At the time of writing, the EFL had not told football fans to drop everything and head to the supermarket to stock up on its preferred energy drink. Maybe that's because their member clubs had already done the dirty work.

An organisation running tiers two, three and four of the national game would look a little unseemly as a giant billboard for caffeinated fizz. Its Twitter account did not promote the drink Carabao by way of direct, up-front message.

The clubs? Different matter.

On Monday, Carlisle United issued the following statement: "Carabao Energy Drink is now stocked in Morrison's! Visit your local store to try the great tasting flavours! #BringItOn!"

Not the sponsor's words. The club's. Or that's how it was designed to look. And the Blues were not alone. The same catch-line, the same hashtag, appeared on the official accounts of several others in the levels beneath the Premier League.

Not content with obliging club staff to rise at 4.15am for a cup draw, the League now turns their places of work into official hoardings. Other sponsors or "commercial partners" increasingly get the same privileges too.

Now, let's not pretend advertising and football clubs is anything new. Nor have the latter been particularly resistant since the gate first opened. Yet generally a basic distinction has survived.

Long before the Allams of Hull, Jimmy Hill tried to change his club's name. He wanted Coventry City to be known as Coventry Talbot to capitalise on links with a car manufacturer. Duly prevented, he instead commissioned a home shirt dominated by Talbot's 'T' symbol.

It was striking, and divisive, as was much of what the pioneering Hill said and did. The difference, though - as with other sponsorship decisions, safe or controversial, subtle or brash - is that clubs could generally exercise a strong degree of control.

Mostly, today, they still can. Social media has gained new outlets for commercial activity, whether club-specific or centrally imposed, and it would be naive not to expect to see these exploited.

Yet this latest hawking, which puts the sponsor's words into the club's own mouth, is too much. It drags the club badge - one of the last, traditional, symbolic things in football - into the promotional blurb, cheapening it accordingly.

Whatever choice remained with Carlisle (and Plymouth, and Notts County, and QPR, and more) before pressing 'tweet', they appear to have had little input on the words, since they were the same across the board. It looked, from this distance, like one more example of clubs having to lay down some of their honour in order to get their hands on the filthy lucre coming in.

So stand by, next, for Keith Curle interrupting his post-match interview to deliver a message from our sponsors, or, on the pitch, Danny Grainger pausing before taking a corner so he can neck, as instructed, a can of the League's chosen beverage.

Off limits? Not when those in power are increasingly happy to cast clubs as characters in the Simpsons scene, where a famous soft drink firm is presiding over elementary school mathematics classes of the future:

"If you have three Pepsis and drink one, how much more refreshed are you?" asks the 'teacher'. "You, the redhead in the Chicago school system?"

"Pepsi?"

"Partial credit!"

This, as well as the right to take an English cup draw off live television and into the middle of the night for the supposed benefit of the Chinese market, is what Carabao's money has acquired from the EFL. Naturally, the desperation to chase the Premier League's tails as a money-making beast has led to all these wheezes. If you can live with the image, EFL chief executive Shaun Harvey's skirt may as well be permanently hitched.

It is not the content or nature of the products that jars the most, even if there is only so much sucrose (43g), taurine (1g), caffeine (50mg), inositol (30mg), nicothinamide (33mg), D-Panthenol (8mg) and sodium benzonate that it would be wise to consume in an average day.

Nor is it to argue against most advertising forms. Put a certain logo on the shirt, around the ground, along the ribbons, against the interview backdrop or on material to retweet; that is one thing, and people can hold their noses if they so wish.

But appropriate the club's own voice - and hence its local standing, authority and reach - to deliver the slogan?

Too demeaning. Far from respectful. And not, perhaps, in perfect line with the section of the EFL's website which makes proud play of its 72 members' history and status.

These clubs, the League write, "embody the unique heritage, pride and passion of the communities they represent".

Amen. And if those communities have a Morrison's nearby, it now seems, then so much the better.