Leeds United MD Angus Kinnear questions need for an independent regulator in football

Kinnear has questioned the value of an independent regulator for English football, something which former sports minister Tracey Crouch has called on the Government to do and the recommendation for Premier League clubs to pay a "solidarity transfer levy" to further support the football pyramid.

In his programme notes ahead of the Crystal Palace game, Kinnear said: "Of the 47 recommendations contained in the Fan-Led Review of Football Governance, there was much to applaud.

"Increased supporter consultation, heritage shares, renewed focus for the women's game and improving equality and diversity (among others) will all be met with almost unequivocal support.

"However, the most significant recommendations are as flawed as they are radical.

"The first is the demand for independent regulation and the second is an increased transfer levy to redistribute increased funds further down the football pyramid.

"These proposals have been conflated to address the very separate issues of the demise of Bury, the threat of the European Super League and the takeover of Newcastle United.

"Forgetting that independent regulation has not proven to be a panacea for any industry (take Ofwat presiding over three billion lities of leaked water every year and thousands of hours of illegal raw sewage disposal in our nation's waterways as a case in point), it is hard to see the value of an independent regulator would have added to the perceived issues.

"We should remember that the European Super League was so repugnant in its conception and so seditious in its execution that the game and its supporters regulated it out of existence without the need for a third party.

"When it comes to the takeover of Newcastle, it is inconceivable that a retired civil servant in the pocket of Westminster would have made the call that, while it is morally acceptable to trade billions of pounds worth of arms to an oppressive regime, it is morally unacceptable for them to own 11 teenage millionaires who kick around an inflated pig's bladder.

"On the recommendations around financial redistribution, it seems to have been conveniently forgotten that the Premier League redistributed £1.5b to the wider football pyramid in the last three years, with a further commitment for another £1.6b in the next three.

"I don't believe there is any industry where its biggest entities donate at anywhere near that level to both their aspiring competitors and their community.

"There is already a four per cent levy on transfer fees which is distributed between a player pension fund and Academy investment.

"Football is a private sector business and has flourished that way. Enforcing upon football a philosophy akin to a Maoist collective agriculturalism (which students of 'The Great Leap Forward' will know culminated in the greatest famine in history) will not have made the English game fairer, it will kill the competition which is its very lifeblood."

"Teams further down the pyramid do not needs their means artificially inflated, they need to live within them.

"As a recently promoted team, we were asked by the review what we would have done with increased funds if Premier League teams had been forced to financially contribute to our p promotion campaign and the answer (although more eloquently expressed) was, fundamentally, that we would have still blown it on Pawel Cibicki."