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Sky have been hyping it on the same lines as Terrific Top-Drawer Transfer Deadline Day.

Wednesday, June 19.

When the Premier League tells fans the times and dates where they can watch the Greatest Show On Earth next season (or rather the Premier League gives Sky a rough guide which they rip-up and hand back with the real times and dates those games will take place).

But it’s not just TV redrawing the fixture list that has ­diminished what used to be a summer ­high-point, when fans began to plan their awaydays for next season. It’s the fact that following your team has become so expensive for many of them it’s out of the question.

Discontent has been bubbling away for months: Manchester City fans boycotting Arsenal’s £62 seats, angry outbursts at being charge £50-£60 at other grounds, rows of upturned plastic in many away ends, and the growing presence of protest banners that warn: ‘FOOTBALL IS NOTHING WITHOUT FANS’.

If you’re in central London on Wednesday lunchtime you may see that banner, as more than 100 fans march on the Premier League’s HQ in Gloucester Place to tell them that enough is enough. That the level of ­exploitation, which would not be tolerated in any other industry, has gone too far.

That as the eye-popping £5.5billion TV deal kicks in (guaranteeing the bottom club in next year’s Premier League £60million) it’s time to stop taking your lifeblood for granted and help them out.

(Image: Alex Livesey)

What is really so impressive about this Football Supporters ­Federation-backed protest is the level of organisation, with ­meetings being held in London and Liverpool, and the range of rival fans taking part.

On Wednesday members of Liverpool’s Spirit Of Shankly union will walk side by side with the Manchester United Supporters Trust and Everton’s Blue Union. Arsenal Supporters Trust and Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Trust will share banners along with fans of lower league clubs like Yeovil and Tranmere.

For those who sit in the ­directors’ box, media seats and corporates (and anyone else who doesn’t pay to get into grounds) this may seem like the whining of ungrateful militants, but the facts shame football.

The Bank of England says prices in Britain have risen by 77 per cent since 1989. Top-tier football ticket prices have gone up 716 per cent. Despite Lord Justice Taylor recommending in the report which ushered in all-seater stadia that clubs should keep price structures in place which didn’t penalise those who paid to stand.

Last season alone, away ticket prices (often the worst specs in the ground) went up on average by 10 per cent, as wages and living standards plummeted.

(Image: PA)

It’s been calculated that if clubs passed on to fans the rise in income from the new £5.5bn TV deal (making do with the £3.4bn they already receive) every ticket at every game for the next three years could be cut by £51.30. In other words they could give most of them away.

Fans aren’t asking for anything like that, just a fair deal.

Many are sick of being ­patronised about how their atmosphere-creating passion is what makes English football a global phenomenon. Then getting nothing in return but buck-passing contempt.

The Premier League saying it’s up to the clubs to cap prices, the clubs saying they can’t do it on their own, the PFA saying their members, whose pockets 70 per cent of that new deal will go into, are only getting the market rate.

Wednesday is a long-overdue rallying cry, a shot across the bows, a taster of what might happen if those in power don’t listen.

Supporters’ groups want an admission that this ­exploitation, especially of the real, hardcore fans who travel to away games and give the grounds the passion they sell across the globe, has to be addressed.

They want to remind the Premier League that their ‘product’ is nothing without fans. And if those fans keep on being insulted they’re not short of ideas on how to damage that product.

Click here for Brian Reade on Wenger's reluctance to spend, Mourinho and the mediocrities and yes-men holding England back