'We all know why in four weeks' time only one Premier League game will kick off on Saturday at 3.00pm. Greed. The Premier League, famously dubbed by one veteran football writer the "Greed Is Good League", is interested in only one thing when it comes to broadcasting rights. Money. The interests of match-going fans come a long way behind.
'The Premier League will protest that some games on the weekend of October 6-7 have been moved because of involvement of English teams in the Uefa Cup. True, but the reason those clubs' European matches have been moved from Wednesday night to Thursday night, necessitating their league games being put back, is, you guessed it, television. Uefa has pushed Uefa Cup games to Thursday nights to clear the way for its flagship Champions League.
'Increasingly, fixture lists published at the start of each season are looking like works of fiction. This does not only affect visiting fans - as an example, over 6,000 Newcastle season-ticket holders live 150 miles or more south of the city.
'The Premier League's own research shows that seven out of 10 fans arrive at matches in private cars. When all of us have an obligation to reduce carbon emissions, switching more and more games to Sundays when public transport is at its worst will only encourage football's carbon footprint to grow. We need measures to promote public transport use. In Germany 75p for each match ticket is given to the local transport authority. In return fans get free public transport to and from the ground on production of their match ticket - the sort of simple, common-sense idea that we seem incapable of in this country.
'Fans who oppose the dismemberment of traditional Saturday-afternoon football are not Luddites. Clubs' opposition to live television over many decades was stupid, it held the game back, but what we oppose is overkill. Football needs to remember that one of the reasons television pays such extraordinary sums for football is the packed and passionate grounds. The football-going fan-base is ageing and increasingly affluent, hardly an advert for the people's game.
'The Premier League needs to address these issues long before the next broadcasting negotiations start some time in 2009. It will fail to act at its peril.'
Steven Powell is director of policy & campaigns for the Football Supporters' Federation