Championship play-offs are the latest victims of the desire to ‘fix football’

It’s the curse of any job to be at the whims of the spreadsheet class, merrily tinkering around the edges of your livelihood.

We live in an optimised world and these people feel the need to justify their salary by making decisions that won’t directly affect them.

Football is especially bad for this and it comes as little surprise to learn that the EFL is eager to destroy the Championship play-offs, its own Golden Goose.

The new proposal, which has apparently been under consideration for several seasons, would mean the teams finishing from third to eighth compete for a place in the Premier League.

It would mirror the format used in the National League, where the teams finishing in third and fourth would automatically move through to the semi-finals.

The quarter-finals, or eliminator round, would feature one-legged ties, with fifth hosting eighth and sixth at home to seventh.

In the two-legged semi-finals, third place would take on the lowest-ranked team remaining, with fourth facing the highest.

Rather than sporting merit, the idea reeks of entertainment for entertainment’s sake. A cheap straight-to-Netflix drama, rather than a richly satisfying BBC Four documentary.

We’re not surprised to hear Peter Risdale has been heavily involved. Any idea originating from Risdale comes with a planet-sized asterisk attached.

Giving a team that finishes eighth over 46 games the chance to win promotion automatically devalues the league.

It’s an admission that the Championship’s not good enough to stand up on its own, that it needs these Americanised twists to sustain interest. The current set-up feels about right.

Parts of it are less exciting than others, but you need to go through those for the big Troy Deeney or Charlton 4-4 Sunderland moments to really mean something.

Football, and society as a whole, is increasingly reducing itself to a permanent highlight reel, stripping life-affirming memories of all emotion and context.

It’s already the most popular sport in the world, arguably the most popular pastime in human history.

Attendances outside of the Premier League are high and the pyramid remains English football’s greatest asset. Why is something unbroken being fixed?

Because the authorities can’t stop tinkering, can they? If the motivation was to make things better, it would at least be understandable.

But as we all know, it’s just about the money. They will never admit it, but there’s already far too much money in the game.

It distorts everything, especially at Championship level. Parachute payments and desperation for a top-flight payday already drive every decision.

While the rest of us wonder whether to wear an extra jumper or foot the gas bill, football can’t help but stuff another sausage roll into its bulging belly.

We’re already seeing signs of spectator fatigue at the top level, as empty seats are appearing at Everton, Manchester City and Tottenham thanks to antisocial kick-off times and unaffordable ticket prices.

This is also a generation fattened by daily televised matches, a diet of chocolate cake and fizzy pop for every meal, where the actual stakes of each one are decreasing.

Jepoardy is being minimised, with safety nets the size of continents constructed to keep an erestaz illusion of it alive.

We see this in the Champions League , the 48-team World Cup and the expanded European Championship.

All motivated by greed, with a token crust about inclusion tossed to those gullible enough to swallow it.

People don’t want more football, whether on television or through bigger competitions. People want meaningful games, with results decided on the pitch rather than the size of your owner’s wallet.

The EFL are mentally diving into their pool of coins like Scrooge McDuck, while dragging their feet on the ‘3UP’ campaign to expand promotion and relegation to and from the National League.

Alas, their solutions to ‘fix football’ are depressingly similar to successive governments, with cosmetic changes prioritised over tackling vested interests and financial inequality.

These people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. The play-offs are not broken and ‘fixing them’ should not be a priority.

Sometimes, the bravest and best thing to do is absolutely nothing. This is precisely one of those times.