‘Keep football competitive’, says PFA chief

FOOTBALL’S administrators need to ensure that FIFA’s Financial Fair Play rules are properly adhered to for the long-term good of the game, according to PFA chief Gordon Taylor.

Speaking at a Barclays Business of Sport event held at the bank’s Spinningfields office last night, the boss of the Manchester-based players’ union said that ensuring football remains competitive “is what sports administration should be about”.

“If Manchester City win  the FA Cup, the League, Cup, the League, the European Cup…Unless you’re a City supporter, you kill it off,” said Taylor.

“It is the job of sports administrators to try and make sure there is an uncertainty of a result and there is a chance for the underdog to win, because if we don’t we will lose its glamour and its special excitement.”

Mr Taylor also defended the use of the special rules in football administrations which means that players and other football debts have to be settled before phoenix clubs are allowed to re-enter competitions.

“The football creditors’ rule has got a lot of  stick, but it’s a way of keeping the clubs alive,” he said, arguing that the alternative would  lead to more clubs vanishing from existence.

”We demand the players are paid and other clubs are paid because we don’t want a club winning a competition on the back of players they can no longer afford, or even pay.”

He said that prior to the establishment of the Premier League, there was an attitude among club  chairman that insolvent clubs should be  allowed to “wither on the vine”.

“If that decision had been taken you wouldn’t now have clubs, like Wolves, Swansea and Leeds,” he said. “We go into the dressing room and we ask players can they hold the club together and can they agree to defer their wages, and can we offer them a loan? I love keeping businesses alive.”

Also speaking at the event was ex-Wimbledon tennis champion Pat Cash and junior champion Annabel Croft, who talked about both the positive and negative benefits which sponsorship had on their careers.

Mr Cash was one of the first professionals on the tennis circuit to employ his own team – including a coach, physio and sports psychologist – which he helped to  fund through sponsorship  deals  but added that he regretted a previous choice of sponsor as a competitor who had offered less money upfront would had given him a greater profile.

Ms Croft, who now runs her own tennis schools and is a regular commentator on the game, also said that she believed a racquet deal had hampered her game.

Barclays’ head of football finance, Brian Foreman, said that the bank’s long-running sponsorship of the Premier League had been worthwhile and had allowed it to establish a niche in  the sector, but only because of  the effort it had put in towards understanding the game.

”We invest a huge amount of time and effort speaking to the clubs – the owners, the FDs, the CEOs.”

He added that it was sometimes difficult writing credit reports for football businesses, many of whom incur heavy losses and can burn through cash.

”Unless you invest that time you’ll never be able to get under the skin of the industry. And it’s not something you can dip in and out of – you’ve got to constantly work at it to refine the product You can’t take something off the shelf for a football club.”