From VAR to referees to points deductions, everywhere you look football is in a mess of its own making

ASENSE of chaos appears to be engulfing English football. From financial fair play and profit and sustainability rules leading to points deductions, to problems with VAR and the quality of our referees. From the ditching of FA Cup replays to endless arguments about the iniquity of revenue distribution and the imminent arrival of an independent regulator — the only domestic league in world football to adopt such a thing.

Everywhere you look, our game seems to be in a mess of its own making.

We have these all- consuming, badly thought-through decisions that lack strategic thinking. It’s a concerning time because the result is this perception of chaos that seems to stalk our game.

We’re losing sight of what football is meant to be about, which is entertainment, sporting excellence and meritocracy. Now it’s increasingly about accountants and lawyers.

This sense of chaos is hardening attitudes but not yet turning fans away. What it’s doing is perhaps solidifying people’s discontent and allowing radio shows to be inundated with enraged callers. But that’s what football does — it brings out emotions in fans raging against the system.

If people weren’t invested they wouldn’t be bothered but there clearly is growing frustration with the direction of travel.

Football needs to fix itself. It needs clever, strategic, grown-up thinking and better communication. This challenging period needs not only big thinking but big thinkers. It requires proper leadership.

Sadly, but almost inevitably, these issues have opened the door to the legal profession who are seeing opportunities to charge clubs left, right and centre. This isn’t what sport was built for but it’s what sport has become because at the centre of it all is economic, business and financial globalisation and these things come at a price. Football’s thinking is sometimes behind the curve of the industry it has now become and has to be better.

It’s not irredeemable or beyond rehabilitation. The problem is the FA have abdicated responsibility as de facto regulator and, as a result, have no control because we know they are a bunch of weaklings, as we saw when they allowed Nike to design that absurd St George’s cross on the back of England’s shirt.

The FA waste time with such nonsense rather than dealing with the big issues. But that ship has sailed in terms of the FA, there is no hope for them. They have been emasculated and have no solutions to the really big problems. And by the way, I’m not sure the Premier League’s chief executive Richard Masters is strong enough either.

The consequence is that we’re letting lunatics run the asylum. That’s what happens when there is an absence of leadership, a vacuum where people don’t lay down strategic, proper thinking.

But I have faith that football, out of necessity and after such enormous acts of self-harm, will get itself some counselling and emerge on the other side.

With FFP, I’ve always been an advocate because I felt it would be a mechanism to help control football’s hyper-inflation, but it isn’t really doing that. It is clear to me now that it is the ultimate form of protectionism.

Ask yourself: who are the people making these rules? When you work backwards from that, you start to work out why these rules were brought in. It’s pulling up the drawbridge and making it virtually impossible to break into the elite. It is strangling football and investment. It worries me.

Why are we forcing this economic asphyxiation on our game? I understand we’re trying to protect community assets but the economic model of football has changed. Now we’re saying, let’s shut down investment because we perceive it to be bad.

Of course, some of this chaos is ensuing because sporting sanctions are attached to FFP and nobody likes it. We’ve opened Pandora’s box where people can take legal remedies to resolve sporting matters.

The result? More chaos. Then you move into refereeing and VAR. It was right to bring in VAR but you’ve got to bring the best version to enhance the game, not detract from it. You cannot have a situation where corruption is pretty much alleged by a club because some bad decisions were made in the VAR room.

On redistribution, that challenge has existed since 1992. The moment the hammer went down on the formation of the Premier League and the FA and EFL abdicated competence and responsibility, you were always going to have these problems.

So now, with the introduction of the independent regulator, we’re going to strangle the commercial energy that has brought about the vitality of the most successful pyramid in world football.

Then there’s the FA Cup. I’m a purist and a great advocate for the Cup but ditching replays is no great crime. Any club that budgets for a replay is stupid because you’ve got no certainty for it.

This confected outrage will be easily dismantled by bigger TV distributions. If the clubs moaning about it are given more money from the TV deals in exchange for giving up replays then bang, end of discussion, no more complaints. I value the FA Cup but we have to accept that the world has turned and sentimentality gets you nowhere.

If people keep being told everything’s terrible in our game, they end up believing it. This self-flagellation we seem so keen on in this country has to stop. Other leagues in Europe have their own problems. I don’t recall any of our big clubs being booted out of leagues, à la Italy, or corruption allegations about undue influence on referees, as in Spain, so let’s not lose perspective.

Although we cannot claim this is our finest moment and we must address these challenges, it’s wrong to suggest we are on the slippery slope to nowhere.

Smashing ourselves to oblivion is not the solution. These are real-world challenges and our response to them will define the future of our game.