So the whispers and the dry-runs – remember Project Big Picture? – have turned into reports in the nationals. These of course don’t necessarily mean that a European Super League will happen but the bells are ringing pretty loudly.

Folks will tell us on the one hand that it’s just the Free Market expressing itself. Maybe those same people, when we call out and indeed coolly itemise the contemptible greed, irresponsibility and crass unawareness at the heart of this, will then tell us to keep politics out of sport. That’s if they can actually formulate a sentence. ‘Keep politics out of sport’.

We’re in a dark hole and it figures that some ‘businessmen’ might try to sell us shiny things to see… from an aspirational distance.

From our puny seat on our puny island it’s tempting to assume that this is simply entrepreneurism in (and for) the time of Johnson. But it’s a Europe-wide, nay world-wide travesty. It’s depressing to consider that it’s not just a reflection of us. Some twat in Barcelona, Milan, Dubai, or the States is ‘right behind this’, too – you betcha, ‘Xander/Gino/Phil/Philippe.

For Brit-based ‘ordinary supporters’ of Man Utd/City/Liverpool/Chelsea/Tottenham/whoever, what other way is there to process this than by imagining someone on the soullessly-brilliant spectrum realising a Performance Art-level symbol for the Era of the Mendacious Clown and his Trough-snorters? A magnificent, insulting, neon-clad testament to… what? Absolutist grasping? It’s so far beyond the perimeters of our common decencies that it fits snugly next to the cronyism scene: like some poisonous twin in the pram.

This is purely business. No respect, no regard, no love of the thing. Just selling of the thing. C’mon. Forget those who love the thing, just sell the fucking thing BIG, NOWWW!! Boris is still at 43 per cent in the polls. That bloke just took over the BBC. There’s never been a better time!! There are no implications, there’s only the deal. Set up the zoom and let’s get it done!

Let’s hope the fascistic dumbos come unstuck early doors – maybe around the notion that players participating will automatically be barred from international duty. Even the dumbest Prem Legend might register the significance of that. It feels pleasingly terminal as a hypothesis but who is clear just yet about who holds which levers? Not me.

I have no expectation of a good outcome – certainly not from within the elite ranks. Unless Rashford breaks through the inevitable Super Club embargo, I suppose(?) Elsewhere we can only fear the kind of diabolical heartlessness that characterises much of Boardroomland. We’re in a hole, alright.