The game's 'prune juice economics' are difficult to swallow

Luton, after all, are in administration, haemorrhaging £400,000 a month, and the players have only received two-and-a-half weeks' wages in the last two months.

Passing lightly over the cynical view that Liverpool did help out by playing so badly a lucrative replay is needed, surely the Anfield club's curmudgeonly attitude proves that however much money the big boys have, the reckless spending they all indulge in means they too are always strapped for cash.

And therefore always making ever more excessive demands of their fans.

Sir Alex Ferguson's complaints about the apathy of the home crowd at Old Trafford have rebounded on the club, as supporters and columnists queue up to denounce a regime that has put up ticket prices three times the rate of inflation, thereby squeezing out the traditional working-class fan base, who did sing.

But it's hard to see an end to that process because of what Sir Alan Sugar memorably called football's prune juice economics — money passing through a club's digestive system before being ejected as rapidly as possible into the pockets of the players, and of course their agents.

Premier League clubs plainly believe the good times will roll for ever, and there's no sum of money too big for punters to willingly pay for tickets, merchandise, or TV subscriptions. I wonder.

The problem is the extra money isn't buying a better product. In many 'Reckless means that big clubs strapped instances it's just paying for spoilt brats like Joey Barton.

No comment has been made to the contrary, so I presume Barton is still being paid fifty grand a week for living in some rehab place.

Sam Allardyce is dancing attendance on him like a social worker, when he should be punishing Barton's breach of club rules, staying out all night drinking.

It won't take too many more Joey Bartons, as the economic clouds darken, to prove to hard-pressed fans they are being asked to pay more for less.

In the United States, the NFL are acutely aware of the damage to the sport's reputation that comes from serious have taken away misbehaviour, and have taken away leading player Michael Vick's licence after he was convicted, amid a blaze of bad publicity, of organising illegal dog fights.

Isn't it time a similar smack of firm government was applied here? Being careless about money, and even more careless about reputation, isn't a sustainable basis for the Premier League to flourish long term.