Speaking recently on The Extra Ball podcast, Leeds United managing director Angus Kinnear criticised the English Football League’s (EFL) way of operating.
The EFL has come under fire many times in recent years, most recently for their decision to introduce a salary cap to League One and Two football teams, which has been labelled ‘unlawful and unenforceable‘ by the Professional Footballers’ Association.
Speaking about the EFL, Kinnear claimed that one blanket governing body for Championship sides down to League Two sides is not particularly helpful, as well as criticising the ‘financial cliff edge’ of the Premier League.
He said: “Our perspective on the EFL – it’s very challenging from a governance perspective to have one governance structure with 72 clubs, which has to span from Leeds United and Aston Villa or Newcastle United at one end to Morecambe and Accrington Stanley at the other.
“Those clubs are just so different in terms of the professionalism, the way they operate, the size of the business. So governance structure, which is sort of ‘one size fits all’, makes it quite challenging. You have meetings and there are 72 representatives in the room, representing that range of clubs. Getting consensus is very hard and makes it very difficult to move forward.
“Then the second thing is that Norwich finished bottom of the Premier League and would have secured over £100 million in TV payments. Leeds finished top of the Championship and would have got just under £3 million. And that financial cliff edge is just not a sustainable way to run football, and it’s not representative of the Championship product versus the Premier League product.
“We understand that a Championship game is not as valuable as Manchester United v Manchester City, but Leeds playing West Brom, in a top-two clash, is more valuable than Bournemouth playing Watford in a dead rubber at the end of the Premier League season.”
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As such, it would certainly appear as if Kinnear is not particularly fond of the structure of the EFL, which, as the managing director of the now-Premier League side Leeds United, is no longer directly his concern.