WENGER: MINNOWS WILL DIE

ARSENE WENGER has warned “smaller clubs will die” without urgent intervention to save teams below the Premier League.

The former Arsenal manager fears a one-off bailout will not be enough to prevent the pyramid, with 92 professional clubs at the apex, collapsing.

And Gunners legend Wenger, currently FIFA’S chief of global football development, slammed Project Big Picture, claiming it would create a climate of “reluctance and a negative approach” if the power grab went ahead.

Speaking at a special event for Sky Sports VIP customers, Wenger (left) warned: “If nothing happens, the smaller clubs will die.

“I don’t think that one payment will sort out the problem. The problem is much deeper than that. The money certainly has to be shared.

“The income of the top clubs has to be shared a fraction more with the smaller clubs.”

Project Big Picture, unveiled by EFL chairman Rick Parry on Sunday – with Liverpool and Manchester United unmasked as two of its major driving forces – calls for the most radical overhaul of English football since the Premier League came into existence in 1992.

The proposals include an immediate

£250million rescue package for

EFL clubs starved of income by the coronavirus pandemic, and a fairer share of future revenue.

But the plans have been criticised by the Premier League and at Westminster for handing too much power to the top-flight’s so-called Big Six.

And Wenger, 70, admitted he was not surprised that Project Big Picture had proved so divisive – even though finances at EFL clubs had been verging on crisis before the

Covid-19 pandemic forced football into lockdown.

He said: “You cannot ignore completely the tradition inside the country. It will create a reluctance and a negative approach.

“Overall the solution has to come from the Football Association, from the government, from the Premier League – to find a compromise to sort out the problems that already existed before coronavirus.”