So are you excited about the start of the new season now that the fixture list has been released? Have you already written the games in your diary, using a special bright pen to highlight the big games?
Well that was stupid wasn't it because the fixture list - which incidentally costs every newspaper £1,000 to print - released on Thursday morning will be virtually useless before a ball has been kicked.
This season will see more live television coverage of Premiership games than ever before with both Sky Sports and Setanta Sports ready to carve the fixtures up between them before completely redesigning the list to suit them.
There will be live football on virtually every night of the week next season - great for fat people who like to eat ready made microwave meals on their armchairs - and great for Premiership clubs who receive so much money for the coverage rights, but not necessarily great for those who actually bother to go to the games.
For example, Newcastle's opening game of the season at Bolton will inevitably be picked for live coverage, but that could be at tea-time on Saturday, lunchtime Sunday or tea time Sunday. As for the Wear-Tyne derby, it's supposed to be on the weekend of November 11, but who knows when the television execs will decide to put it?
So what was the point of releasing the fixtures on Thursday because they weren't worth the paper - literally given the cost of copying them - they are written on? Surely it would have been better to wait until the television types had got their claws into them, decided who was having what and when, and then told the fans?
I'm not moaning - well I am a little bit - about television because we all know football, in its present bloated form at least, would collapse without it, but there seems to have been a lack of common sense here.
As for the fixture list, do you really reckon it is decided randomly by a computer? Yeah right, Newcastle just happened to get Bolton Wanderers away on the first day. Honestly, it's just a strange coincidence that Big Sam will face his former club on the opening day of the campaign!
Then again, only a heartless computer could come up with these Festive period gems for North-East clubs. On December 29th, the Saturday in between Christmas and New Year, Middlesbrough make the short journey to Portsmouth while Newcastle are in the capital, yet again, this time at Chelsea.
I'll give you short odds on the Chelsea game being moved for television as well, probably to a time which will make it impossible for those travelling from the North-East to get home again! Thanks, nothing quite like thinking about the fans is there!
As for Leyton Orient, well a trip to Hartlepool on the same day might be good for me, but it isn't great for the majority who leave in East London is it?
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