There are a couple of really good questions that the PL need to answer – how to ensure fairness in the draw and how to accomodate the local footballing authorities wherever they’ll go to play. It’s obvious that England-based fans will not travel to any of these games, and filling the stadiums will be another thing to look at although seeing the PLs track record and the shaping of this ‘weekend’ as a ‘football festival’ (another exercise in money-making, yes), I wouldn’t bet against the stadiums being filled.

What you say may be right, but another possibility is that this is an ill-thought out idea by a body of people only interested in making money.

It could just be that this is actually a very bad idea.

Could their opinions change once the Premier League offers them incentives?

IMO that still doesn’t excuse the Guardian from running this as it’s top headline WITHOUT any perspective – McCabe has an axe to grind against Scudamore and the Premier League because of the West Ham affair and his comments, once taken in that context, lose a lot of relevance.

I can hardly disagree with Richard Williams when he craps on bloggers but to – through willful omission more than anything else – avoid any perspective in their coverage of a story is criminal.

I also think that the way the media has quickly pounced on the 39th game proposal as *such a bad idea* and quickly opposed it has had a big role to play in fanning the flames.