49ers told to 'get a grip' as Leeds United legal action damaging 'spirit' of Premier League

Leeds United will be damaging the "spirit" of the Premier League if they take legal action against Leicester City for a historical PSR breach.

That is according to former Everton chief executive Keith Wyness, speaking exclusively to Football Insider, who believes that lawyers are "dictating the policy" of clubs at the moment.

This comes after the news that the Whites are contemplating legal action against Leicester after a PSR breach back in 2023-24, with the inference that it stopped them getting promoted from the Championship.

Wyness has urged the West Yorkshire outfit to drop any plans for a legal push, and has called for owners to "stop the rot" with these cases, and prevent them becoming more commonplace moving forward.

There have also been suggestions that Leeds could target Everton and Nottingham Forest for PSR breaches back in 2022-23, as they both stayed up at their expense.

Everton are also involved in a dispute of their own at the moment, and are appealing against their order to pay Burnley £35million in compensation for a historical PSR breach.

Keith Wyness: Premier League owners need to 'get a grip'

Everton’s former chief Wyness – who served as CEO at Goodison Park between 2004 and 2009 and now runs a football consultancy advising elite clubs – believes that the 49ers and the rest of the Premier League owners need to "get a grip" over these legal issues before they become totally commonplace.

The former boardroom man believes that clubs' desire to help each other and make decisions to benefit everybody has totally eroded from the modern game.

Speaking on the latest edition of Football Insider's Inside Track podcast, he has called for a new "mechanism" to be introduced to avoid clubs turning to legal action for issues like this.

"Everybody now is reviewing these cases and stacking them up and trying to get cards to play. But there's got to be a mechanism beyond this situation of going into the legal framework and making claims against each other," Wyness said.

"There's got to be a way to fix it. It's going to stop the ability of clubs to cooperate together for stronger points of improvement in the game because they're all going to be involved in these bitter fights.

"It's just not the spirit of the Premier League that I knew when I was heavily involved. I was on the board of the Premier League for a long period, and I saw under Richard Scudamore a lot of growth that happened, and that was because clubs actually did reach out to each other and did try and build bonds together.

"That whole spirit is starting to erode, and that really worries me that we're now getting very insular and it's the lawyers dictating the policy of the clubs rather than the owners.

"The owners have got to get a grip on this quickly, and it's my urgent appeal to them today to really think about this and to stop the rot of these sorts of cases going forward."

Leeds to settle Leicester issue with '£5m deal'

Wyness told Football Insider last week that Leeds and Leicester should settle their dispite behind the scenes and reach an agreement between the two clubs.

The Scottish businessman suggested that it may only take a "£5m deal" between the two parties, rather than a large scale dispute involving lawyers.

Wyness also made it clear that the Whites do not have as strong a case as Burnley, who look set to be successful in their law suit against Everton.

He is unwavering in his stance that legal action in football should be a last resort, and that is not the case for certain clubs at the moment.