Football365.com: Response to Mini Competition

'England's elite clubs are determined to exploit their international popularity by staging mini-competitions in places like Asia, Australia, Africa and North America, during a 12-day winter break,' it says in Monday's Daily Telegraph.

If you were doing an 11-plus comprehension exam, you might be asked to spot the flaw in that extract and you'd expect to get a tick for pointing out that the final word - the word 'break' - makes no sense at all at the end of that sentence.

So the Premier League's latest absolutely flawless plan is to use a winter break designed to give the players a rest in the middle of a long season to fly said players half-way around the world to play games in Sydney or Singapore - giving them the usual two games to play in a 12-day period but adding in two flights with a combined total of up to 50 hours' travelling. Brilliant, isn't it?

There was quite rightly an outcry over the 39th game idea - where a competitive 39th round of fixtures would be played around the world - but we cynical types realised that this was just an opening gambit, a ridiculous idea that would make subsequent ideas look that little more sane. And if this latest plan falls on rocky ground, a slightly less ridiculous idea will soon be along to take its place, until some way of crowbarring money from 'EPL' fans across the world is agreed.

Garth Crooks - for some obscure reason the public face of the ManYoo-Pompey game in Nigeria last week - is citing the success of that game as an argument for taking the Premier League worldwide, but the fact that only 28,000 people turned up in a 60,000-seater stadium to see the champions take on the FA Cup winners highlighted one of the many problems with the plan.

In order to make it financially viable, tickets for the game were priced at Stamford Bridge style prices of £40-100 - that's like charging English fans roughly £1300 for a glorified friendly. So ignore the bollocks about speading the word of the EPL, these games are about making money.

And that's making money at the expense of the host nations' own leagues, at the expense of the quality of the Premier League, at the expense of the England players who will have played extra games and flown extra miles ahead of international tournaments and at the expense of Championship clubs who see even more money going into top-flight coffers to further increase that gap.

Premier League clubs already play lucrative games in far-flung places but that is their own business. They choose to sit their players on planes and parade them in the Far East or Africa for huge wads of cash. It's a very different matter when you're talking about sending 20 clubs around the world on official Premier League business in the middle of a season that most experts already consider too long and too physical.

The flaws in the plan are many (including the prospective ticket sales in a country that gets lumbered with fifth-placed Everton and a trio of Middlesbrough, Fulham and Stoke City) but the argument in favour - as far as the Premier League concerns - is written in numbers, not words. Some people find that all too compelling.

Sarah Winterburn