JUST when you think the top tier of English football cannot get any more dispiriting it goes and gives you another kick in the vinyl-coated orbs.

Take today as the prime example.

It’s bad enough that the FA Cup – recognised as the oldest, most glamorous, legend-stuffed domestic cup competition on the entire planet – is being played before the league season has still to be completed.

But, on top of that, the year 2011 will now forever be remembered as an annus horribilis in football folklore as the day when the Cup final does not have lone billing.

Today, May 15, FA Cup final day between two of the game’s most historic clubs, Manchester City and Stoke City, is not exclusively for that showdown.

For the first time it is shared with several Premier League fixtures, including Manchester United’s imminent coronation as the club with the most English championship titles to its name.

Yet tomorrow there are five other Premiership fixtures. That alone beggars the question why could not Man United’s visit to nearby Blackburn, the all-Lancashire spat between Blackpool and Bolton, Sunderland’s home visit of Wolves and Everton’s entertaining of West Brom, have been held over 24 hours and at the least afford Man City and Stoke their prized, precious day in the Wembley sun to themselves.

It’s quite cruelly ironic that for only the second time in the last 18 years that an FA Cup final does not feature any of Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool or Arsenal, it does not garner maximum exclusivity as always previously expected of the FA Cup final, which has traditionally signalled the conclusion to the English season.

Okay Manchester City are now reaping the Croesus-type rewards of its Middle East owner Sheikh Al Mansour by combining an appearance in this afternoon’s Wembley showpiece with qualification for next season’s Champions League, but they are still newcomers to a knockout final.

Opponents Stoke meanwhile are in their first FA Cup final... ever.

So on such a rare occurrence it’s little short of a disgrace that the occasion is downgraded, even degraded, by the appearance of other games on the same day.

And it demonstrates just how far apart the respective powers of the Football Association and the Premier League actually are.

Further evidence of that rift, and the distinct feeling that the game is perched perilously on a pimp-my-ride blinged-up handcart clutching a ticket destination marked hell, has come this week with Lord Triesman’s evidence to the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

Besides his charges against the sport’s world governing power FIFA, whose tawdriness should surely ensure its initials represent For I Fleece All, the former FA chairman also alleged that the Premier League would have more quickly backed England’s bid to stage the 2018 World Cup bid if its proposal for a 39th top-flight game in various venues across the world received FA backing.

Lord Triesman’s allegation has been roundly refuted by the Premier League’s chief executive Richard Scudamore, but it highlights how the two bodies, who should be united in maximising the best of our national game, are self-serving empires who mistrust the other.

As the current campaign draws to a close, albeit in its arse-about-faced way given today’s fixture fiasco, maybe it’s time the FA and the Premier League took time out to invest in some of the furniture which will grace the BBC’s new £200 million northern headquarters in Salford.

Among the fixtures and fittings are 28 collaboration pods – hooded two-seater creations whereby the “interplay of ideas” can be exchanged. With them there’s no escaping actually sitting across from each other – although, based on the intransigence of the FA and the Premier League, collaboration would be replaced by the sulks of taciturn teenagers because they can’t get their own way.

It’s enough to make you weep.

AHEAD of today’s FA Cup final I have to apologise to Stoke fans Linda, Kevin and Chris – you know who you are – for believing their cup run would end in the semi-final against Bolton. How wrong I was.

So on to this afternoon’s Wembley duel. I could tip Man City in the hope that my ruinous forecasting record founders again. But no, I actually think Stoke will prevail 2-1 and lift the FA Cup for the first time.