Scudamore had to act on breakaway fear but he's still wrong

Scudamore, it turns out, is even more concerned than Sepp Blatter at his League's uncompetitiveness. An uncompetitiveness based on massive inequalities of wealth.

In America's NFL all the clubs have broadly the same financial resources in arrangements policed by the League.

Scudamore has no such power, and the best he can do is ensure that at least the TV revenues are equally split rather than, as in Italy, carved up between the biggest clubs.

The arrival of new, albeit controversial, owners, like Thaksin Shinawatra at Manchester City, has evened things up a bit, and the Premier League have moved on at least somewhat from the days when Manchester United's matchday programme revenue exceeded the total turnover of fellow top-flight side Wimbledon.

But this is not enough for Scudamore, who believes the Big Four are far better placed then the rest to exploit the League's global standing by playing lucrative exhibition games abroad, as United did a several weeks ago in Saudi Arabia for a fee rumoured to be in excess of £1million.

The 39th game proposal was his way of trying to cut everybody in on this foreign action.

But it's a sure sign of how much the Premier League have become dominated by four clubs that Scudamore felt obliged to discuss the idea with them first, and that was his undoing.

Because the rumour mill suggests it was a director of one of these clubs who tipped off the BBC's Mihir Bose, enabling the scheme to be made public before Scudamore had even announced it to most of his members..

In his presentation Scudamore pointed out the downsides of the idea, notably the likely ferocious opposition of FIFA and UEFA.

But the leaking of the news meant he got all the opprobrium he feared before he'd even had a chance to put the pros and cons to his members.

On this analysis Scudamore's basic instinct isn't too wide of the mark; unless the domination of the Big Four is broken, the Premier League surely will lose their commercial edge here and abroad.

And I would add an even worse scenario; as all the major European leagues become dominated by a few clubs, like Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, pressure will grow for the one thing the rest of the Premier League must surely fear more than anything else ? a European Super League.

A league that would bring together the AC Milans and the Manchester Uniteds but leave 16 clubs beyond the Big Four out in the cold. Because promotion to, and relegation from, such a league would be well-nigh impossible, leaving it, again like the NFL, a cartel that outsiders can't penetrate.

So Scudamore may be right, desperate times require desperate remedies. It's just that his 39th game remains several degrees too desperate for me, creating many more problems than it solves.