sport news The Premier League will be WORTHLESS if you destroy the pyramid, EFL chiefs ... trends now
In one of the corridors in the main stand at Crewe Alexandra’s Mornflake Stadium, there are pictures on the wall devoted to some of the club’s famous alumni.
Bruce Grobbelaar, Steve Holland, Geoff Thomas, David Platt, Dean Ashton, Robbie Savage and Danny Murphy are just a few of the names who have spent early stages of their careers here, all of them symbols of the symbiosis that once existed between the lower leagues and the top flight.
That relationship is broken now. Premier League intransigence over a six-year, £900million New Deal for football has ensured that.
At a time when the top flight is becoming more synonymous with greed and arrogance, the Premier League’s inability to agree a deal for increased financial distributions to the EFL is making it look more dysfunctional than ever.
The Premier League, which won a new host of enemies with its heavy-handed scrapping of FA Cup replays earlier this month, is lobbying hard against an independent regulator, which is likely to pass into law through the Football Governance Bill before the end of the current parliament.
Leicester returned to the Premier League at the first time of asking this season
Charles Grant (left), Rick Parry (second left), Sharon Brittan (second right) and Doug King (right) have warned the Premier League risks its own existence by undermining the EFL
If the Premier League’s hapless chief executive, Richard Masters, had a pound for every time his trite, haughty and insufferably smug line about the ‘unintended consequences’ of the creation of a regulator were trotted out by his acolytes, he could probably fund the New Deal himself.
But the regulator will become a reality in the next few months and it will have the power to frustrate Premier League hopes for a 39th game, as well as imposing a financial settlement on the top flight and 72 clubs of the English Football League that will improve redistribution, enhance the sustainability of EFL teams and tackle the vexed question of parachute payments that distort competition, particularly in the Championship.
Last week, EFL chairman Rick Parry, Crewe chairman Charles Grant, Bolton chairman Sharon Brittan and Coventry owner Doug King met Mail Sport at Gresty Road to discuss whether the enmity between the Premier League and the EFL can be resolved.
OLIVER HOLT: Why should the Premier League pay a penny of the billions it has earned in broadcast deals to help fund the EFL? Isn’t Steve Parish, the Crystal Palace chairman, right when he says supermarkets aren’t instructed to help corner shops?
RICK PARRY: I am not aware that you have promotion and relegation in the supermarket industry. If you want to see the value of the Premier League plummet, then stop promotion and relegation, make it sterile and see what happens then. Good luck with that because look at the reaction of fans to the closed Super League.
There are now 14 clubs in the EFL that have spent the same amount of time competing in the Premier League as 14 clubs currently in the top division, contributing equally to the value creation of English football along the way.
The 14 currently in it are going to get £1.9billion in media revenue this year. The 14 who are with us will get £90m. It’s just madness.
SHARON BRITTAN: I find it utterly astonishing that the Premier League have not made us an offer.
I have worked in the commercial world for most of my life. I work through communication, collaboration, negotiation, getting things done and everybody benefits from it.
It is staggering to me that the Premier League have not been able to work together with the EFL for the greater good of the game.
Premier League CEO Richard Masters has opposed the introduction of an independent regulator for English football's top-flight
EFL clubs have backed the introduction of a regulator to resolve the widening chasm that has created a huge gap between the have and the have nots
Man City are on course for a fourth consecutive Premier League title, while several clubs along the pyramid have gone bust
CHARLES GRANT: We have to believe we can move freely up and down the divisions.
That gives football life and oxygen and sustains what the Premier League is all about. The pictures on the walls at this club are of England players, Wales players, people who have come from this football club and worked their way through a system.
The system isn’t working now. The Premier League has become self-centred.
The model has to be sustainable and the people at the top are responsible for that.
America has to support the world in defence. It’s the No 1 nation on the planet. The same is true of the Premier League.
You can’t be isolationist about this, but that is what they are and we must persuade them otherwise. If you destroy the EFL, which is a competitive part of the football pyramid, then the Premier League is worth nothing.
OLIVER HOLT: What do you want the independent regulator to look like when it arrives?
DOUG KING: There have been some bad owners who have destroyed community football clubs, Coventry being one, and you have to look at these things more carefully.
That is one reason we need a regulator. I want the regulator to be brave. It must say to the Premier League: ‘We don’t want to destroy your brand, but we need to resolve many years of a huge, widening chasm where a lot of clubs have been destroyed.’
SHARON BRITTAN: We don’t want angst. I’d like the regulator to support the EFL and the Premier League, to make it work for everyone. The Premier League have acknowledged they have opened conversations, but then they do nothing. How is that allowed to happen?
If all routes have been exhausted and no deal has been made, someone has to have the power to enforce a financial resolution.
CHARLES GRANT: We are in a position where the regulator must be the answer because we know the alternative doesn’t work. It has
