Did you see the bedsheet flag hanging from the second tier of the away end at Stamford Bridge last week with “Magic of the FA Cup? Sold by the FA for Monday night TV ca$h” painted on it, a sentiment which was applauded by Chelsea fans?

I was standing under it and momentarily wondered if it would be picked up on by those commentating for the watching millions on terrestrial television. Then I realised how stupid that was.

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Obviously, you get a wall of silence from anyone taking the TV coin when criticism about games being rescheduled comes their way. It’s uncomfortable for them because they know it’s the truth and it has long been so.

Sir Alex Ferguson claimed that football had sold its soul to television saying: “When you shake hands with the devil you have to pay the price. Television is God at the moment and broadcasters have too much power.” He said that in 2011 and, eight years on, television is pumping more money in and thus enjoys even more power.

It’s not an issue for most football fans. When I started going to games in the Eighties, people who watched the few televised games were derided as armchair fans who weren’t prepared to drag their backsides off a sofa to a football ground. Now, the fans at the match are in the overwhelming minority.

There are millions of fans of the bigger clubs around the world who’ll never see those teams play live. Football is something they watch through a screen. Quite often it’s not for the want of trying. I’ve met Macedonian Manchester United fans who’d love to see a game at Old Trafford, but visas have been a no-no while their country squabbled with Greece about its name.

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The surge of televised football has heralded new genres of football fans – and you even have people calling themselves football journalists who never attend actual football matches.

There have been positives from the rise in televised football. Production values from the likes of Sky Sports are superb and it’s easier than ever to watch any game you’re not at, not that watching on a screen is anything like the experience of being at the game.

But it all comes at a cost to the most hardcore fans, those who travel away, those who are responsible for creating most of the atmosphere at games, without which TV football would be dead in the water.

TV companies get away with shifting almost every fixture for the biggest clubs because they can. Beyond a few grumbles, there’s little in the way of protest. Demand to attend games remains exceptionally high in England, although in Spain crowds fall right away when games are shifted to a Monday night.

And the scheduling of matches isn’t just down to TV. It wasn’t TV that scheduled the Manchester derby on FA Cup sixth round day. There was a fair chance that one of them would be in the sixth round. Both of them are.

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And it wasn’t the TV companies who sent United to Crystal Palace on Wednesday, a game played midweek for the third consecutive season. United have played four away games in the evening in London on four different days in the last six weeks.

If you’re stuck in 1994 and find Nick Hancock funny, then you might say that all the away fans are from London anyway.

You’d see it very differently if you went to the away end. Selhurst Park is the most awkward ground to reach by road from Manchester and supporters’ coaches have taken seven hours to make the journey south.

Train? You can’t make the last train back to Manchester since it leaves Norwood Junction five minutes before the end of the game. Fans caught it two years ago – and missed Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s late winner. Fans missed Nemanja Matic’s last gasp winner last season too. If you want to look at football fans as customers, it seems a bizarre way to treat the most loyal punters.

It’s the same for West Ham fans at Manchester City, though at least they have a special relationship, a long-standing mutual affection and they can stay at each others’ houses.

The authorities don’t appear to care. Money talks. The stadiums are full and if you don’t like it then don’t go, since nobody is forcing you. Away tickets for clubs like United are massively over-subscribed. The sixth round game at Wolves, which will be played on Saturday night, saw 14,533 applications for 4,684 tickets. There’s much magic left in the FA Cup.

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Championship clubs are regularly proud of their away support, but they’re fortunate because, in getting 5,000 tickets for Barnsley or Preston, they get bigger allocations than any Premier League stadium. United would take 20,000 to most grounds, given half the chance.

It’s not all sweetness and light for the majority who watch games on TV either. The rights packages for various leagues have been cut and spliced so much that it’s now necessary to hold multiple subscriptions should you have the time or inclination to watch various leagues. Four years ago you could watch the Premier League, La Liga and the Champions League on Sky. At the start of this season you would have needed three separate subscriptions to do the same. La Liga rights went to Eleven Sports, which struggled to attract sufficient subscribers and sold them on to ITV. Has saturation been reached? Can anyone really have a life and hold down relationships if they’re watching eight televised football matches each weekend?

Not surprising, then, that Amazon and Facebook, who’ve entered the Premier League rights fray, have done so tentatively.

It’s hard to argue that saturation TV coverage is affecting live attendances in the UK. Attendances are extremely healthy and the Championship had an average crowd of 21,000 last weekend, a staggering figure for a second tier league. Average crowds in the Spanish equivalent are not even into five figures. Even crowds in non-league football are booming. Perhaps people are getting sick of looking at screens and want to see games in real life – even if they know those games might be changed to suit television.

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