AS OWN goals go, this was a corker; the ball wellied straight and true from 40 yards out, and over the head of the keeper. In fairness, quite a few things go way over the head of this particular goalkeeper, Brian Barwick, the boss of the Football Association. But on this occasion he had no chance. “Oh no, what can the big lad Scudamore have been thinking of,” says Motty as the crowd fall about laughing. Well, money, that’s all. Humungous great sacks of the stuff. Money and nothing but money.

On Friday, the FA became the last people in the known world to stick the boot in to the Premier League’s plans to introduce a 39th game of the season, to be franchised out to whatever country forks out the most dosh. Over the course of seven days, Scudamore’s exciting proposal to exploit the “global phenomenon” of the Premier League was mocked, vilified and then mocked again in a remarkable and rather uplifting display of world unity. Americans, Arabs, French, Germans – everyone who’d heard of the game of football felt moved to link hands and announce what a stupid, ignorant and arrogant idea it was. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Janjaweed guerrillas of Sudan put out a press statement calling for Scudamore to resign.

Perhaps uniquely in the history of world football, the proposal enabled the Fifa president Sepp Blatter to appear sane, moral and in touch with ordinary supporters. “Over my dead body” was the gist of his response, while the excellent Michel Platini, who is always bang on the button in his understanding of the rapacity of the Premier League, could scarcely conceal his scorn. More remarkably still, the managers of two of the clubs most likely to benefit from the extra game – Rafael Benitez at Liverpool, and Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United – also expressed grave doubts.

And then finally, after everyone else had given of their tuppenceworth, the FA complained. There seemed to be real pique in its communique, much made of the lengths to which the FA had gone in order to restore England’s reputation, and then along comes an idea which jeopardised it once more. Plus, they worried themselves silly about the possibility of losing the World Cup. They didn’t say much about the fans, though.

With a lovely sense of timing, the cities that might have been expected to bid for the right to stage these games were able, on Sunday afternoon, to have a taste of what’s on offer, with the epic encounter between Chelsea and Liverpool at Stamford Bridge. Believe me, if you were marooned in a hut on Baffin Island with nothing but a ping pong table with one bat, you would still have forsaken the opportunity to watch this stultifying game of caution masquerading as football. You’d be better entertained staring at the snow for 90 minutes, or filleting a penguin. Avram Grant, mind, still thinks the idea is a good one, at least – but for entertainment value, what city on the world would bid to stage a Chelsea game right now? Port Moresby? Vientiane?

The furore seemed to take the Premier League by surprise. You do wonder how the league can have had the naivety to announce its idea apparently without having first tested the water. It seems to me almost inconceivable that Barwick et al were not apprised of the notion, given the intertwined relationship of the two organisations – and yet we are led to believe, from the response from Soho Square, that they were not. This is surely stretching the boundaries of credulity. The Premier League might have had the sense to mention it quietly to Fifa, too, given England’s occasionally tense relationship with the world governing body and our struggle to secure the 2018 World Cup. Better still would have been to allow the notion to quietly escape from the lips of one or another Premier League chairman, mooted as a sort of vague possibility, nothing official, for the distant future and then seen what sort of response it met with. That would have enabled them to shelve the idea without looking like greedy jackanapes to the rest of the sentient world.

The main objection to this flawed remake of The 39 Steps is the total and utter disregard shown towards the fans, of course. It is not so much that they were not consulted – you wouldn’t expect that from the Premier League – it is more telling that they were not even mentioned when the idea was put forward. So, if you are a supporter of a Premier League club – by which I mean someone who turns up on a Sunday lunchtime or Monday evening to watch his or her side play in real life, then you know exactly where you stand in the scheme of things. And it’s worth noting that the scheme is not yet dead in the water: such is the relentless greed of the Premier League that they still might press ahead, regardless of the views of the fans, managers, players, international organisations and politicians.