The FA Cup semi-finals are staged at Wembley for one reason and one reason only.
The Football Association needs the dough. And when 81,445 souls are prepared to stump up serious cash to watch this sort of mediocrity, they are not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
But this was an FA Cup semi-final weekend which was - bar the penalty shootout that saw Manchester United through - stripped of any thrill, notable only for its inconvenience for so many.
There were two marathons in London on Sunday - the one that Kelvin Kiptum completed in the second fastest time ever and the one that multitudes faced trying to get to and from Wembley Stadium.
But the reasons semi-finals should not be at Wembley are not just logistical and financial, although the notion of making Manchester City and Sheffield United haul down to a neutral venue in the south is plainly ludicrous.
Wembley should be the ultimate target, a special place for special games. Having the last-four contests here dims the lustre of the final.
But while it is a special place, Wembley is not always conducive to providing the conditions for entertaining football. It is not often you could describe the atmosphere here as invigorating and over the course of the two semi-finals, it was overwhelmingly flat.
The punters at this Brighton-United match were probably too preoccupied with worries about catching the last overcrowded train home while those at the City-Sheffield game were just bored with the entirely routine nature of proceedings.
And in the vastness of Wembley, there was no way City could have been even remotely ruffled by opposition supporters. It might have been a shade different inside somewhere such as Villa Park, for example.
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But Wembley cannot only be soulless, it can also look like a difficult pitch on which to produce a flowing game, players seeming to catch their studs in the turf with some regularity.
The final, on June 3, will be a belting occasion but after this most forgettable of weekends, the automatic staging of the semi-finals here should now stop.
But with the FA needing that money, don’t bank on that happening.
