Sources: January announcement set to enrage Leeds United CEO Angus Kinnear
The government remains on course to set out its aims for an independent football regulator by the end of January in news that will not go down well with Leeds United CEO Angus Kinnear, sources have told Football Insider.
Kinnear previously described the proposals of Tracey Crouch MP’s Fan-Led Review, among which an independent regulator was the crown jewel, as “akin to Maoist collective agriculturalism”,
Maoism was the Marxist philosophy of Mao Zedong which led directly to the Great Chinese Famine, one of the worst atrocities in history that killed almost 30million.
Kinnear’s incendiary remarks were near-universally derided but the Premier League and its member clubs have continued to lobby against the introduction of an independent regulator.
Football Insider revealed in December last year that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is set to outline the remit of the third-party body in a white paper before the end of January.
The resignation of Helen Macnamara, the Premier League’s go-between with the UK government, has caused some to question whether DCMS are still on track to meet that target.
But a source has now told Football Insider that, as of this week, the plan is still to submit the policy document before the month is over.
It is also understood, however, that DCMS is deeply unhappy with the Premier League among various other bodies for their lack of meaningful cooperation in drafting the white paper.
The source explained that there is “too much ego and testosterone and not enough trust” between football stakeholders involved in liaising with DCMS’s policy-makers.
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire told this site in April last year that Leeds’ objections to independent regulation as the current self-regulatory system effectively allows them to “mark their own homework.”
Football Insider revealed earlier this month that real-time monitoring of club finances is among the powers that the government want to give the independent regulator.
In other news, Villarreal in advanced talks to sign Ben Brereton Diaz in blow to Leeds United and West Ham.