat -- he's a hell of a fuckin' trier. And that's all credit to God. An he can go through the biggest fuckin' apocalypse going, jog out the other end in his lucky Wembley tracksuit, shrug his shoulders at the crowds of press, and just give it an 'It's an eternity of two halves'. Yeah, there's one thing you can say for sure about God -- and that St Thomas Aquinas missed this one -- he don't never give up. Even when it's too late.