The Premiership season is only a week old and already the glamour of it all has consumed me like Kotoshgiku Kazuhiro, that well-known Japanese Sumo wrestler, devoured a sushi steak bake at the opening of the new Tokyo Greggs.

Just 13 days into August and I’ve travelled on a flying bus bound for Slovenia which landed in Croatia, diced with death by holding court with Austria’s version of The Scheme in Graz before being whisked to safety, danced to the Proclaimers in a European rooftop nightclub and, most troublesome of all, fought valiantly to find a plug socket at Galabank.

Yes, let it not be said the life of a sports journalist is not filled with excitement. The long-suffering Mrs Mullen still thinks I’m in the aforementioned nightclub. My dignity still is.

I joke but of course already this season Scottish football has spat out more plot lines than a Hollyoaks script writer on glue.

We’ve had Joey Barton, Brendan Rodgers, Kolo Toure, the return of Rangers and of course Aberdeen, Hearts and Hibs bomb in Europe.

But is this what makes Scottish football the gift that keeps on giving? Or is it Kilmarnock announcing 11 players in the one go, wars of words between rival players, a game that has every competition sponsored by bookmakers but doesn’t allow players to bet, fixture catastrophes, a manager changing the size of their pitch and the fact nobody knows what to call a Killie Pie anymore?

I suggest the latter.

Our wee game is never short of talking points and no, it’s not always about the football. But who wants that?

With this in mind, spare a thought for those south of the border that have to make sense of this year’s circus.

There have been Presidential elections which passed with less billing than the English Premier League’s current campaign which starts today, with so much money splashed it would make Donald Trump look even redder in the face than normal.

We’ve had Paul Pogba return to Manchester United for the same amount of money that would feed a small African country for a year, while, at the point of writing, Sky Sports anchor Jim White tells us that Manchester City have offered £365million for Partick Thistle mascot Kingsley.

It has all got, well, a bit obscene. Increased television money has propelled already sky high budgets into the stratosphere, and England is now operating in a universe of its own.

The Beatles once sang money can’t buy you love. The Fab Four may have been on to something, as it also can’t always buy you quality either. For years the EPL has failed to cultivate their own players, simply importing ready-made stars that have been a success elsewhere and expect them to thrive.

Mr Pogba is the prime example. A kid at Old Trafford that wasn’t valued, the young Frenchman was forced to go Juventus to find his feet and establish himself as one of the finest players in the world before Manchester United emptied their bank account for him. Great scouting, boys.

In theory, the red shirt the 23-year-old will pull on will not be far removed to the one given to his granny in disgust four years ago. In reality the working class values which once embodied the badge that will sit on top of a body valued at £100m could not be further removed from the soulless beast it now represents.

On the football park, there may be little to separate the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, City and United. Off of it, they are quickly becoming identical arms of the same corporate machine.

As the North American market gets more involved in English football, the ethos and mentality of a ‘franchise’ has never been more applicable to the bigger Premier League clubs, driven more on merchandise, TV money, sponsorship and commercial image than discovering the next Paul Gascoigne.

So, as you sit in your plastic seat at Cappielow today, damp rising through your plimsolls and a Bovril with the heat of a thousand suns turning your top lip to ash, spare a thought for those less fortunate who will never get to experience such pleasures. And to the men who may be able to find a plug socket.