C. E. Lord OBE

This morning on Radio 4’s Today programme we heard the chief executive of the League Manager’s Association describe the situation at Blackburn Rovers Football Club which yesterday sacked its third manager this season. Michael Appleton was dismissed by an ‘adviser’ employed by the new Indian owners of the Club rather than by the Club’s managing director and, it seems, without his knowledge.

This to me is a further example of the lack of cultural understanding and poor  corporate governance brought about by the new generation of football club owners, frequently from beyond our shores. The desperation the game has in finding investors who can meet the ever increasing demands British clubs (or should we say players) have for financing transfers, wages and sometimes better facilities has meant that the ‘fit and proper person’ test is a mere fig leaf rather than a reality.

What is worse is there is little if anything that the game’s governing bodies – The FA, Premier League and Football League – can do about it as they are themselves beholden both in financial and governance terms to the self same proprietors. It beggars belief that we have a system in football, our national game, in which the regulators are owned by the regulated. This is a fact I know for certain is a source of constant frustration to the FA’s outgoing Chairman David Bernstein and General Secretary Alex Horne who have been thwarted at every stage in their attempts to modernise the Association’s governance model.

The House of Commons Culture Media & Sport Committee, led by John Whittingdale, continues to have football governance at the top of its agenda. Now that the Department for Culture Media & Sport has got media regulation sorted (we hope), maybe it is time it took on that other out of control British industry, football.