REGULATOR COULD RULE ON EFL DEAL

EFL chairman Rick Parry has warned Premier League clubs stalling on a £900million ‘solidarity’ bond that an independent football regulator could force through a deal.

The Football Governance Bill, which will enshrine the game’s new tsar and its statutory powers in law, was introduced to Parliament yesterday.

The regulator’s raft of powers will include ensuring clubs are run on economically sustainable lines, driving out unfit owners and blocking teams from joining pirate competitions such as the European Super League.

And it will be able to impose a financial settlement on the Premier League and EFL if they cannot agree terms.

Earlier this month, the Premier League walked away from a £900m deal with the EFL after only 10 of the required majority 14 clubs approved the package.

Parry (above) is not surprised by Premier League clubs kicking the can down the street and welcomes the prospect of an independent regulator invoking “backstop” powers to break the impasse.

He said: “If you go back to the first year of the Premier League in 1992, their turnover was £45m and the EFL’S was £34m.

“The gap was £11m – it’s now more than £3billion, and it’s just getting wider and wider and wider.

“Football has had 30 years to address it, but it hasn’t. You can say we all ought to get together now and change it, but our view is that without independent intervention it isn’t going to happen voluntarily, and why would it? It doesn’t happen at any level of football.”

One area of the game which should be shored up by the arrival of a Government-backed regulator is the fit-and-proper persons test for club owners.

Parry added: “The regulator will have statutory powers with teeth – it will be a criminal offence, potentially, not to provide information to the regulator whereas everything we do is voluntary.”