EL-HADJI DIOUF hasn’t spat at anyone for absolutely ages, has he? It’s a great shame and has seriously diminished my enjoyment of televised Premier League matches this season. There was a time when Diouf seemed incapable of lasting 90 minutes without arcing a pale green, glutinous stream of Senegalese phlegm into the face of some despised opponent, or a bunch of fans. But not any more.

Maybe Bolton have had his saliva glands surgically removed, just as someone clearly once surgically removed Joey Barton’s brain and replaced it with an Iceland deep frozen “King Prawn Ring with Marie Rose Sauce” (£3 while stocks last). More likely, though, is that Diouf sat himself down on New Year’s Eve 2006 and made a resolution: no more flobbing, for a bit.

You admire his resolve, and it’s an example which might be followed by quite a few of our gilded, overpaid moppets. Here are the New Year resolutions I’d like them to adopt, and adhere to, on pain of having their baby Bentleys impounded:

1. Goal celebrations. Henceforth players who score a goal will, at the very most, raise an arm in the air and smile self-deprecatingly before receiving a manly handshake from their captain. No cartwheels, no careering in maddened joy towards the corner flag, no oral sex with the rest of the team in the centre circle, no going “Sssshhhhh” to the crowd as if the achievement of scoring a goal has altered our collective perception of you as being an utter and complete tosser (take note, Lee Hughes). And if Nicolas Anelka is fortunate enough to score again this season, he will not do that massively irritating and rather effete bird-type thing with his hands. One of those Bents - Marcus, I think it is, the one who sometimes plays for Wigan – does a similar thing on the crushingly rare occasions that he scores a goal. He seems a comparatively likeable chap, Marcus Bent, certainly not in the same league of self-delusion and perpetual petulance as Anelka. So give it a rest, mate. You’ve scored a goal against Fulham or Middlesbrough? Hell, we could all do that. It’s no big deal. Spurs’ Robbie Keane, mercifully, seems to have stopped doing that crouch-down-firing-an-arrow business and has become a much better player as a consequence. Clearly Robbie had never actually fired an arrow in his life. If his mime were made real the bowstring would have snapped back into his face and the arrow ended up in his foot.

2. In postmatch press conferences, football managers will refer to their underachieving players with stiff formality bordering on disdain. They will use the Brian Clough-approved formula of “Edward Sheringham”; no more “Stevie” Gerrard, or “Lamps”. Indulge the cretins and they will let you down. Take note, Signor Capello.

3. Newcastle United supporters will at long last accustom themselves to the patently obvious fact that their team will never win anything, ever, regardless of who they employ as manager or centre-forward. You are overachieving right now, you Geordies. You should be nestling one place below Wigan, by rights. Forget the 1950s.

4. Meanwhile, the majority of Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal “supporters” will resolve to no longer mortgage their houses for the privilege of watching their team three times a season, or gaping at them on the TV every week, but instead support their local clubs (i.e. Stoke City, Torquay United and Kilmarnock).

5. Players who choose to “roast” a young lady in a hotel following the inevitable euphoria of a narrow victory over Derby County will take the requisite steps to ascertain the young lady’s explicit acquiescence in proceedings. Beforehand.

6. No players under the age of 38 will be permitted to write an autobiography, especially not if it is ghosted by some third-rate, semi-literate hack from the Daily Mail. Nor will they be permitted to make “hilarious” TV programmes about pranks played upon their colleagues.

7. When showing the fifth round of the FA Cup on Match of the Day, the BBC producers will understand that the least interesting fixture is Manchester United versus Chelsea, or Aston Villa versus Liverpool, or Arsenal versus Manchester City, because we’ve already seen these bloody games nine times already this season. The interesting fixtures are between the teams we don’t usually see on Match of the Day – the likes of Chasetown, Horsham, Blackpool and Middlesbrough.

8. The Football League will resolve that any club which has failed to pay its police bill, or otherwise defrauded local people, will be relegated without appeal. Two divisions in the case of Leeds United.

9. Managers who complain long and loud that they will be missing players who have gone off to take part in the African Cup of Nations or the InterToto Cup for PostSoviet Nuclear Wastelands will be slapped around the face and reminded that they were not compelled to buy those players in the first place. And that, whatever they might think, a player’s country comes first, even if it’s Dagestan. Or indeed England.

10. Players who whine about abuse from opposing supporters will have deducted from their pay packets the amount of money contributed by paying fans. Yes, I’m talking about you, Sol Campbell. They said beastly things about you? Aww. Dry your eyes on a fifty pound note, then.

That will do, for starters. And for those of you expecting great things from your team in the next 12 months – God help you and keep that delusion alive.