RICHARD ‘Baldrick’ Scudamore, the contumacious Premier League chief executive behind the much-criticised proposal for an ‘international round’ of matches, has drafted a revised plan designed to sidestep opposition from FIFA and the Football Association.

Scudamore was forced to bin his original plans after Sepp Blatter indicated such a venture would undermine England’s 2018 World Cup bid, accusing Scudamore of having a brain so small that if a hungry cannibal cracked his head open, ‘there wouldn’t be enough to cover a small water biscuit’.

However, Scudamore is determined that his job should involve more foreign junkets and has announced plans for a series of five four-team international tournaments to take place during a so-called winter break. Instead of using the break to rest their players – surely the ‘fucking point’ of a winter break, said Blatter – clubs will be forced to jet off to Africa, Asia, North America and Australia to compete for a bunch of pointless trophies that nobody but Scudamore gives a tiny dribble of piss about.

“It is vital that we have a winter break,” argued Scudamore. “Nobody wants to be freezing their tits off on an icy windswept pitch in January when they could be in Hong Kong or Sydney or Florida. We can’t stand still – we must find new and more ridiculous ways to entirely diminish the credibility of the English game and flog it off to the highest and most gullible bidder. I mean, who wouldn’t pay £10 million to watch Hull City Vs Stoke on a patch of wasteland in Harare?”

Meanwhile, Football Association chairman Lord Triesman is less than enamoured with Scudamore’s not-so subtle attempts at rehashing the 39th game proposal. He said: “Scudamore wouldn’t recognise a subtle plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing ‘subtle plans are here again’.”

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