To Beijing or Not to Beijing, that is question?

More carping about the Premier League's forward thinking imperialist desire to take Bolton and Fulham to the five corners of the earth?

Sorry - I am on the fence on this one - The FSA is up in arms and ready to bring Barclays and Lucozade to their corporate knees if the they put their support behind the "winter road trip". Bold words and surely well within the compass of such an august body.

Back in the 80's, when going to the match was marginally less acceptable than smoking crack and sleeping with your family pet, the FSA was born and did much, if not all, to return football from the hooligan abyss. Thatcher (remember her) was all for marching the fans into pens at railway stations, tagging them and keeping them under surveillance for the duration of the week. The FSA successfully fought the battle and won. Since then a gentrified game has taken up with Sky and the Yankee dollar.

Sadly that is the last time fan power prevailed - we were united in one cause and there was a seamless resolve. Having seen the Glazers protest fizzle out, "Getting behind Rafa" and a whole bunch of worthy but failed attempts to display who is at the heart of the game, the writing is on the walls. The Premier league hierarchy are under pressure to deliver US sport style solutions to UK sports franchise owners. The Premier League is now so divorced from the reality we grew up and understood as football. MP3 download against wax cylinders. Go and watch Crawley Town this weekend in protest.

We're dead in water brothers and sisters

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Wednesday 7th February 2008 - write it in your diary.

What a terrific day for world football it was yesterday.

1. The premier league imperialists laid out their world domination plan.

2. Andre Bikey strikes a blow against that unseemly football minority stretcher bearers

Where to start?

My favourite response to the impending shoe horning of a new Pay for View money laundering operation into the beautiful game has got be Gareth Southgate. If you aren't totally au fait with the premier managers below Fergie and Arsene, Gareth is the English one who looks and talks like a secondary school physics teacher .

Southgate felt, when questioned about the concept, that he was being exposed to some April foolery. It has got be a great idea for English football for establishing it as the number one world leader in selling itself. It should be no surprise that, wherever football is played it there by virtue of the pioneering spirit of British travelers at the turn of the last but one century.

When Steve Bruce and other dissenting voices have to employ an extra man with a wheelbarrow to help them take home even more money in season 2010 -11 I'm certain they will have been tuned into the many positives that can be taken out of the scheme.

Mr Bikey - yowser. There will be people who tell you this was a dark day for football when Andre saw red last night but like Zidane in 2006, Cantona at Selhurst Park in the 90's, Di Canio when he was an owl, these are the moments that punctuate and validate our beautiful game. They are pure gold and whilst I would hate to see them more than once in any given football season, they brighten up everybody's [except the surprised bearer] day.

It's a passionate game (copyright Martin O'Neill and Gordon Strachan)

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