How to _really_ enjoy a football match

I love football and can't think of a better way to spend a rainy evening than to lie sprawled on my sofa watching, say, a Champions League match between Juventus and Real Madrid, but how to get through an EPL encounter between two teams like Sunderland and West Brom (no offence to their fans), when you aren't rooting for either team and goals are hard to come by? Switching the TV off, changing channels or any other heretical suggestion is not an option, BTW.

Well, I have hit upon a way to stay focussed and interested even when faced with such matches: instead of counting the goals, you count other things and award points to the teams accordingly. I have chosen three candidates for this: a) number of corners gained b) number of shots on goal and c) number of shots on target. There is an overlap between b) and c), but it's the principle of the thing that matters, not the specifics. I award one point for each of these; were a team to score a goal, they get five points [*].

Keeping track of these points not only gives you something to keenly look out for, it also helps you to appreciate the pulse of the match; at any given point, you can say which team is dominating the proceedings, how the tide has turned in the last 15 minutes, and so on.

I piloted this strategy in the Man United - Chelsea game last Sunday, and for what it's worth, though United were winners by goal margin, Chelsea clearly came out on top according to my system (if I remember correctly, the score was something like 23-14 in Chelsea's favour).

[*] a) You can extend this to include things like the number of offsides, the number of free kicks in threatening positions and so on, but then you start to get mired in statistics instead of concentrating on the game b) I have not yet decided whether to award only five points for a goal. My gut feeling is that it should be higher.