Gary Neville has accused the Premier League of acting like ‘bullies’ and says the organisation is ‘entitled’ and ‘selfish’ amid the ongoing debate over the potential introduction of an independent football regulator
Gary Neville has criticised the Premier League, accusing them of acting like bullies in the face of a potential independent football regulator. The Football Governance Bill, which includes the establishment of an independent regulator, was introduced by the Conservatives in March and Labour are pushing ahead with it.
The call for an independent regulator in English football gained traction after the Super League fiasco. The government have stated that it will ‘protect football clubs’ by ‘ensuring their financial sustainability’.
If passed through parliament, the bill will grant a regulator backstop powers to intervene in football when necessary. Neville is a staunch supporter of an independent regulator and believes its introduction would safeguard the interests of English football fans throughout the pyramid, reports our sister title the Manchester Evening News.
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The Premier League has been hesitant to see an independent regulator introduced but the organisation’s CEO Richard Masters has warned it would be a ‘risk’ for it to be formed. Labour has quashed rumours that English teams such as Liverpool and Neville’s former club Manchester United could be excluded from European tournaments with the advent of a new regulator, despite UEFA’s policy against state interference in football governance, emphasising its independence.
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Sky Sports pundit Neville has castigated the Premier League for being hesitant about an independent regulator. In comments made to PA during a Labour event on Monday, he remarked: “We have a Premier League that’s entitled, they feel entitled. I’m not going to use the word greedy, but I just have.
“They are selfish and I can’t understand that way of thinking. It’s almost like they’re the big brother that sit there and distribute scraps of food to the little brothers round the table.
“It’s not what you do when you’re in a family. Their mindset is such of a bully. Their mindset is such that they think they can influence the regulator once the regulator’s introduced and they can get a better deal potentially the other side of the regulator. And what they’re applying is their soft power and their influence to try and create scare stories and scaremongering, like we had a couple of weeks ago.”
Talking at the same Labour conference, Lisa Nandy, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, labelled the idea that English clubs would be banned from European competitions as ‘ridiculous’ and said it was ‘really disrespectful to fans because it caused a lot of alarm which was really unnecessary’.
Nandy has reassured that the government will not adopt a ‘heavy-handed’ approach, emphasising a desire to address the lack of sustainability in parts of the football pyramid.
The Premier League has hit back at Neville’s accusations of acting like a ‘bully’, stating they are in ongoing discussions with the new government regarding the football regulator. They have suggested that ‘light-touch, targeted and proportionate legislation can be made to work’, referencing CEO Masters’ remarks from the previous season’s end.
Premier League CEO Masters expressed his concerns: “My overriding concern is that the bill will reduce our competitiveness and weaken the incredible appeal of the English game. Our competition is the most watched and commercially successful football league in the world. Thanks to that success, Premier League clubs are able to give away £1.6 billion every three years 16 per cent of our total revenues – to the wider game, helping to make it the envy of the world.”
He warned: “It is a risk that regulation will undermine the Premier League’s global success, thereby wounding the goose that provides English football’s golden egg.”
Masters also highlighted the potential dangers of regulating an industry that leads globally, especially when its competitors are not under similar regulation. “Those competitors are relishing the prospect of the Premier League being uniquely constrained. Empires rise and fall and while I am confident about the League’s immediate future, it would be a mistake to be complacent about our place as the world’s most popular league.
“It is a risk to introduce uncertainty and red tape into an industry that relies heavily on a relatively small pool of investors, who often see club ownership as a passion project as well as a business. While the sport is buoyant today, it would be so easy to misstep and drive our world-leading investment elsewhere. Already, before it has even arrived, the promise of regulatory intervention in football finances has changed incentives for a new voluntary arrangement to be struck.”
“We have spent the last year in discussions with the EFL about an even more generous financial settlement. But these talks have only served to highlight how destabilising intervention could be. The government claims its regulator will not interfere on the pitch, but by intervening in the carefully calibrated distribution of revenues and upsetting competitive balance, it is already doing exactly that.”
