Norwich Supporters Trust welcomes fan-led review of English football
Key recommendations want to see an independent regulator introduced and a stronger test for prospective owners of clubs to pass
Norwich City's 11th largest shareholder group has welcomed the Government's fan-led review into English football- but say there's still a lot of work to be done.
Canaries Trust says recommendations that want to introduce an independent regulator and a stronger owners test, among other things, need to be implemented swiftly to be successful.
Rob Sainty is the organisation's chairman.
He told us these changes had to introduced: "I spoke to somebody on the FA Council not so long ago about this.
"Their response was, we think that football should have the chance to reform itself before it's done externally. But, the FA has been around for over 100 years and they haven't sorted it out, so what's the sense in giving them more time to do that.
"There's a lot of opposition from the Premier League"
"Now, it's one thing to talk about doing something about it- but we need a clear timetable on when these things are going to be done.
"There is always the danger that this becomes something that's going to be kicked into the long-grass further down the road.
"Clearly there's a lot of opposition from the Premier League for the obvious reason that it attacks their monopoly. So, there's a lot of hills to be climbed, if not mounted".
Mr Sainty did however say that plans to do away with financial 'parachute payments' that are handed to teams when they are relegated would do more harm than good: "If that does happen you're going to see a similar situation to what you've seen with Norwich.
"Unless you go into the Premier League and spend ludicrous amounts of money, you're going to come straight back down by which time you're loaded with players with Premier League contracts and you don't have the resources to pay them anymore".
"I'm not getting overly excited at this point"
He concluded by telling us that the fight to determine the future nature of the English game has just begun: "The Premier League and the FA have a vested interest and they are going to fight this all the way through and I suspect that we're going to see an attempt to chip away, water down or get rid of the key components.
"So, I'm not getting overly excited at this point. We need to see what the Government's White Paper looks like first".