IT’S the most repeated cliché in football, and one that should be eradicated from the language.

“The fans are the most important people in the game”, gets spouted willy-nilly by all sorts of people from players to politicians. It is complete tosh, of course, if you judge by the reality of where fans really sit in the pecking order of football.

You don’t often hear club directors saying it, because they know, they really know, that they are the most important people in football. Well, that’s the way most of them act.

Players? They come and go, especially nowadays when long-term contracts are the exception rather than the norm. Sure they will praise the fans to the highest and kiss the club badge when they score a goal, but their loyalty is to their wallets, first and foremost, and let’s not blame them for that.

The bosses at the SFA, SPFL, Uefa and Fifa are absolutely certain that they are the most important people in the game, and the arrogance displayed by Fifa’s high heid yins in particular has now come back to bite them. There is only one thing wrong about the downfall of Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini – it came far too late.

Don’t get me started on the people who really do run football – the television companies. Does a single one of them care what fans want? No, because they know they can schedule their choice of matches to be screened when they want, and if that means loyal supporters having to get up early and trek to far off stadia for a lunchtime kick off then tough – money talks.

If the fans really were the most important people in football then the game would be played in what passes for a summer in Scotland; every stadia would have those much-desired standing areas as well as luxurious seating; you would be able to buy an alcoholic drink without paying through the nose for an executive box; clubs would lay on decent entertainment before matches and go out of their way to cater for families; and every club would win every game, because that’s what fans want most of all.

The reality is that fans are treated like walking cash machines. Football’s bosses know that the loyalty of supporters means they will put up with dreadful stadia, appalling food, kick-off times that would try the patience of a saint, and a standard of play that has been deteriorating in Scotland over many years, and pay through the nose for it.

The answer to Scottish football’s woes is being touted as greater fan ownership of clubs. So what fans are we talking about? Those among the Celtic support who thinks it’s fun to fling smoke flares and get the club fined? Or those Rangers bigots who insist on singing The Billy Boys when their own club has told them it’s not wanted? Will fan ownership deal with those numpties?

Both clubs have really tried hard in recent years to deal with the low lifes in their support, while the SFA and SPFL are powerless to act – do you really see Celtic being expelled from the Scottish Cup after the idiocy of three fans at Stranraer, or Rangers being docked points every time The Billy Boys is sung? No, not least because that would be unfair on the vast majority of supporters.

Fan ownership of clubs is no guarantee of good behaviour, and I think such a system of ownership is beyond the reach of Scottish football.

Scotland’s sports minister Jamie Hepburn weighed in last week to say: “I firmly believe there is a powerful and persuasive case for supporter involvement and ownership of their clubs.”

The problem for Hepburn and the other politicians promoting this nirvana of fan ownership is a simple one of history. Most clubs in Scotland are companies owned by shareholders. Asking such people to give up their property so fans can own a club will not happen – Ann Budge at Hearts being the exception that proves the rule.

Far better and much quicker would be the introduction of a fan registration system, where every person who wants to attend a match has to become a member of the football club he or she supports, with match tickets only sold to those who join.

If fans will not wear such a system, and they won’t, then how are they going to own their clubs? Directors would have to have the final say in any case and by and large they don’t want fans owning clubs – or else why did Dave King and his fellow directors at Rangers knock back the £500,000 loan offered to them by Rangers First which would have meant more shares for fans and not directors?

Therein lies the problem for those who see fan ownership as a solution to Scottish football’s ills. The only way for such ownership to happen would be for the Scottish Government to pass a law compelling directors to sell their shares to fans.

Such a law would be seen as political interference by Fifa, and Scotland would be expelled from international football. But hey, if that’s what the fans want, let’s give it to them, because after all, they are the most important people in the game.