Any sports journalist who says he is totally impartial is a liar.

Equally, when you are a reporter you can't call yourself a true fan any longer. Journalists might call themselves fans in the same way celebrities do, but they're not. You can't go to games in your colors, tanked up, ready to chant and jump around in the press box. And you don't live and die by results like you used to.

If a journalist does step out of his uniform, you remember it.

I remember the Preston press team celebrating when they scored at Millwall a couple of years ago, Austria's doing the same against Wales in Cardiff and an excitable Korean reporter who leapt out of his seat whenever Seol Ki-Hyeon was on the ball at Reading - a real fan in hack's clothing.

The professional sportswriter does not take sides, and keeps a cool silence when thousands around him are a-hooting and a-hollering. He is the monk, contemplating and reflecting amidst the Bacchanalian revel.

Every scribe was once a fan, like every player, and while you cannot watch a game in the partisan way you used to as a supporter, you still cannot emotionally detach yourself completely from teams and players you have followed for a long time.

My fan team is Ben Olsen's old haunt, Nottingham Forest, but having watched so many of the American teams in England these past years, I find myself looking for their results first. And so it is that my eyes are most usually drawn to the lower half of the Premier League, and this season, its relegation zone.

These are serious times for Americans in England, and though English, I feel a personal connection. I first met Jay DeMerit as a shy, shaven-headed young man living the dream a few games into his Watford career. When he scored that unforgettable goal at the Millennium Stadium to take the Hornets to the Premier League, I could not help clenching my fist and teeth in my press seat.

DeMerit is in a promotion fight and should be in a hopeful state of mind. And if current form continues, he will pass nine... yes, nine Americans on their way down to the Championship next season.

Time was when we followed every step of John Harkes on an English field, as the only American in England's top division, so to lose nine Yanks from the big league will be tragic.

If the current bottom three goes down, that would leave Tim Howard and Brad Friedel - both goalkeepers - and Jonathan Spector, who is not a regular starter at West Ham, as the US representatives in the Premier League.

Bottom of the heap are Derby, who were home before the postcards, as they say. Never can a club so doomed for the drop have showed up at the gates of the Premier League as sheepishly as the Rams did in 2007.

I feel sorry for Eddie Lewis, as nice a guy as you could meet in soccer, but at the same time pleased he could have one final season in the Premier League after being denied the chance to shine by stubborn French coach Jean Tigana all those years ago at Fulham.

Benny Feilhaber's invisible season at Derby is perhaps the saddest individual tale of the US overseas brigade this season. Surely, he is good enough to have been given more than one start and seven substitute appearances in that team.

Second to last are Fulham, home to five US internationals of past and present. From a 'Nats perspective, the prospect of Carlos Bocanegra, Clint Dempsey and Eddie Johnson swapping the elevated contests of the Premier League for the rough and ready combat of the Championship is not ideal preparation for 2010.

Fulham had stagnated under Chris Coleman, and although Lawrie Sanchez was a risk worth taking as he had achieved some fine wins with Northern Ireland, the former Wimbledon man's true colors as a long-ball merchant came through and the Cottagers went backward.

Some of his old boys from Ulster were not up to the job, while Dempsey's parting shot about the team trying to 'jump the ball in' too much spoke volumes about a coach out of tune with the league he was working in.

Roy Hodgson is a fine coach with a good pedigree, but rescuing a team in trouble with scant resources and few games remaining is a scenario new to him.

Unless Mohamed Al-Fayed sells Harrods and pumps all his fortune into his football team, Fulham will not advance beyond the lower third of the Premier League, and a team which struggles to sell 20,000 tickets cannot complain when they are outbid for players.

The Cottagers have a big ask ahead. The club with the infamously abysmal away record have six of their last 10 games on the road, and I don't fancy them surviving if they need to win at Portsmouth on the final day of the season.

I feel even sorrier for Reading. Two seasons ago, the Royals stormed the Championship, smashing records and playing fantastic team soccer. When the club let us hacks into the champagne-soaked dressing rooms on the last day (unlike the States, this does not usually happen in England), we all felt part of a fairy tale.

Fast forward to 2008 and there is malaise at the Madejski. Second season syndrome has struck for sure as the unbeatable juggernaut of 2006 has rusted wheels and the players no longer have the Force in them.

Losing Steve Sidwell to the Chelsea bench has had more impact than was expected at the time. His midfield partner James Harper, the real talisman of the team, seems muted without the ginger one beside him and unable to grab the game by the scruff of the neck as he used to.

Reading's roster is in need of fresh blood, yet the club does not seem able to afford renovation. And if you don't have the dough in the Premier League, you will have to fight against relegation.

Owner John Madejski, who made his money selling cars, has worked wonders in taking a non-descript English team into the top 20, so much so that FIFA president Sepp Blatter singled them out as the model for other clubs. But a Royals insider told me two seasons back they were putting out feelers overseas because Madejski's money is not major league.

Steve Coppell, a wise and diligent man who is the biggest reason the Royals have enjoyed such success, deserves better. The former Manchester United winger is perhaps the best English coach in the top flight, and was rightly vocal about being harshly ignored when it came to selecting a new manager for the national team.

All is not lost, but with 10 games to go, the Royals must play Arsenal and Liverpool and face a fiery scrap for points with Fulham on April 12th.

We know Americans are not ready to step up to the elite band of teams yet, though on the plus side, the raw numbers of Yanks across the board grows every year, so there is no cause for worry in the long run.

But losing nine of them from the elite league of Europe will be a real blow for us all, and for once, I will remove my press hat, go home and sulk until next season like the fan I used to be.