With the ever-growing industry of football TV rights slowly becoming a popularity parade whereby the interests of the fans have been neglected, it begs the questions: will we be sitting down for Christmas dinner simultaneously with a 12:30pm kick off between Brighton and Crystal Palace? Or perhaps celebrating the build up to New Year with a 7:45pm FA Cup tie between Bury and Wigan, the last of four games for both sides in a week? Perhaps not, but in the wake of some bizarre schedules of late, it certainly raises a few concerns.

As Sky and BT face increased competition from the likes of Amazon and Eleven Sports among others, the industry is in danger of becoming too sporadic. It’s slightly concerning we’ve already seen significant changes in the annual fixture schedule even before the inevitable rise of the tech giants comes into play.

At the beginning of January, less than a third of the 32 FA Cup matches were played at the conventional time of 3pm on a Saturday due to the reported £210 million overseas deal between the FA and Pitch International for the rights to broadcast.

This led to seven games being played at 12:30pm on Saturday, five at 5:30pm the same evening and seven more were scheduled for 2pm on the Sunday.

Due to the demand for English football worldwide, it comes as no surprise that the Gulf region has been involved in proceedings. Pitch have also paid a reported £120 million for rights to the English Football League to sell on to Qatari broadcaster beIN Sports.

Now, I enjoy glueing myself to the settee for the football day in, day out for hours on end as much as anyone, but as the consideration for us fans and the tradition of our great sport falls victim to increasing negligence to the point where matches are being rescheduled for the benefit of overseas watchers only. It starts to make you wonder where we might be in a decade’s time.

Football has an unrivalled global status, and it’s impossible to ignore its potential worldwide success in its current business-driven state.

However, in this instance, it is simply unnecessary for the boundary between business and the interests of clubs and their players and fans to be intruded upon.