At a meeting with the Football Supporters Federation's club representatives yesterday Premier League Chairman Richard Scudamore refused to be drawn on whether there would or wouldn't be a Xmas Eve TV fixture.
The Football Supporters Federation and fan representatives from each Premier league club met with Richard Scudamore and Premier League officials in their six monthly meeting on Tuesday morning at Premier League HQ.
High on the agenda was whether there would be a televised game on Xmas Eve this year, the FSF and the club reps were united in their stance that this was a step too far in televised game scheduling, that with transport shutting down early on Xmas Eve and with football supporters wanting to spend time with their familes on that day, it was not acceptable to schedule a televised game.
Whilst undoubtably it would be a draw for armchair supporters and indeed around the World, the people it would truly affect are those who actually attend the games, who will be asked not just to abandon their families on that day, but also to have to cope with a travel network that is shutting down early, this will be bad enough for home supporters, but for the travelling away fans it will be a nightmare.
Richard Scudamore would not be drawn on the subject though, all he would confirm for sure was that although initially he had said a decision would be made by 12th October, this would now be the 19th and that there would definitely be no fixture with a kick off time of 4pm or later.
This led to several questions but Scudamore would not be drawn any further even when asked whether a 3.45pm kick off might be on the cards, although he was keen to stress the point that he and the Premier League were well aware of the opposition to the proposals and the reasoning why.
But in my opinion he seemed to be implying that although the late kick off would not be scheduled, that an early one was certainly still in the pipeline and that with Sky seemingly pushing for a game on that day, that a compromise needed to be reached and that could well be an early kick off, indeed it could be that two matches could be scheduled and although he did not say directly that this would be done on Xmas eve, Scudamore did say that dual televised fixtures in the Premier League with the same kick off time, as is the norm in the Champions League, were in the pipeline.
From a personal point of view I like many would enjoy an Xmas Eve fixture on TV, however as supporter who attends games and so who could be affected by such scheduling I can see the bigger picture and that for the fans of the team involved it would be another case of being inconvenienced for the sake of the likes of Sky making big money from those who do not attend games.
Whilst in today's game we have to accept that fixtures have to be changed to accomodate TV, there are some changes that are a step too far and this is one of them.