Football regulator will still make errors just like referees – but finally fans might be prioritised

YES, of course there  are rights and wrongs in football. Whether many will be cured by a regulator is open to much doubt.

After all, it’s possible to  give him a different name —   a referee.

That, as you know, has already been pinched but our refs make plenty of mistakes, even with help from several quarters.

There would be nothing infallible about this freshly-minted bureaucrat, either, and he will not come cheaply.

The judgment that football should have a regulator has been made by a fan-led review under Tory MP Tracey Crouch.

 It contains ten key points and includes an improved owners’ and directors’ test — and more say for supporters.

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Indeed, the cost of regular checks on club books, inquiries over alleged injustices, ensuring  player costs are limited to 70 per cent of a club’s revenues, and so forth, will be enormous.

And the problem is that 70 per cent of Manchester United’s revenue, because of Champions League football, has given them a decent amount to spend.

Yet 70 per cent of Brentford’s revenue doesn’t allow them to compete . . . 

Most of this, I suspect, will be heaped on the Premier League, plus just a little on the FA.

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The FA? It is a shocking commentary on the effectiveness of the governing body that the report all but ignores them.

The Government now plans swift implementation but much of it should be welcomed like a giant hole in Wembley’s pitch. It is messing with an industry which works better than most and it’s hard to see what football has in common with banks or other financial institutions who also have regulators.

There is, in my view,  only one way a regulator would prevent bankruptcy at badly-run or impoverished clubs.

And that’s by milking the Premier League of vast sums  — also known as chewing the hand that feeds them.

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The case for the Premier League must be made. It has grown from the threadbare First Division into one of the world’s greatest domestic competitions.

It has a worldwide audience and makes enough revenue to attract football lovers and businessmen to club ownership.

In doing so, it also passes down cash to countless good causes, as well as to lower-level clubs, making it an important benefactor.

I wouldn’t wish to suggest that we allow free entry for suspect characters around clubs — owners and agents among them.

But that is also true of many businesses for which regulators would be poison.

Football, though, is glamorous as well as successful, with lots of TV and fame thrown in.

Politicians are bound to find meddling irresistible. Some even know the difference between Aston Villa and West Ham.

Now, we have to assume there will be a cost to implementing the ten key points.

Control and bureaucracy do not come cheap, so much so that the whole thing could be in the HS2 wasted money league.

But we have to remember  the Premier League is the envy of world sport, so why break it because Bury went bust?

It’s staggering that there are 92 full-time professional clubs in England and that only Bury have gone out of business.

More would have done if the Prem hadn’t handed out heaps of money during Covid.

And for those that think the Prem should do more, we are already giving away £1.6billion to other leagues, grassroots  and charity over the next three seasons.

How much more giving can we do without damaging the top flight itself?

The logic is flawed — why should Norwich, for example, give more cash to Stoke, whose owners are worth £7bn?

And one of the big problems with the proposed directors’ and owners’ test is that those you may want to keep out are already here.

How do you root them out? More work for the regulator, I presume?

Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk