I DON’T like Mondays. Not in the sense of feeling an irresistible compulsion to run around Goodison Park hurling Everton Mints at anyone in the vicinity.

Specifically, I don’t like Liverpool playing matches on Monday evenings. This is partly the traditionalist in me who feels that football on Mondays and Thursday nights is just a crime against the natural order of things; partly a rail against the way the TV companies ride roughshod over the wishes and needs of fans; and mainly a practical objection for those of us for whom a midweek home game means a half-day off work and, in my case, a 450-mile round trip (I was exiled from Liverpool in the 70s on a trumped-up stoat-smuggling charge). This season the combination of the TV companies’ whims and the consequences of playing in the Europa League have meant that just one of our 16 league games to date has taken place at 3pm on a Saturday; 11 have been on the telly. By the time we get to mid-February, the figures will be two out of 27 (and that only because New Year’s Day falls on a Saturday), with 18 televised.

I’d like to think this excessive level of coverage is down to the desire to show the nation the scintillating football we’ve been playing this season; unfortunately I suspect it’s more to do with the desire to pick at the bones of our imagined corpse as we dallied with the relegation places a few weeks ago.

But given that we have to play a lot of games on Sunday anyway because of European commitments, would it be too much to ask that the Premier League require the TV moguls to limit our exposure to these games, and allow those matches that can be played on a Saturday afternoon to do so?

Now if I sound particularly bitter here, it’s because I am. Sky’s late decision to shift the Villa match to Monday night meant that I had to miss my first game of the season, having already organised a mass excursion to see the Bootleg Beatles at the Royal Albert Hall.

Judging by the attendance though, I wasn’t the only one inconvenienced by the shift to Monday night. I know the Villa end was sparsely populated, but it was clear that many others had been thrown by the date change.

To compound my irritation, the Newcastle game tomorrow has been shifted to 5.30pm. This is bad enough for those of you who want to travel but live a tad nearer Liverpool than I, ruining your Saturday night out.

For me and my brother, this rules out any possible return that day by train or plane, leaving only a 10-hour round trip by car through two feet of snow or the expense of an overnight stay as alternative options. Not even I’m that daft.

Of course the interests of the travelling fan are way down the list of the Premier League’s priorities; the armchair viewer is now king. But if the vast empty spaces appearing in stands across the country on televised games start to threaten the provision of a ‘studio audience’ to create atmosphere, then just maybe they’ll think twice about so wantonly messing with the fixture list.