STOP all the clocks, cut off the BT Sport subscription.

Football should be in mourning today. Bury the coloured scarves, swap flags, banners and terracing chants for black ties, glum faces and mumbling hymns.

This weekend hundreds of thousands of supporters will converge on football grounds across England, a ritual they have come accustomed to over generations, but there will be something different this time round.

As of this midweek, the soul has gone from the game. English football as we once knew it is dead.

No longer can we speak of the ‘romance of the FA Cup’, or look at the Premier League, supposedly the best in the world, as some shining light for us all to look to and gasp in wonder.

After this week, there is nothing left but greed, desperation and a repulsiveness which tells of a game that has become an out-of-control monster that will very shortly consume itself.

Speaking of consuming things, let’s jump back to Gander Green Lane, Sutton, the setting for the first of two fatal blows dealt to a once fine institution that is English football.

With big guns Arsenal arriving in the FA Cup, all eyes were on this little team and their moment of glory. They may have lost 2-0, but the immediate story was all about how well Paul Doswell’s team performed, how the whole place had been swept along by the majesty of the event and how the club would be all the better for it.

Then an obese man on a bench ate a pie, and all that positive publicity and momentum was snuffed out in one gulp. Bookmakers had placed odds on sub goalie Wayne Shaw eating the calorie-laden treat and he duly obliged. No matter what he did it for, it was a tasteless act by him and bookie in question. Apparently the football story isn't enough.

Nothing is sacred anymore, it seems.

We then jumped forward a couple of days to the news that Claudio Ranieri has been sacked by world superpower Leicester City, not even 24 hours after they lost their Champions League last 16 first leg away tie in Seville.

That was the final straw.

What the Italian did for that club was nothing short of a miracle when you consider they were relegation fodder the previous season before he guided them to the Premier League.

Imagine Hamilton Accies winning the Premiership (stop laughing) and times it by 100. You’d still not be close.

For him to be dismissed after just nine months is disgusting. If you had said to any Leicester fan a year and a half ago ‘You can win the league next season but you’ll get relegated the following campaign’ they’d have bitten your hand off. They’re not even down yet, either.

The 65-year-old is one of the most loveable characters in the game and it was clear he had taken Leicester to his heart. There was talk that he’d lost the dressing room, but the success he delivered will never, ever be repeated. Ranieri’s Leicester will be the biggest romance in Premier League history, that should count for something.

Sadly, it doesn’t.

This is the reason so many are becoming disenchanted by English football and its greed. Loyalty is of no value, just pound signs.

I did chuckle when I saw Mark Warburton’s name on the short list for the job. For me, it is the man on the other side of Glasgow who is the prime candidate for such a job given how he has transformed those at Swansea, Liverpool and Celtic.

For now though, let’s be grateful our crackpot of a game, and all its weird and wonderful traits, is the more civilised cousin compared to our bampot neighbours south of the border.