THE Premier League’s 39th game reared its head again this week and I suspect will continue to do so until it is brought in. Only it’s not the 39th game but the 38th this time.

In case you are not familiar with this particular episode of controversy in the soap opera that is English football, the 39th game was an idea broached a few years ago which involved adding one extra round of games to the fixture list and playing them all over the world.

The motivation, you guessed it, was money. The fact it would destroy the league’s credibility as a sporting competition would, one suspects, have been gladly glossed over by the accountants who run the top clubs.

The idea was rapidly put on the back burner following uproar among fans who instantly saw through its blatant commercialism.

The extra game was completely wrong on every sporting level, as relegation, the title destination and European places could potentially be decided by that game, and it was pot luck who and where teams played it.

Say Newcastle and Crystal Palace were level on points, third and fourth bottom, and one of them was destined to go down, and Newcastle played their extra game against the club who were bottom of the league while Palace were given the top-of-the-league club to play. That would be completely unfair on Palace yet it’s the sort of thing that could happen.

It was only a matter of time before the idea would crop up again because there is money to be made from the lucrative foreign markets, particularly in the Far East and USA.

By playing one round of games it would mean half the clubs would play one fewer home game than the rest, which can’t be right.

I’m not against taking the Premier League around the world in the same way American football and USA basketball games are.

But it’s got to be fair otherwise the idea would undermine a great competition which is the envy of the rest of the world.

One way would be to take two full programmes abroad, the home and away games of the same fixture.

However, if Manchester United and Liverpool played games in the Far East it would be like two home games for them because of their phenomenal support in that region.

And what about the fans. No I didn’t forget, just saved the best argument for last. Any move for a 38th game would mean asking the fans to dig deeper into their pockets to follow their team or not see them at all.

Regardless of all this, I fear Premier League matches will be coming to a foreign country not near you in the foreseeable future because the money men who run clubs will demand it.

But I can’t see how they’ll make it fair.