Le Prof should listen to what the fans want.Football Is Entertainment.

When I was a Kid the shops didn’t open on a Sunday. If the local newspaper shop opened on a Sunday until 11am it was a bonus.

You couldn’t get money out of a bank because hole in the walls didn’t exist and the banks were closed on a Saturday.

You got paid cash anyway and the thrill of opening the Friday wage packet was the be and end all.

Sundays were a dreary drag of lazing about in some mate’s girlfriends house and filling up the bedroom with smoke whilst listening to the Smiths or ABC depending on which mate it was and how cool you wanted to look.

Sundays were spent in the leisure centre playing space invaders and making a cup of tea last for three hours.

Football was played at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon and the European Cup was played on a Wednesday night. That was it. There was no other time to watch football.

Match of the Day was the highlight of the week.

“Dad can I stay up”.

“Please. It’s Saturday. It’s Match of the day”.

Saint and Greavsie on a Saturday lunchtime followed by the wrestling which they tried so hard to tell us was real. Then Match of the Day.

There was no Tivo box so recording MOTD was not possible.

If you could go back in time and show them UFC they would think you had come from another planet.

Which in a sense – we are from.

In 1980 Kenny Dalglish won the European Cup and League Cup, Liverpool finished 5^th in the league that year.

I was sixteen and had just left school.

There were no mobile phones, no computers, no internet, no sky, none of the technological innovations that have revolutionised our lives.

Football has now become pure mainstream entertainment. Where once it was limited to highlights on match of the day once a week now we are over exposed to it every day. It’s pure theatre. It’s what sports fans want.

Give the customer what they want at the right price and they will happily pay for it.

Bleak greyness is definitely not what we want.

Football club managers may whine about how many games they have to play in too few days but in the past they would never have been paid the huge salaries they are being paid now and they would never have had so much opportunity to voice their thoughts.

Things are very good for football and long may it continue. Innovation is the source of all future income.

Friday night games, Saturday lunchtime games, Sunday Afternoon games, Monday Night Games… You tell me where do we stop.

The line should be drawn when we start to cut into player’s recovery time because we definitely don’t want to see second rate displays. That’s for sure.