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Sky and Setanta announced their fixtures for the first 15 ‘match days’  in the 2008 Premier League calendar (here is a Premier League TV Guide for US television).  What often goes unnoticed by football fans is the power that the television companies have over which clubs their money goes to.

The Premier League clubs decide how to split the money received from television, and due to bullying by the big-4  in their wisom award 25% of the money according to how many times a club is shown on TV.  For the current TV deal, that works out to £460,000 per appearance (with a minimum payment of £4.6million per year).

The fixtures announced today break down as follows:

9 appearances: Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United

7 appearances: Manchester City, Newcastle, Spurs

6 appearances: Everton

5 appearances: Aston Villa, West Ham

4 appearances: Sunderland, Bolton, West Brom, Blackburn

3 appearances: Fulham, Wigan, Portsmouth, Stoke, Middlesbrough

2 appearances: Hull

The usual suspects are at the top of course, but it’s also interesting to see the ‘big clubs’ like Newcastle and Spurs getting a lot of games despite disappointing campaigns last year.  The ’small clubs’ like Blackburn and Portsmouth are getting relatively few games despite finishing higher up the league table.

This translates into cold hard cash as follows: If the discrepancy remains over the course of the season, Newcastle will receive over £3.5million more than Portsmouth - at the discretion of Sky/Setana - even though Portsmouth finished 4 places higher last year.

Putting this in real terms, it’s enough to pay two players £35k per week, or it’s like having an extra 7,500 fans at every home game.

SoccerShout posted some more examples of unfair TV money distribution last season.  For example, Newcastle getting £5million more than Middlesbrough, despite finishing only once place higher.

Let me be clear on one thing:  I don’t blame the TV companies for wanting to show more of the big-4, and even teams like Spurs and Newcastle, if that will draw the most viewers.  It’s their prerogative to optimize their offering.

I do have a problem with the Premier League distributing that money according to appearances, which effectively lets the TV companies decide which clubs get the most money.

Robin Van Persie should be congratulated, along with his Arsenal colleagues, for his focus on providing entertainment while he’s on the pitch. A comment he made recently though was a reminder of who the team is really there to entertain.

Just before the recent defeat to Manchester United (another nice dose of entertainment), he spoke these words to the Times:

“For me, the basic of football is to give enjoyment to people buying a ticket. That’s where it starts. We are like 11 actors on a stage, we have to give enjoyment.”

Again, this shows what a great attitude Arsenal have, and it’s entertainment that will drive football’s success in business terms.

But Van Persie - and many others - often forget that the people buying the ticket make up a tiny percentage of the people being entertained. How tiny? Well, for every fan in the Emirates Stadium, there are another 1250 fans watching the game live around the world. So the people in the ground represent less than 0.1% of the live audience (never mind about the people enjoying the game in packaged highlights around the world).

That ratio - 1250 to 1 - should be remembered when the new season ticket prices are being announced. For example, Boro are offering really good value for kids in order to boost their attendance, while leaving the adult prices untouched. But is such tinkering really worth it when there’s a vast worldwide market waiting to be tapped?

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All too often, football fans get treated like they are brain dead morons who lack any ability for critical thought. Managers think you’ll be content to listen to the deserved-a-result and ref-done-us-wrong spiel in the post-match interview. Television companies think you’re motivated by terms like Super-Grandslam Sunday, as if you couldn’t figure out on your own that the top-4 playing each other on the same day wouldn’t be worth watching.

I also find the level of analysis and tactical insight to be sorely lacking in television and newspapers. The co-commentator is too often limited to say-what-you-see analysis during the replays: “Well, the winger crossed the ball in…and the striker jumps above everyone else…gets his head to the ball…and it’s in the back of the net”. Yeah, thanks for that.

I want to like the Telegraph’s new Champions League 3D feature that turned up on their website for this week’s Champions League games involving Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea. It’s really nice technology: Graphics like you’ll find in the FIFA-style games that accurately represent the players actions during the goals; the play is marked-up to highlight the runs of players; virtual camera angles that would physically impossible to capture on the pitch.

But the commentary that goes with it reverts to the state-the-bloody-obvious style that we find on TV. The Arsenal highlights start out well by highlighting Adebeyor’s neat run from the goal line to the edge of the six-yard box - I didn’t spot that on ESPN. It’s all downhill from there though - just have a listen and you’ll probably feel that a child could have come up with something more original.

Well done to the Telegraph for trying something new. They’ve done the hard part in putting the 3D replays together - they just need to find an intelligent footballer to narrate it.

Alright, so maybe they haven’t done the hard part.

Arsene Wenger’s blind spot has become legion in footballing circles. “Doing a Wenger” has become synonymous with pretending not to see something that implicates one of your players.

That’s all well and good to a degree - it’s the footballing equivalent of pleading the fifth - but there comes a point you’d have to assume that your audience are imbeciles if they’re going to buy it. And as Wenger’s audience are also the people who pour their money into the sport - and therefore his club - he’s insulting his customers. And that’s just not cool.

Wenger on Martin Taylor’s tackle on Eduardo:

“The tackle was horrendous and unforgivable.”

He did retract the statement that contained that comment, but presumably he would still stand by that part of it. “On reflection, I feel that my comments about Martin Taylor were excessive”, he later said, but nothing along the lines of “the tackle wasn’t that bad after all”.

So after Abou Diaby’s red card against Bolton (video), which to my mind was right up there with Martin Taylor’s leg-breaker, we get

“I was not upset with the sending off but I felt it was more of a protective tackle. But he was too high so I don’t complain. Just before that I thought it was a foul on him.”

You’re probably familiar with the concept of parallel universes. The theory says that there are an infinite number of them, but for the sake of time and bandwidth, there’s only two of them that I want you to try and imagine.

In another universe, Eduardo is still skipping about on the football pitch and no-one has spent any more time thinking about Martin Taylor than they did last season, which is not very much. However, Bolton’s Gretar Steinsson is in hospital with a compound fracture of his shin, thanks to Abou Diaby’s lunge. It could easily have happened.

What would Wenger have said then?

“I was not upset with the sending off but I felt it was more of a protective tackle. But he was too high so I don’t complain. Just before that I thought it was a foul on him.”

Let’s dance on to another parallel universe. This one is even more uncomfortable for Mr Wenger. In this universe, there have been two broken legs in the Premier League this season - one a piece for Eduardo and Steinsson.

What would Wenger have said then?

“I was not upset with the sending off but I felt it was more of a protective tackle. But he was too high so I don’t complain. Just before that I thought it was a foul on him.”

I don’t think Wenger’s blind spot is his inability to notice things that happen on a football pitch - his job title will tell you that cannot be true. His blind spot is that he can’t tell when he’s sounding ridiculous and treating those that pay his wages like morons.