Question Time Football Special

Question Time Football Special

e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e 9 10 hello and welcome to this special Question Time edition of we love you football we’re streaming live on YouTube for the next 60 minutes or so and the live cast will then be available as a recording on all the usual podcast platforms I’m gr Miller I’m a fair game Ambassador former Sports correspondent and presenter with a variety of media outlets and I now around a sports consultancy called media View and I’m based in luten which gives you a clue where my allegiances lie and it’s my pleasure to be the regular host of uh fair game podcast we love you football now the format of this live episode will be this we have a distinguished panel of hopefully five football experts covering the range of current football issues and I’ll be introducing them to you very shortly and in a slight change from the usual Question Time style or perhaps maybe not we will have questions from invited guests who are on the live cast with us to generate what I’m sure will be an Illuminating discussion to shed some light on the current footballing problems and issues so let me get straight on with it and introduce you to our panel Clive Betts is a candidate for the labor party in the forthcoming general election and he was chair of the allp party parliamentary football group and is a member of the football supporters Association Paul atham is a prospective candidate for the conservative party in next week’s election and an Everton season ticket holder Dominic Lord Addington is a liberal Democrat peer in the House of Lords who sat on the national plan for sports and recreation committee Dr Christina philippo is one of the country’s leading experts on footballing finance and a senior lecturer at Portsmouth University and we’re hoping to be joined a little later on by Henry Winter who’s an award-winning football journalist and broadcaster and formerly Chief football writer for the times so let’s get things underway with our first question I know he’s on the line and it comes from Mark paleos the co-owner and chair of tram Rovers if you give us your question CL Mark I should say and let us know who you would like it to be addressed to first of all and we can’t hear you Mark if you can just uh unmute yourself where and way we go no we can still see a red tick I can see still a red tick on my screen if you can just unmute yourself and then we’ll be able to hear your your question or I can read it for you if you have a technical problem no we still can’t hear you I’ll tell you what I’ll do I’ll read uh I’ll read your question if you carry on and see if you can get through I don’t know this is the question from Mark and it’s this the voting structure in the efl is weighted heavily in favor of the championship the structure in the Premier League favors the top six and clubs in the National League appear to have no voice at all in short the efl and the Premier League don’t speak for the whole of football football and indeed it can be argued they don’t speak for the majority of their members so how can it make sense in the bill as drafted with the backs with with the powers that there are for the regulator to intervene in the flow of funds uh which can only be triggered by the Premier League and not the football the football league shouldn’t the power asks Mark shouldn’t the power rest more with the independent regulator I hope that question makes sense let’s let’s go first sorry gry yet it do and I’d just like to say that really what what’s at the bottom of this is is something that um you seem to be leaving it to the same parties who’ve made such a success of the last I don’t know 50 years of the game in terms of organizing it and it actually falls back to them and potentially they will uh once again uh create a suboptimal solution and who would you like to put the question to first of all i’ started with my own mate Clive Betts who actually play years ago right Clive if you’ve got the gist of the question over to you yeah I think Mark put his finger on a difficult issue in the legislation that we considered uh before Parliament was dissolved um it’s it’s a very very constrained form of consultation about how football finances might be redistributed essentially you’re back to square one uh the two leagues sitting down can they reach agreement if they can’t ultimately the regulator can come in and then ask both leags to put with their own suggestions and then the regulator picks one of them I’m sorry I I have got real problems with that whole process uh I I think that uh in terms of how the money is distributed the regulator should be able to take a lot of advice and and seek views from a range of bodies uh from from clubs in general not just the leagues from the national league guests as well as the efl and the Premier League and also from the FSA fair game and others who represent what we actually have is a fan dead review which made proposals and we’ve ended it with a mechanism for looking at the distribution funds which excludes fans completely so I think that’s something that will have to be addressed when we come back to consider a new bill in the next Parliament Lord Addington we seem to have a lot of work still to do um well basically yes we didn’t even get the build didn’t get to the Lords that’s why he didn’t get a wash up deal on it so you’ve got a problem here that how I put it this the government I think wanted football to sort this out itself gave it all the time it could and we had two Waring factions that would not agree so basically it’s we’ve now got Parliament is going to get much more involved and these questions are going to come to the four fairly regularly who decides what is the fun you know how much money and what is the function of that money because I mean I put my cards on the table I’m not a great football fan indeed I’m a what’s left of left of a rugby player uh but it’s a case of you’ve got something which seems to be accepted as a cultural asset and we’re trying to let a small click run it again and nobody really thinks that’s a good idea Paul Athens what’s what’s your take yeah thanks very much for your question mark um I haven’t been signed Parliament so I didn’t get an opportunity to delve into the details of the white paper I do have the white paper here um however I’m also very aware the whole purpose of the high white paper is to allow Parliament to debate these sort of things um unfortunately I didn’t control the timing of the election if we had have got to the point where the debate the bill had gone through to the Lords as sort of um Lord Dominic um highlights that actually these are the sort of things that have been refined as the bill progresses all bills have a have a go through a process where they still need to be amended and debated within Parliament and actually I think the point you’re making is is completely fair and for me the the fact is is that I think the broad party agreement on the implementation of a regulator for the first time and and that regulator needs to have the teeth to be able to actually hold um football uh clubs who are breaking the rules to account and so that premise is the premise that we need to stick to and actually then in Parliament that’s when we debate the detail and I know that my party is committed to bringing this bill back to Parliament um when uh Parliament returns post the election on the 4th of July Christina philippo you’ve spent a lot of time and effort on all of this how frustrated are you feeling right now it’s a great question um yeah look if we’re kind of talking about the the back stop obviously there’s there’s a there’s a long way to go from a from our perspective um like you said we’ve spent a lot of time looking at the finances and it feels like every time it it kind of takes a while and by the time it comes in again as a bill we’re going to have to have a whole set of in because we’ll be looking at another set of yet another set of accounts and you have all Frozen which is not a good sign oh I think we’ve lost Christina there momentarily just a brief word from the two would be politicians how confident can we be or how high is the priority for this uh in you know in the labor party and the conservative party what can you tell us about that my guess is we we we’ve got a good chance of getting it in the first session because you know there will be different some of the details we’ve just discussed but the principle of having a regulator thinking to hold to account clubs uh where owners may be doing bad things and uh you know ruining the the community assets uh that have been uh held in those communities for Generations um yeah we we we want to have that that regulator to make sure that the the finan of football and the ownership of football is better controlled uh for the benefit of fans there are differences I think about how we go about some of the redistribution issues the back stop and others um you know H how far we write in uh the way in which uh fans should be consulted properly by clubs but there are details I think the overall principle is there so the bill is there in that sense is a good framework uh I think if labor election it probably will come back with one or two tweaks we’ve already said we will deal with parachute payments differently which I welcome uh so so hopefully there will be something ready to go uh now for Mo much of the other legislation for new government it takes time so the few bills that that from the last Parliament that we are happy to pick up and run with I think this could be one of them and therefore would have a chance of going fairly quickly Paul am I right in thinking that both the conservatives and labor are agreed on this one that they both want to get it through whichever party takes control next week yeah that is correct right it is a Manifesto commitment for us to re return that bill to Parliament and the fact is as has already been highlighted the first stages of the bill debate had taken place so if the conservatives if my party are successful on reforming a government on the 5th of July I I I haven’t been in Parliament to be able to say when but certainly as a new MP I be pushing for that to happen as soon as possible and the fact is is that that bill can just be reintroduced either in its current form or tweaked um in quite short order okay thank you for that that’s time to move on to our second question and it comes from Marian Broadbent who’s a board member of the Luton Town supporters trust hello to you Marian I’m not quite sure where you are but it’s good to ah there you are very good excellent I can now see you so let let’s have your question please and tell us um who would you like it to be asked of but anyway first of all let’s hear your question um I you’ve touched on it already in the conversation I’ve heard but since the start of the Premier League uh the financial divide between every division seems to have got wider and wider um and that really means that to be successful a club has to um to be successful on the pitch um a club has to gamble with their Financial Security off the porch um I think that inevitably has led to trouble and it’s not surprising 64 of the top 92 clubs have gone into Administration during that period um so I guess question is how do we stop the ever increasing divide between divisions um and start to reward clubs um that’ll well run and reward clubs taking Behavior sanal Behavior into account um and actually I would be happy for anyone to answer the question well Christina it’s a finance question it’s right up your street how tough is it and what can we do from uh Marian’s question yeah thanks gron sorry about dropping off the the joys of uh parenting um it’s it’s a it’s a really good point and ultimately that’s the Crux of of the issue here because it’s the cliff edges between the leagues that cause a lot of the issues a lot of the gambling that we see um Championship is the worst league in terms of if you look at the financial side and the reason for that is they’re all you know effectively gambling everything to get into the Premier League the problem is once they’ve got into the Premier League it’s not as if everything is Rosy there um you know if if you look at last year’s accounts seven of of the 20 Premier League clubs are technically insolvent so it’s not as if it’s all Rosy at the top either um and it is about trying to create a more sort of Level Playing Field across the divisions so that you know the bottom of the division above and the top of the division below are in Far More similar territory rather than these huge cff edges that we see at the moment um and then all the solutions that we’ve seen like parachute payments Etc create other issues so it’s about finding a solution that works while not having the issues in the first place so it’s about decreasing those Cliff edges ultimately Lord adding to what would the sport and Recreation committee saying about football’s finances nothing uh they weren’t talking about football at all we were looking at Grassroots Sports and Mass participation I’m the sports spokesman so that’s probably a better answer to you the thing it’s been explained to me as it’s going through here is you have this incentive that everybody is saying if we just get promoted everything’s wonderful we’ve got to actually put something in break says that you don’t do that and then apply it across the board so somebody isn’t take playing that ER rolling dice the whole time and let’s face in any if you regard yourself as an industry which probably isn’t the best way of looking out football if you did I mean the the accountants would be would have carved you up and sent your way long ago other sports are as bad Rugby Union probably should be preaching to you not at all and there is talk of them getting a regulator in or people looking at it but sport has got to make sure it maintains its product and make sure that he actually behaving with normal business practice and unless you address that that you are in certain aspect effects you are behaving a normal business practice and that you should be able to survive demotion is also something that we should be looking at here so the club survives you live on hope you live on expectation it’s making sure that’s still there uh is something that we should be looking at through here there will still be people who will you know will gamble on this and say because if you pay millions of pounds for brilliant Striker and he breaks his leg as all sportsmen are one slip in the the changing rooms away from being out forever you’ve got to bear that in mind to your structure and I don’t think many people do normal business practice uh Paul Athens as an Everton fan that’s right up your street right now how do you respond uh yeah no I mean I could wax lyrical about the uh woes of Everton both on and off the field at length I think the the I don’t really disagree with anything that’s that’s been said so far I mean the whole point is and where there is cross party agreement is the need for this regulator to come in to do that and as part of that the licensing scheme that would be introduced for owners of football clubs to try and block Rogue owners because as as has sort of been alluded to there is a difference between a club having a significant problems on the field due to injury or something like that and actually an owner taking over a club in order to rinse that club of its finances and we have seen that especially in the in the lower leagues and I think I think Ryan Reynolds reom documentary highlighted the past Rex and that happening particularly um noticeably there and so the regulator has to be able to have the teeth to be able to stop owners like that there is a difference between owners not necessarily making the best financial decisions and owners actively damaging the football club by essentially treating it as capital to take loans out of Etc and that’s that’s the thing that we really need to avoid financial decisions uh Clive bets wearing your football supporters Association hat and the uh all party commission I mean this is again something that you’ve been dealing with for some time yes now I W talk about the uh situation at shepher Wednesday I think we were rated the 123rd out of 123 clubs in Europe for financial sustainability so uh that’s one trophy we’ve won in the last few years but yeah it is about the overall distribution of money as well as the bad behavior of some owners of clubs uh the AFL gave us a very very good briefing at the committee stage on the bill when we were considering this I think they pointed out that uh 90 that only eight% of the the clubs uh the top of the league the Premiership uh and the uh the parachute payment CLS basically have got about 90% of the wealth it’s con so concentrated in a handful of clubs that’s the premier clubs and we they call them the 25 but the Premier League clubs and the five with parachute payments uh and just so uneven that you get these Cliff edges and some’s overreaching themselves so uh getting a fair distribution down to the efl absolutely key to this um the the the government were determined to hold on to parachute payments which quite frankly is a nonsense that when the Premier League talk about the money they give to the FL 80% % have actually given in Parachute payments 80% is given worsening the problems uh rather than improving now no one’s saying that clubs that go uh down from the Premier League to the championship don’t need some extra help they probably do what you’ve got to do is to way that up with the Distortion of the competition in the championship by those STS that come down if they’re giving a lot of money in Parachute payments then having a grossly unfair Advantage with the other clubs in the championship and then those clubs trying to overreach themselves so sorting that complicated problem out and putting more money down the leagues right down the leagues uh is right and M panas also raised a very important Point uh you know within the efl I think the efl has to look at how it distributes its own funds because the gap between the championship uh and League one is significant as well so there a lot of of thought got to going but in the end it’s a is a fairer distribution of money removing the cliff edges and then sorting the the Rope chairman and owners as well Christina how do we bang heads together then because the well the chief executive of the Premier League has made it quite clear that he really doesn’t want to change the status quo at all well th this this is the problem isn’t it um there’s obviously a conflict between between the two um the concerns are um on on the parachute payment side obviously if clubs go down they are very likely to go into Administration in the current scenario because of the cliff Hedges so therefore that’s why parachute payments are there in the first place however as we know parachute payments then create distortionary effect and create problems in the championship for all the other clubs um the the issue is how do you get people in the room to agree and when they are consistently looking at things from completely different directions and I think the other issue that kind of comes into this that nobody’s really talked about is the legal aspect as well because if you start talking about parachute payments then there’s there’s some FIFA rules as well around what government can and can’t do in terms of their involvement and that can create a legal issue if you start trying to force the problem so it’s how do you get effectively create an atmosphere for mediation and arbitration to get the issue sorted out um rather than trying to get it through legislation I think is is what the problem is here Maran let me throw a question back at you as a member of the Luton Town supporters trust Luton of course have just been relegated how would you feel about not receiving parachute payments um I think we believe I mean I’m I’m bias because I believe we’re a well-run club and run by fans trying to to make sure that their custodians and that the club will be there for the future um so I think all the fans would agree I don’t know but I think the club would would like to do away with parachute payments I can’t speak for them but that is my sense because we believe in Fair football and it sort of seems at the moment that you kind of have this Choice as a club which is to cheat what I call cheating by overspending and not being called to account on it um and potentially risk your Club going into Administration or you don’t and you’re potentially uncompetitive and parip payments is just one element all of that you’ve been talking about but yeah I think we support that just add sorry that say and L were very well served in our bill committee we had Rachel Hopkins who was uh was a member for member for L South uh these matters and certainly raised them on behalf of clubs like lve done a fantastic job over the years considering where they were they got the penalties didn’t they for having the financial difficulties uh into the non league and then come up to the Premier League uh and have done it the proper way and I know now I look to build a new ground uh and really move the club forward so Rachel is a great Advocate and I’m sure she always will be for your course so we’re down this time but we’ll be back we’ll be back yep that’s the one okay let’s move on thank you for that let’s move on to our next question and it comes from Ian ma maa who’s director of Cambridge United so uh Ian can we have your question please yes thank you uh it’s principally a question for Clyde but also for Paul as our future MP I attended the Parliamentary committee looking at the uh the bill and I thought it did a a very good job and I noted Clive did a very good job on Richard Masters in uh quizzing him over his lobbying for parachute payments i’ interested to uh hear how influential the committee was and did the committee approach it with a fixed mind and did the committee change its mind at all based on presentations or was it just stuck on party lines and not moving so that’s principally a question for Clive who was uh in the room and the question for you Paul is given that you’re now a candidate and hopefully would be an MP uh would you support allowing the regulator to uh affect parachute payments because currently as drafted the bill says that parachute payments are excluded from Financial consideration Clive tabled a very good amendment to uh M to that would you do the same well Clive let’s go to you for the first part of the question then we’ll come to Paul after that yes um I think the Govern had a fixed mind uh and the clause on parachute payments was a very strange one it didn’t seem to fit The Narrative of the bill it just was dropped in and um it is just referred to the uh my question of Mr Masters about lobbying there’s no doubt in my view that the the the Premier League were not very happy with the bill at all they don’t like the principle of regulator they don’t like the principle of redistribution and the s that was given to them was well you can keep your parachute payments we won’t interfere with those uh and that’s what was happening so certainly there can be a change and I think there will be because in the end the labor front bench which probably initially wasn’t convinced uh of the the challenge to the government did support that challenge and put their own Amendment down uh to effectively allow parachute payments to be removed so I think that will will be tattled in the new legislation but yeah your government’s coming with fixed Minds to committies sometimes you can move them and persuade them I think this persuasion to do about the back stop powers of the regulator whether the regulator could intervene earlier U as as as M Palos was saying uh that that’s something I think we will come back to hopefully we can push a labor front bench on that one as well so uh yeah I hopefully uh government’s coming with a a bit of flexibility to listen to arguments in committee Paul do you want to pick up on the football regulator part of the question yeah thanks for your question in um I obviously haven’t sat through the entire committee stage and so and also I’m I’m sort of here as as a conservative but also as myself so I’m sure that the bill as presented by the government there’s a reason that they were against it um my personal view is as an everon fan if uh if the Premier League don’t really like it then it’s probably the right thing to do um so I personally at the current stage would probably support allowing the regulator to look into parachute payments um and on your sort of question about how open the committee are I spent my career in the Army so I’m not a career politician so maybe I’m just too naive on this but I think that actually what the committee stages are often the area where you do get broad cross-party consensus and you do get an depth look at it and if you can play put um put those recommendations to government in a in a uh pragmatic way generally speaking I think government would be willing to consider it so from my personal side I would back giving The Regulators as much tee isue possible uh and from a government side I’d like to think that they would always take committee recommendations uh with uh a view of uh at least considering them that makes sense very very hopeful attitude towards committees in government uh if the government have decided that they don’t want to do it they will have to be forced I mean it’s just is I mean the I mean if the government decide you’ve got a minister who may not care about football taking a bill through Parliament reading through with a Secretary of State who says oh my God why am I having to do this unless you get it set up and you put pressure on it won’t happen now hopefully Clive with a man of great influence provid ing he wins his seat will be able to apply that pressure but if you don’t do it these things you’re in an incredibly dogged fight over this and it is a powerful Lobby and it has been defending itself quite savagely I personally feel that this bill I would like it to be seen as a social asset and actually giving it a few more powers and responsibilities to communities as a group uh something with a huge reach I don’t think unless you are prepared to stand your ground and cause a bit of trouble you can expect these uh things to come right because government haven’t wanted to do this they’re doing it because they’ve had to Ian do you feel reassured by those responses uh I am largely reassured on the basis of the polls suggest that Clive’s view will probably hold sway so uh good on you Clive and I look forward to sitting up through the night and watching your results come in there we are okay let’s move on to our next question which again I’ll have to read out uh it comes from Pete green who’s the communications manager at women in football and it’s this in the original fan LE review equality diversity and inclusion was considered fundamental yet uh it was notable by its absence when the bill was finally published does EDI matter and what role should the regulator have to ensure best practice who wants to pick up on that Lord Addington basically unless you make things like this a priority they get pushed to the back of the queue and get stuck in I mean let’s look at what’s happened about small example wheelchair access in in Premier League St stadiums I know we’ve got better but it took a hell of a long time people didn’t want to do it it was inconvenient it was something you didn’t worry about let’s stick them in the back in unless you put some pressure on to take this seriously it won’t happen and also the case of we have the football at the moment is defensive all sports get defensive I’ve covered all of them all sports get defensive when you start to intervene I think unless you actually say You must deal with this it won’t happen I’ve also been a disability spokesman blah blah blah unless you actually say it is a priority and also there is some price for not doing it they don’t happen so I would actually say You’ got to push it back in it’s one of the things I’d have been looking to actually raise when we went through and the advantage of the House of Lords is they you don’t get your amendments as selected you can just put them down and get them on there so hold me to that guys we will bring it back and we will get it discussed at least I can’t guarantee it’s agreed but you’ve got to try and put this to the four and the fact that ignoring the women’s game at the moment is insane it has so much social goods so much Prestige going with it that it is ridiculous to ignore it five it appears we’ve just got to be more aggressive yeah yeah the issue of um equalities and uh relevant matters um I think is a challenging one my instinct would be that the regulator should have back stop powers that we Regulators going have a real job in the first few years of existence to sort the finances of some clubs out and the ownership and Implement all the new rules about changes of ownership uh about ownership of grounds uh and all the fan involvement and make sure terms of doing that properly because many of them aren’t uh many think that fan engagement is something that they have to do tokeny if they have to do it at all um so those challenges and then the overall issues of football finances are going to be massive challenges so in the meantime the leagues can get on and do a lot more uh just just the challenges I can and that then if they don’t do it after after three or four years the regulator should be given powers to step in at that point but look at the challenges um black managers where are they I mean we’ve been the players have been complaining about this for years that is it 30 to 40% of Premier League players and our black B Community uh there handful of managers we almost Nam them all in the whole of professional football that’s not right um we’ve got the first premier league referee since Yuri reny retired over 10 years ago that’s not right first woman Premiership referee how long has that taken look at the the absence of women in boardrooms and running football clubs that isn’t right U so all those issues uh football has been pretty good actually at tackling racism and homophobia in the crowds it’s coming back a bit so they need to be VI Vigilant about it but they have generally had a reasonably good track rep but then you go and look at the crowds there’s not a single Club in this country where that crowd represents the ethnic mix of their communities it just doesn’t uh the reality is that that the people from the B communities uh don’t come in the same numbers um as their po local populations ought to suggest um and also women don’t go to football in equal numbers sometimes they’re put off by the whole approach uh uh and attitude there so I think there’s big challenges are there which often aren’t talked about in football uh to bring equalities about uh clubs and leak should be beginning The Regulators should have back stop Powers there’s a lot of issues there that aren’t been properly tackled at present Christina is the women’s game being squeezed out of the financial debate well there’s there’s two points there um and I I’ll answer your question first and then I’ll kind of go back to what we’re talking about um in terms of women’s football the the problem is that they uh the original review said you know women’s football needs its own review because it’s at a different stage which it is it’s more of a kind of startup phase in terms of if you look at it compared to you know the industry as a whole compared to the men’s game is um the the issue with women’s football however when it comes to regulation is that if you look at who owns them if you look at the WSL if you look at the Women’s Championship then if you look at the clubs that you’re regulating on the men’s side that’s mostly the same clubs so if you are effectively carving out the women’s game as part of Regulation you are almost creating an an area where clubs can sort of move around their finances from a financial perspective and that can create some issues so ultimately you know if you look at it from a holding company perspective who are you regulating you’re regulating the same people on the one side and not regulating them if you’re ignoring the women’s game on the other so that I think there’s a very strong argument for including uh women’s football in in the regulation um in terms of EDI I think the big issue is what people tend to ignore is the fact that there is so much research that shows that more EDI you know the more you look the more you Encompass it the more you think about it in your business the better you will do financially and therefore it is something that’s actually should be important if we’re looking at finances if the problem is financial well the fact that you’ve got you know the vast majority you’ve got huge amount of all male boards you’ve got very little female representation on any holding companies that creates an issue in itself and it’s not just gender diversity it’s diversity as a whole there is you know football is very very stayed in its in in its ways if you look at the the boardroom and that can impact the finances as well so I think there is a lot more work to be done to consider the things that it it’s not just kind of regulating the finances it’s thinking about governance as a whole and what would improve the finances from there yeah you’re going to answer the diversity question as well that that that was that was my answer no okay all right I thought you so just to come in if I could just come in every time you look at diversity look outside football for your answers here don’t look inside if you look at business practice and things like that the fact that you will retain people if you have good practice good diversity and that’s good a good practice and your players inside there and your fan base that is something that usually improves business it certainly cuts down on on legal threat and things like that look outside don’t down that football can talk to itself about itself because the fact you’ve got a bill in Parliament says you can’t because the rest of the world is coming to you Paul what about this um lack of black managers bearing in mind the number of players we have and the history and how many have been around for so long what can be done about that how can we move di this this particular aspect of diversity up the list up the priority list well yeah a really good question gr and I think um that I think the Crux of the question is is is this something the government needs to legislate on or is this something there needs to be football clubs need to take the lead and encourage on it and I would say that we’ve sort of relied on football clubs doing that and they the the the record seems to suggest that they haven’t been as successful as we’d want them to be um but in terms of the actual bill and and the regulator and what it should and should not include I think there is a risk of uh if trying to include everything means that it NE the bill never gets over the line it never makes it and it never goes there and I think um I wasn’t involved in the tabling of the original bill I wasn’t involved in the government discussion of the bill so I can’t say why the government decided that it wasn’t going to put EDI as Central as as some way liked it to be or why they took the recommendation that the women’s game should be excluded I personally think that as Christina sort of alluded to when the same people own the same two areas of football they should be included in the ability of the regular to do it but I’m also very aware of if we keep talking about adding extra bits to the bill and to what the regulator could do it may never happen and so I’d rather have a 60 80% solution now and equally once the regulator is in place that does not mean that it can’t change you can introduce that regulator and then you can then review the bill two three four years later to say well actually what does the regulator need to focus on now and I think there is unanimous agreement that the major issue facing most clubs in football is the financial model and is the risk of a breakaway league and those sort of things and that is the primary priority for the football regulat okay thank you for that let’s move on to our next question it’s from Dave Kelly who’s the chair of the Everton fan Advisory Board Dave the floor is yours good evening um really interesting debate um I don’t think it’ll come as much I don’t think it’ll I don’t think it’ll come as much of surprise to anybody on the call um that ever F Advisory Board all a con all the young independent regulator um and PSR in particular um um I think open comment would be I think for anything to be open transparent fa and be predictable and consistent that should be the basis of effective regulation now the big concern that ionians have got uh o over the past 12 months that in applying the PSR rules last season the Premier League the only consistency throughout that process was the inconsistency that appro from four different commissions with four different interpretations of the rules and a selective approach on how it dealt with stion with it sanctions um I’d like to ask the panel to they agree that in order to ensure that there is an effective oversight and confidence in P PSR whatever form that might that the independent regulator should have full oversight and publish guidelines on how sanctions are applied sanctions should not unfairly P punish supporters and there should be a full involvement and representation of all the sanctions processes now the the the reason we say that and I picked up um one of the previous speakers speaking about cheating heav football club uh who I believe one of the most historic and iconic clubs in the country got a reputation over the last 12 18 months from cheting I think if you look back as a pre at well that’s going on Everton and evertonians had protested for a number of years about how badly our club had been run that we were extremely concerned and so much so that fan protest eventually removed to col board members of me being in the states flux since ionians haven’t at any stage she we’ve shouted from the rooftops that what’s wrong what’s going wrong with this club is unacceptable and as such the Premier League and the the FAA should be L into it and he should be de dealing with it simple I get the point I get the point you’re making and it’s it’s a good one Lord alington can I ask you about the profit and sustainab sustainability question that he was Raising what’s what’s your thoughts well really the point about you’ve got to implement your rules and regulations of legal requirements in a way that everybody understands and the only thing I would say about looking at the way football’s doing is I haven’t a clue what’s going on I think a lawyer is making quite a lot of money somewhere and looks like very good lawyers are doing very well but when you get to that state stage you’ve got a system that’s failed you’ve got to have confidence in what’s going on and if a club is going to get punished and it has to have the capacity to punish a club if there something’s going wrong the fans deserve to know why because they have in they are the ultimate the bed off of the investment and the structure of the thing professional body that will follow them and go every week you’ve got to let them know why it’s happened and I can’t see after that the idea of it being transparent which I think was at the the key of David’s question is something that must be down there and the independent regulator must oversee that transparency if they don’t you get this sort of situation where everybody’s jumping around not knowing what’s going on waiting for their next you know very expensive QC to go in and or sorry KC now to go in and uh you know put his case forward but at the moment we don’t know nobody seems to quite understand and it looks like Manchester City’s lawyers I have heard are better than others but hey what do we know we don’t Paul I don’t want this to be an Everton love him but this this this silence is deafening and very frustrating yeah absolutely gram and and Dave thank you very much for your question and as a fellow of aonian I mean I think I actually voted for you in the fan Advisory board so uh good good on you um our club has been badly mismanaged um there is and the profit and sustainable rules I completely agree with with Dave Everton hasn’t cheated and actually I think Everton’s been punished for its honesty um and yeah I’m a I’m a Conservative candidate standing in Greater Manchester a lot of my constituents or Manchester City fans so I’m doing myself no favors but the fact is is that Manchester City have I think it is 114 Providence sem rule charges against them Everton had two and by being open and honest about admitting that and explaining what the issues were one of which was the fact that our second largest donor was sanctioned by the UK government as a result of the fact that he’s been Russian and it is it is we have been punished for being open and honest when other clubs have not been open and honest and gone away with it and then in terms of the transparency the regulator absolutely absolutely agree the fact is is that no one can tell us why we had a 10-point deduction why that was then changed to a six-point deduction why we got the second two-point deduction why nottingam Forest got that specific twoo deduction the the the fact is is it wasn’t open it wasn’t transparent and I absolutely if you know my my knowledge of the white paper is not good enough to say whether this is a key part of it or not but the independent regulator absolutely has to be able to set the guidelines for what profit and sustainable Ru breach is are punished and in what way and it needs to be transparent and open because certainly as a fellow Everton fan like Dave I have absolutely no idea what happened and why and it’s something that is infuriating on a daily basis whoever’s going to be the regulator that inbox is going to be rather full from day one let’s move on because I want to get a couple of questions in before we have to finish if I can um Oliver Ash the co-owner of ma Stone United is with us olle would you like to ask your question please can you hear me Ollie if not I can read out your question on your behalf you’ve you muted me oh did I well it wasn’t me well somebody somebody’s muted me can you hear me now can hear you loud and clear so on with your question please all right well I’m I’m delighted to be unmuted yeah so first of all evening ladies and gentlemen uh an interesting discussion um my question really is about a detailed matter um and uh indeed I can’t remember who it was who said that that the whole business of the regulator now depends on the regulator the regulator actually being put in place and too much concentration on trying to change details May Scupper the whole thing and I get that but there are a lot of details um important details that came in the fan L review and the question really relates to the fact that what to what purpose does the fan L review what purpose does it serve if some of those recommendations are not implemented and in in the case of the particular point I raised that Tracy Couch’s review recommended that 3G pitches should be allowed in League two and these pitches are approved by FIFA and UEFA they used extensively International Football they allow Community participation and are very helpful in Revenue generation for smaller clubs an example recently Sutton United had to replace their 3G pitch when they were promoted to League two uh they have no 3G pitch as they land in the National League and they’re counting the cost of this following their relegation so under all these circumstances would it not be reasonable and sensible to allow 3 pitches in League two what as a rugby player I can safely say I’m against 3G pitches because I’ve got the scars to prove it uh but uh the fact of the matter is they are very useful they are sustainable they are multi-purpose if there is a good enough reason for professional athletes not to be playing on them which I don’t think there is you might have a case there but the fact of the matter is your going into an area where somebody has decided on an arbitrary basis that we don’t play on something and unless you talk to the people coming up and down and indeed help them we are talking about moving money around uh you are going to have uh some trouble with this if you have different regulations in in a progress that has promotion and relegation there’re always going to be these cut off points and you know I I can’t really go any further than that but you’ve got a situation where somebody requires if you’re going to make an arbitrary change and you want that change promotion and relegation you must come in and facilitate it and that is something and this and helping you with your ground I would think would be something that would be quite reasonable for all this money that’s slopping around at the top of football making sure that this pyramid which well this I don’t pyramids exactly but this progress of of development and and possible uh you know retreat from it which it characterizes football and we determined to keep if you’re not going to help people through that you basically are putting artificial blocks in the way that don’t help at all I won’t comment more on that because I’m not a football player and I don’t like 3G pitches but you seem to be saying that they’re okay Christina 3G pitches they are they are a new income stream in many ways for so many clumps and a good Community Asset I mean from a financial point of view they’re a must yeah from a financial perspective obviously it is um a good Revenue earner um it makes clubs usable for much longer part of the year um they can rent it out when they’re not using it themselves and generate extra income so yeah from a financial perspective it it definitely makes sense cool what are your thoughts have you played on one uh not for a while actually um and I I also remember the uh the the uh friction BS but um I I don’t I I don’t know this level of detail I’ll be honest with the OE of why it wouldn’t be included in League two if Tracy Crouch has recommended it I generally trust what Tracy Crouch recommends so uh and so if I was if I was in the position there I think I would probably be supporting what Tracy cr’s recommendations was and saying well you should be allowed to do it but I I’d have to take a counterview of why you shouldn’t allow pitches in League two for to sway me the other way if that makes sense but that’s the whole point I would I would say really it’s not whether you like them or not as interested as I am in your opinions it’s the fact that it’s in the fan L review which is thousands of hours of research and discussions with fans and everything and the the reasoned conclusion was that they should be allowed in League two and the metaphor of this really is the the way that the leagues are all stretched out now and there’s no dialogue or cons consy between the Premier League the efl the national league and you get into this ludicrous situation which the regulator surely should be empowered to manage where the national league wants something which could be of interest to their clubs uh which is that one level higher these these pitches should be allowed and the efl just tell them to f off and that cannot be a sensible way of running this game and and as I said it’s a metaphor for lots of other issues where one League refus refuses to discuss something with another League um so the whole pyramid is skewed because of the inability of the three bodies that govern football pro football to to manage things consistently so that that’s why it’s really a metaphor for that it’s in the rec it’s a recommendation in the fan L review what’s the point of the fan L review if it’s not going to be implemented well the review wasn’t a Government review it was uh it was something that came up and put pressure on government so don’t expect too much of it and the government will take from that what they will any government will do that but I would actually say that the thing that really caught me then was three bodies discussing this where there’s nobody saying by the way there must be a solution or help and if you don’t want a 3G pitch you must assist us because we’ve done everything else to go forward would I I would have thought was a reasonable compromise and if the regul is not prepared to take on this role half the point of it is gone more work for the regulator let’s move on this will probably be our final question and it’s an interesting one from Steven Coburn who’s the deputy director of Amnesty International I don’t think he’s with us so I’ll read it out uh Sport washing is a growing concern within football should states with poor human rights records be allowed to own football clubs and secondly ethically what criteria should be added to the owners and director’s test well I did raise this in the House of Lords uh it’s well what really ran this home to me is the fact that people were worried about a sovereign wealth fund taking over Telegraph a paper is an important body I’m afraid the football clubs are part of our National Heritage effectively I regard them as such anyway you’ve got these big things going through so there must be some consistency of approach about what is going on there and sports watching is taking place there has always been an element of it uh and possibly it means that sort of you know big events like World Cups and Olympic Games won’t take place because certain people will be using it or using it for publicity people ppes purposes but having some acknowledgement that there is a point where you don’t want certain groups involved because it is such an important part of your you know well cultural heritage again I can’t think of another expression for it that has to be taken into account and it’s something you’re not good enough to do one thing why not another I really do feel I have a considerable I have a degree of sympathy with this you can go you know totally mad and say you can’t walk anywhere that you slightly disagree with because you get five people in a room you’ll find there are five different sets of countries you can’t touch it but there certainly should be some consideration in there or at least some acknowledgement that there are issues well should human rights records be taken into account in terms of the ownership of a club yeah I mean I I think I I do agree with with Lord Adon actually you know there’s I I do have concerns with um the ownership of Newcastle United as a as a prime example um and what I you know is it the place of the state to say who can own something well actually I think that is something the regulator does need to look at and the whole point of the licensing scheme for the owner of football clubs I think that is absolutely something they need to to look at and it is it is in I mean as you know an everon fan who was in part owned by Russian who then got s sanctioned by government when you know Russia invaded Ukraine that there is a a significant negative impact that does then happen on the club so not just from an ethical side but there was the Practical implication that part of Everton’s Financial struggles has been the fact that a large owner and donor to the club was removed as a result of of financial sanctions and so we uh they giving the regulator the power to be able to look into these things and equally I think the you know there’s a there’s a parallel between the European Super league and what’s happened in Gulf with Lynn and essentially Saudi Arabia buying an entire new golf tournament to try and drag people away there and it is you know I was really proud of what happened when fan it was the fans that really put the kaios on the European Super League that was that was was excellent and it was it was unanimous and even the fans of those big six clubs who thought they were better than everyone else to go out of there you know that is fantastic and I I am pleased that one of the parts of the bill and one of the purposes of The Regulators to make sure those sort of breakaway leagues don’t happen because that is the as well as influencing the owners of football clubs those Breakaway leagues are the other way that you can get sort of Nefarious interests trying to take advantage of what I completely agree is part of our cultural heritage which is the Beautiful Christina what’s your take on the financial side because so much of the big money is coming from these controversial individuals and indeed countries well it is an a governance issue as well right from a financial perspective um as you know Paul um mentioned what you don’t want is money coming from the wrong places um what you don’t want is owners to be sanctioned and then have clubs have to be sold like we saw what happened with Chelsea um and one way of doing that is making sure that where the money’s coming from is robust and that feeds into the whole governance thing and making sure that we are looking at this from as a whole as opposed to yes this this is there there’s money coming in great we’ll take whatever we can get it’s well is the money sustainable is the money from a source that isn’t going to lead to issues further down the line that’s part of due diligence and that’s part of if you look at other Industries if you look at the financial services industry or whatever that is what they look at right and that is is very very much important and it’s linked to governance side of things there’s so much work to be done isn’t there we we’re so close and yet so far away I just wonder what is going to happen over the next coming few months when things begin to take shape we’ll have to wait and see but anyway as ever the clock has taken charge of all of us the 60 Minutes has gone around very quickly indeed so that’s all we have time for as I say for this special question time my thanks to our panel Clive Betts Paul Athens Lord Addington and Christina philipo I’m gr Miller and I must say a special thank you and well done to our production team for delivering what was a seamless technical operation with the inevitable bits and pieces in between but that’s all part of the course as we all know and of course thank you for watching and for listening if you have enjoyed it do please subscribe to the fair game podcast you can find it on all the usual channels and so until the next edition of we love you football from all of us it’s goodbye for now recording stopped there we go well done everybody thank you very much indeed cheers y thank thank you you everybody you great to see you all and thank you so much for your time and uh hope you enjoy the next few weeks and stuff like that and we will be in contact with you all very shortly Paul thank you very much for stepping in the second reading in the Lords ever happens I’ll be in touch definitely be in touch definitely thank you everybody thank you bye for now bye bye bye bye