Stadium naming rights are not something we should always froth about. If Arsenal want to move to a new and improved stadium, and, to help with costs, call it the Emirates Stadium rather than New Highbury, well and good. If, on the other hand, Mike Ashley uses naming rights as just another way of tormenting the supporters of Newcastle United, that’s not so good. It depends on the stadium and the people involved.

The announcement that St James’ Park will be renamed the “sportsdirect.com@St James’ Park Stadium” until the end of this season, when an auction will be held in the hope of raising £5 million a year from a company appending its name or slogan to the ground’s time-honoured title, is probably the worst of all the awful things that have befallen Newcastle since Kevin Keegan left in 1997 (the only really good thing was the Indian summer of Sir Bobby Robson). Worse, even, than Ashley’s takeover and the installation of Dennis Wise alongside an unwilling Keegan in his second spell as manager.

St James’ Park is St James’ Park and should be so until the fans say otherwise. Anything else is bad business, quite apart from the insult it delivers to the sensibilities of those who give not just the stadium but the city in which it is near-centrally situated a rare and wonderful form of footballing life. And for the Football League to stand by and say nothing — just as, to be fair, the Premier League would probably have done had Newcastle not been relegated last season — is yet another illustration of how loosely the game is regulated, for all the improvements to which both Leagues justifiably point.

The name of a ground really does matter, as Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur will discover when they tap this source of revenue with which to pay bloated salaries. Chelsea hope to raise at least £10 million a year, which would keep John Terry at the club but not leave enough over to satisfy Salomon Kalou, let alone Didier Drogba. It should, however, be the concern of Chelsea’s supporters, just as it would be a matter for Manchester United supporters if the Glazers decided to rename Old Trafford the AIG Arena or something even more dubious. In San Francisco there is a stadium called Candlestick Park. Nearly 20 years ago I went to the city for a holiday and, because the name was so evocative (“candlestick birds”, a kind of curlew, inhabit that part of the Bay), visited Candlestick Park, barely knowing whether the game would be of baseball or gridiron (it turned out to be the former).

Later the stadium was renamed “3Com Park”. Not only would this put off tourists such as me; the locals scorned it, too, and became even more irritated when it turned into “Monster Park” in honour of Monster Cables, a company that marketed the leads that protrude from electronic equipment. A bylaw was passed to the effect that it reverted to Candlestick Park when the deal expired last year.

If the popular will is good enough for the Americans, it is good enough for English football. The Leagues should react to the news from Newcastle and Chelsea by regulating that any change of a stadium’s name must be endorsed by its users, by means of a poll supervised by trusted experts.

I suspect that, were such a rule in force, Arsenal would have been able to persuade their season ticketholders, many of whom formed a waiting list at Highbury — but that Newcastle’s latest idea would be rejected out of hand.

As I keep saying, football should behave less like a business and more like a sport, because then it would do better business.

Rooney leads way in welcome art of selfless celebrations

Everyone is talking about the number of goals scored in the Barclays Premier League this season — but what about the improvement in the celebrations?

Out, suddenly, is the me-me attitude and pointing at the name on your back. Eduardo da Silva even waved away his team-mates on Saturday because he knew that Ronald Zubar, the Wolverhampton Wanderers defender nearest to him, had diverted in Arsenal’s first goal.

Cesc Fàbregas, having claimed the third, solemnly straightened his face and thanked Robin van Persie for laying it on.

At White Hart Lane, Robbie Keane almost forgot himself before acknowledging his debt to Peter Crouch for the header that let him bundle one in for Tottenham Hotspur against Sunderland. But Jason Roberts, at Ewood Park, wasted no time; he was pointing gratefully at Benni McCarthy almost as he converted the South African’s low cross for Blackburn Rovers’ third goal against Portsmouth.

It had been a similar story the previous weekend: Portsmouth’s Aruna Dindane thanked Kanu; Fulham’s Bobby Zamora thanked Damien Duff; West Ham United’s Guillermo Franco thanked Radoslav Kovac. But there are few players more teamoriented than Wayne Rooney, who thanked Anderson, the crosser, and Gabriel Obertan, who had fed the Brazilian the simplest of passes, for his fine volley against Blackburn.

This is the true spirit of football and those of us who seem to spend half our lives moaning about some aspect of the game or another can only rejoice.

Brazilians understand it (though sometimes they go too far and point at God), so let’s hope that, when England play Brazil on Saturday, we see it from both sides.

Why we should tolerate Warner’s ire

There are, as far as I know, two Jack Warners, so let’s deal with them in order of merit.

The first is the late actor who played Dixon of Dock Green in the BBC Television programme that ran from 1955 to 1976. Having emerged from Dock Green police station, cheerfully greeting us with “Evenin’ all”, he would represent all that was best about the human race: honesty, decency, kindliness and modesty.

The other is Jack Warner, president of the Trinidad & Tobago FA and Concacaf and a vice-president of Fifa. Goodness knows what Dixon would have made of him. I suspect this Warner would have got the quizzical eyebrow, not least for his flouncing last week as he returned to the FA a handbag that had been presented to his wife and those of other members of the Fifa committee that will decide who gets the 2018 World Cup. The handbag, Warner wrote in a letter to the FA independent chairman, Lord Triesman, had resulted in “the tainting of her character and mine” and, further complaining of media reports after the handover of the bag by Triesman’s predecessor, Geoff Thompson, at a recent London dinner, he said it had become “a symbol of derision, betrayal and embarrassment”.

You would think Warner had become accustomed to at least the first and third of those indignities. Especially because it is only three years since his family, through its travel firm, was found to have made £500,000 from selling match tickets at three times face value. Why this did not cost him his place on the Fifa executive committee is a matter of speculation — some say the votes he delivers sustain Sepp Blatter’s presidency — but it does explain his continued presence on the high horse.

He was critical of the England bid before, saying that it lacked “stardust”, and then, as now, Triesman declined to rise to the bait. It demeans all of us. Whatever Warner wants — whatever any member of the committee may want — the most they should get is that accursed £230 handbag and if they don’t like it, too bad. If the price of a World Cup is pandering to the likes of Warner, let someone else have it.