England ‘needs only 40 pro clubs’

MANCHESTER UNITED chief executive Peter Kenyon has claimed only half the professional clubs in England can survive the current financial state of football.

With the future of several clubs in the balance in the aftermath of the ITV Digital saga, Kenyon believes that the Football League should be restructured to leave just 40 professional clubs in England. ‘‘I don’t think you can have four divisions of professional football any longer,’’ he said.

‘‘I think there are too many clubs. That’s not to say that they can’t exist, but they can’t all be professional and that has to be reviewed. I can’t see much beyond the first two divisions being fully professional and then a third division being semi.’’ That would result in just 40 professional clubs, he agreed. The Old Trafford club has a stock market value of £260 million, but Kenyon argued that the flotation of clubs had been ‘‘a fad.’’ He added on BBC Radio Five Live: ‘‘I am not sure why most football clubs went public in the first place. It was almost a fad. I think the majority of the City think that football clubs shouldn’t be quoted. They have not changed their management structure. They have not demonstrated that they can manage costs. They have not demonstrated that they can be anything other than a football clubs. There is huge uncertainty and all those things are not what the City like to invest in.

Meanwhile, Players’ union chief Gordon Taylor believes the Barclaycard Premiership has created a ‘‘financial monster’’ where business sense is put aside in the pursuit of the riches on offer at the top. But Taylor, the Professional Footballers‘ Association chief executive, insists that the drastic restructuring suggested by Kenyon should not be necessary if clubs are run and monitored properly.

He said: ‘‘You can count the number of clubs we’ve lost on the fingers of one hand and we’ve never had a bigger pot at the apex of the game, at the top of the Premier League.

‘‘We are dealing with administrations which have had bad financial propriety for years and I think only now are we really monitoring where the money is going. Players are on limited contracts, but what we’ve created with the Premiership is a financial monster where clubs are spending money they haven’t got to get there and spending money they still haven’t got to stay there so that when clubs do come out of the Premiership they all go into administration.”