The FA Premier League is nothing if not imaginative in its ways of generating extra revenue for its already swollen and bloated cash cow.

But selling Premiership games to the highest bidder? It all seems a bit seedy to me.

The move to add an extra round of matches is simply bizarre when you consider the general moans and groans of club managers down the years.

They have appealed ad nauseum for a winter break or a sensible solution to avoiding player burn-out which can lead to serious injury.

Football fans I know who don't belong to the top three or four clubs, and many that are, are just bored with the Premiership as a whole which has become about as predictable as night following day.

Having reached saturation point in this country the powers-that-be seemed to have no other solution but to foist the 'brand' on the rest of the world.

Like pawning the family jewels, the FA is effectively selling what little soul and dignity remains in English top flight football. Passion, fervour, tradition are priceless commodities which clearly have no value to them upstairs.

AND:-
On a lighter note, the whole idea of long-distance footie got me thinking about the most extreme lengths players and their fans have gone to for a competitive match.

In Britain, the prize must go to a bunch of Cornish posties from Falmouth Post Office who made the Herculean journey for a fixture in Edinburgh against Leith in the Post Office Cup final, a round trip just eight miles short of 1,100.

Having set off at 12.15pm on Saturday lunchtime, the Falmouth team bus eventually arrived in the Scottish capital in the early hours of Sunday, but still played the final later that day which the visitors sadly lost by a single goal.

Credit must also go the lucky few Torquay United fans who braved the 399-mile trip to north east outfit Blyth Spartans for an FA Cup first round tie in the 1954/55 season. The players showed no sign of travel weariness and duly rewarded them with a 3-1 victory.

On the European stage, the longest trip recorded was for a Cup Winners Cup qualifier in 1994. Played over two legs, Icelandic team Keflavik locked horns with Israeli titans Maccabi Tel Aviv, the aggregate mileage coming in at a whopping 6,548.

For any fact fans still awake, the Israelis won 6-2 after the two matches.