Giving evidence to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport ("DCMS") Select Committee this morning, Lord Triesman, the first independent Chairman of the FA, revealed how FA proposals to reform football had been killed by the Premier League in 2009. Triesman described how carefully considered proposals for the FA to regulate finance, debt, licensing, supporter ownership and other key areas across the English game were killed by representatives of the professional game, led by the Premier League "in two minutes" with no discussion.
Lord Triesman has been supplied with a copy of those proposals by someone inside the FA and gave them to the Committee. The Committee will at some point publish them, but in the meantime thanks to key supporters of reform within the FA, I publish them here for the first time.
These proposals, that were never properly debated, aim to restore the FA's historical role as regulator of English football and to tackle issues of key concern. This is not a revolutionary blueprint, but a well thought out set of ideas to bring sanity to the sport. They were killed by financial interests within the game.
I suggest interested readers compare them to the FA's head in the sand submission to the DCMS Committee (available here). The contrast is stark and damning.
Key proposals of the May 2009 document
On finance:
On debt (note review of the idea of debt limits):
On encouraging supporter ownership following insolvency:
On reforming the "Football Creditors" rule:
On the "Fit and Proper Persons Test":
Why were the Premier League so keen to kill this measured and reasonable document?
Why won't the clubs allow the FA to regulate the game (Triesman called the current regulatory system "outsourced" to the leagues)?
Time to put this right.
LUHG
