In committee room 3a of the House of Lords on Tuesday, a gathering was held to commemorate the first anniversary of the fan-led review of football governance. It was a stuffy affair, in the sense that someone should probably have opened a window, and an airless room may have contributed to a mood which stopped some way short of celebratory.
Twelve months after Tracey Crouch launched the review to wide acclaim, its status remains in limbo. A document the Football Supporters’ Association had said offered an “unprecedented opportunity” to reform the game and which the Premier League’s chief executive, Richard Masters, called “comprehensive, wide-ranging, bold and radical” is still waiting to get off the launch pad.
The reasons why are numerous and to most people in the committee room – almost all over the age of 45 – wearily familiar. Much of it is politics, and firstly the politics of Westminster, where the Conservative government has yet to match deeds to supportive words. The government says it accepts the review’s central recommendation, which is the creation of an independent regulator for football. However it has yet to publish a white paper that would spell out how such a regulator might work in law. It was due in the summer, and then in the autumn, and now – despite assurances to the room from the sports minister, Stuart Andrew – there remains no date for its arrival.
The process has not been helped by the fall of two prime ministers in as many months. The commitment to the review appeared to disappear altogether under the brief administration of Liz Truss. Andrew has calmed a lot of nerves since his appointment last month, but the language – that of civil servants “working at pace” – remains the same as nine months ago.
It’s time for the government to deliver, yet appearances suggest Crouch is relatively relaxed about the delay. She says she believes there will be a regulator within five years whatever happens and makes a point of noting the review has cross-party support; code for “if this government doesn’t get on with it, a Labour government will surely do so instead”. The political struggle proving a bigger impediment to change, it turns out, appears to be the one within football itself.
In her foreword to an FSA publication looking at the review a year on, Crouch mentions the Premier League just once, and that’s to acknowledge Manchester City as champions. While the Football Association “should be applauded: for recent internal reforms and the EFL’s new financial control bodies are acknowledged”, no action or achievement from the game’s biggest power broker is even mentioned. In the room, Crouch apologised for beating up on the Premier League, but didn’t deny she was doing it.
The heart of the problem is that the Premier League is yet to hold talks with the English Football League over financial redistribution, despite it being one of the review’s original recommendations. “Whilst the EFL has long had a clear position,” the FSA publication notes, “the Premier League has still not engaged in a discussion.”
The nature of this standoff is straightforward but symbolic of differences between the Premier League and EFL which ultimately run deep. The EFL says that, as part of a restructuring of the game, it wants 25% of the Premier League’s broadcast revenues to support the pyramid upon which English football depends. The Premier League says it wants guarantees before it commits to any increase (it shares 16% of TV money, though most is in parachute payments). Specifically it wants to know any money does not simply end up doing what it often has in the past; fuelling wage inflation as clubs chase a place in the most successful domestic league in the world.
It’s not just the policies that are rubbing each other up; there’s status at play, too. The Premier League bristles at being expected to talk when the lower leagues have set preconditions. The EFL feels there has been little to no constructive engagement from the top flight. Both sides know the threats implicit in the review – that if the leagues don’t strike a deal themselves, the regulator will write one for them – are unlikely to come to pass in the short term.
For those who have been around long enough this all has a ring of familiarity; a bright new dawn that sinks away into dusk without anything having changed. The response to dismay, however, is that such an interpretation is not quite correct. Even the Premier League now accepts the idea of independent regulation. This was not the case a year ago.
The FA, through the appointment of a new chair and non-executive directors, has gone a long way to showing it understands the challenges facing governance within the game. Meanwhile, the FSA has been building bridges both domestically and across the continent, meaning that many fans now have better representation at their clubs than any time in living memory, with Liverpool and Manchester United – two Super League conspirators – among those leading the way.
Suspicion and mistrust at the top of the English game remain and it feels like, without external pressure, discussions may not get to the point where a new deal for football can be struck. At the same time the Premier League has finally signed off a counter offer to the EFL and perhaps it’s the order in which events might happen that could be key.
“Regulation before redistribution” is the new catchphrase, a sequence which would suit the Premier League and an idea Crouch can get behind. After giving the Premier League the stick this week, she offered those in the committee room an olive branch. If the Premier League was to increase redistribution it “should not be giving money to bad owners”, she said. “It would be like opening the windows and keeping the heating on.”
