Bernard Ginns: Interesting times should the Sky fall in on Premiership

Accountancy firm PKF has hired him to lead its corporate recovery and insolvency team. Mr Birch will also join PKF’s football industry group, where his considerable experience should be useful.

He has a fairly unique insight into the game. Mr Birch started his career in 1974 as an apprentice at Liverpool FC – he was the last player to be signed by Bill Shankly – and spent several years at Anfield when the club ruled Europe.

He never broke through to the first team though and following stints with Shrewsbury and Chester went off to become an accountant.

The second career took off and he became a leading light at Ernst & Young, specialising in insolvency work. A chance encounter with Ken Bates led to the chief executive’s job at Chelsea and latterly Leeds, Everton and Derby County.

While at Chelsea, he famously brokered the deal to sell the west London club to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.

Mr Birch’s return to the profession comes at an interesting time for the game, when many clubs are running enormous deficits and are saddled with eye-watering debts, largely due to sky-high wage inflation.

Speaking to me in February, Mr Birch expressed frustration at the lack of salary cap at the top end of the game, while clubs are penalised at the other end of the spectrum if they fall into administration.

As a business, football is sustainable while TV money exists, said Mr Birch. By extension, should the value of media rights be destroyed, then the model would be in trouble.

“It’s the exclusivity of it that creates that premium value,” he said.

He’s right; if that exclusivity goes, then clubs could collapse overnight. Take away Sky and the accompanying revenues and wave goodbye to the Premier League.

That might not be a bad thing, when you consider how ugly and disconnected aspects of the national sport have become.

n I have mixed feelings about the impending closure of Business Link Yorkshire, the taxpayer-funded support service for would-be entrepreneurs and companies with growth plans.

I say mixed because hundreds of people have lost or will soon lose their livelihoods when the project finishes this November.

The loss of one’s job is traumatic for the individual, the immediate family and, in large enough numbers, the wider community.

With 434 staff at its peak, Business Link Yorkshire was a significant employer in Barnsley. That’s a town that can ill afford to lose jobs.

But how productive was the service? How much will it be missed, except by those who depended on it for employment or who ran training companies that won lucrative contracts?

According to Helen West, the chief executive, Business Link Yorkshire helped many thousands of businesses. It also offered “tremendous” value for money, generating £35 for every £1 spent, she said.

Let’s examine that claim, which Ms West attributes to independent research commissioned by parent organisation Yorkshire Forward in 2009-10.

Launched in April 2008, Business Link Yorkshire spent around £35m a year. Following the Government announcement that all regional Business Links would be closed, the budget was cut back to £6m.

In all then, Business Link Yorkshire will have spent in the region of £76m. Based on Ms West’s sums, this means the organisation will have generated £2.66bn.

If that’s correct, why is the Government axing a service that has contributed so substantially to the Yorkshire economy?

I suspect it’s not. The problem with programmes like Business Link Yorkshire is that it is very difficult to measure your return on investment.

The argument now is purely academic. I just wonder if the economy of Yorkshire would be stronger and less dependent on public spending if the last Government had channelled the billions it put into regional development into large-scale infrastructure projects instead.

n In a parting shot in Business Link Yorkshire’s annual review, Helen West says that she hopes the organisation has had a positive impact on entrepreneurs and businesses. I’ll leave that hanging in the air.

She also claims “there is still some uncertainty about the business support arrangements post November”. She might have a point. After a flurry of new policy initiatives at the start of the year, BIS has been very quiet of late.