There are so many other uses for a stadium besides football

Pitch invasions

It's so obvious that Liverpool and Everton, each of which has been planning to build a new ground, at a total cost of £500m, should build just one ground and share. So obvious, they therefore probably won't do it. They'll blame the credit crunch and put everything off for another decade, by which time we'll have a better name for the current credit crunch. It's such a piddling, puny, meaningless term for something so dramatic. The South Sea Bubble, or the Great Depression, or even the Three-Day Week, they're grand and emotive and we know exactly what they refer to. No imagination, these economists.

Liverpool and Everton did one very good bit of sharing for many years, from about 1904 to the late 1930s, when they had the same match programme. Depending on who was home each Saturday, that team got the bigger coverage, while the other team's reserves, also playing that day, would be featured as well. Now collectors' items, they were excellent programmes, usually 16 pages, containing local theatre news as well as the latest football chat.

In Liverpool, the Reds and Blues don't hate each other; it's affectionate contempt, not like Glasgow's Blues and Greens or even Manchester's two teams. I'm sure they could live together at one ground, as the two Milan clubs have managed at the San Siro.

This whole obsession about clubs having their own exclusive, multimillion architectural wonder is a nonsense, anyway, when it's used only about 25 times a year. Teams now live full-time at their training ground. Such a waste of money, space, investment. I'd like to suggest some other uses.

Hotels: Some of those boxes and hospitality suites at the Emirates and Old Trafford are so luxurious and well appointed they're like suites at the Savoy - so why can't they be let out during the week? At West Ham this already happens, but all clubs could easily do it. To actually watch the game would cost extra.

Flats: Most boxes are so huge that they could hold families living on benefits who need space for their 15 children, plus dogs. All they'd have to do would be to move out once a fortnight for half a day.

Keep sheep: Easy to round up on Saturdays and keep in lorries for a few hours during the game. And if one or two sheep got forgotten, would Harry Redknapp notice them on the pitch? Not if they played in goal.

Or cows: They'd give great milk from all that lush turf. The cowpats might be a problem but, there again, most Prem clubs end up with shit on the pitch, anyway, having spent millions on dodgy eastern Europeans or South Americans we've never heard of.

Car boot sales: Perfect chance to sell old rubbish, expensive mistakes, pigs in pokes, stuff that failed to work or didn't do what it said on the box, and new discoveries that agents promised would be star attractions.

GM crops: Aren't they supposed to grow very quickly? Over the summer break, there would be no problem. During the season itself, mushrooms would be grown, as long as they didn't pop up during the game and get eaten by some dopey druggy player.

Farmers' markets: Urban ones are now everywhere, in very limited space. They bring in a lot of money, as well. The 16 run by the London Farmers' Markets make more than £6m a year, enough to buy a second-hand Croatian or an elderly Argentinian. The market near us closes at two o'clock on a Saturday, and they clear up so well, there's no sign of it afterwards, which means debris should not be a problem.

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