WE MUST ACCEPT ‘BIG PICTURE’ TO SAVE CLUBS FROM DOOM...

THE proposals outlined in Project Big Picture are too important to dismiss — it has my support and I have spoken to EFL chairman Rick Parry to tell him so. The £250million bailout is absolutely essential in the short term and, going forward, so is the 25 per cent redistribution of Premier League revenue. It guarantees the sustainability of football outside the Premier League, providing there is discipline put into it through regulation, the biggest one being a hard wage cap in the EFL. When I first saw the document I was excited by it. It is selfinterest, of course. Is it better for my club? Yes. But certainly all of the Championship clubs I’ve spoken to are behind it. As for those in League One and

League Two, it would be huge. It would save a lot of them. I understand it comes at a cost for some Premier League clubs. I, too, am uneasy about the movement and concentration of power. But the truth is that those Big Six clubs already have significantly more influence than the rest. If you look at where football revenue is generated in this country, it is because of the overseas love affair with the Premier League.

In particular, those Big Six clubs. So nothing is perfect. Would you ordinarily wish that power shift to be the case? Probably not, but sometimes you have to give something up. Overall, the document is better for the future of football. Without this, or another bailout, I see a domino effect of clubs going bust. These clubs are so important to their communities. It will be immensely difficult to get everyone on side. Many will question the spirit of it. But at least we have people who are brave enough to come up with something, knowing they’re going to get silly politicians condemning it, even though, in the main, this is a very good attempt to make football sustainable. Football should embrace the majority of these proposals. For Parry, to come in as chairman of the EFL at this time, it really is a poisoned chalice. He’s working very hard for the good of the game. He is trying to find a way through a mess that is not of his making. Outside of politics, the weight of responsibility on him right now is as big as it can get. It’s a time to support each other and not be in the background sniping. Parry has a job where everyone thinks they can do better. I promise you, they can’t. A lot of Championship clubs are completely dependent on owners. The amount of money they are putting in to compete against those clubs who come down with parachute payments, it is simply not sustainable. So removing parachute payments makes for better competition. The wage cap is also absolutely necessary to assist these proposals. You only need one rogue owner to come in and start throwing money around to distort the market. We do not want the redistributed revenue simply disappearing, Alan Sugar’s old prune juice analogy — in one end and out the other. We need to use it to build the experience for the fans; better stadiums, academies, more involvement in the community. The proposals in Project Big Picture allow this to an extent that, right now, we can only dream about. Steve Gibson was talking to Craig Hope.