- FA chairman initiated process and discussed breakaway threat
- Suggested more big six money and was involved beyond spring
The Football Association chairman, Greg Clarke, is under increasing pressure to explain the accounts he has given about his role in the Project Big Picture proposals to reshape football, because of apparent inconsistencies with his actual degree of involvement.
Clarke set out his first, highly critical account in a public letter to the FA council on Tuesday 13 October, responding to the leak and publication of the plans in the Telegraph two days earlier. The proposals, to reserve key Premier League decisions to only nine “long term shareholder” clubs with six carrying a majority, reducing the Premier League to 18 clubs, more money for grassroots, and providing the EFL with 25% of joint Premier League and EFL net TV revenues, had been met with widespread denunciation. Clarke wrote that he had “participated in the early stages of discussions” then “discontinued his involvement” in late spring “when the principal aim of these discussions became the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few clubs with a breakaway league mooted as a threat”.
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