Latest news with #ChristianPurslow
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Starmer's search for football watchdog chair goes into extra-time
The appointment of the inaugural chair of English football's new watchdog has been thrown into fresh uncertainty after Whitehall officials resumed contact with applicants who did not make it onto a final shortlist. Sky News has learnt that the preferred candidate to chair the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) is now "unlikely" to be drawn from a group of three contenders interviewed months ago. The search process has not been officially reopened, and insiders said the £130,000-a-year post was not expected to be readvertised. They acknowledged, however, that a shortlist including former Aston Villa Football Club chief executive Christian Purslow would probably not produce the chosen candidate. Sky News revealed in recent weeks that the other contenders were Sanjay Bhandari, who chairs the anti-racism football charity Kick It Out, and Professor Sir Ian Kennedy, who chaired the new parliamentary watchdog established after the MPs expenses scandal. The delay to the appointment of the IFR's inaugural chair will do little to dampen recent speculation that Sir Keir Starmer wants to pare back the powers of the football regulator amid a broader clampdown on Britain's economic watchdogs. Both 10 Downing Street and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have sought to dismiss the speculation, with insiders insisting that the IFR will be established as originally envisaged. The establishment of the regulator, which will be based in Manchester, is among the principal elements of legislation progressing through parliament. The Football Governance Bill has just completed its journey through the House of Lords and will be introduced in the Commons shortly, according to a DCMS spokesman. The establishment of the regulator, which was conceived by the previous Conservative government in the wake of the furore over the failed European Super League project, has triggered deep unrest in English football. Steve Parish, the chairman of Premier League side Crystal Palace, told a recent sports industry conference that the watchdog "wants to interfere in all of the things we don't need them to interfere in and help with none of the things we actually need help with". "We have a problem that we're constantly being told that we're not a business and [that] we're part of the fabric of communities," he is reported to have said. "At the same time, we're…being treated to the nth degree like a business." Interviews for the chair of the football regulator took place in November, with a previous recruitment process curtailed by the calling of last year's general election. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, will sign off on the appointment of a preferred candidate, with the chosen individual expected to face a pre-appointment hearing in front of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee. It forms part of a process that represents the most fundamental shake-up in the oversight of English football in the game's history. The establishment of the body comes with the top tier of the professional game gripped by civil war, with Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City at the centre of a number of legal cases over its financial dealings. The government has dropped a previous stipulation that the regulator should have regard to British foreign and trade policy when determining the appropriateness of a new club owner. "We do not comment on speculation," the DCMS said when asked about the process to recruit a chair of the football watchdog. "No appointment has been made and the recruitment process for [IFR] chair is ongoing."
Sky News
12-04-2025
- Politics
- Sky News
Starmer's search for football watchdog chair goes into extra-time
The appointment of the inaugural chair of English football's new watchdog has been thrown into fresh uncertainty after Whitehall officials resumed contact with applicants who did not make it onto a final shortlist. Sky News has learnt that the preferred candidate to chair the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) is now "unlikely" to be drawn from a group of three contenders interviewed months ago. The search process has not been officially reopened, and insiders said the £130,000-a-year post was not expected to be readvertised. They acknowledged, however, that a shortlist including former Aston Villa Football Club chief executive Christian Purslow would probably not produce the chosen candidate. Sky News revealed in recent weeks that the other contenders were Sanjay Bhandari, who chairs the anti-racism football charity Kick It Out, and Professor Sir Ian Kennedy, who chaired the new parliamentary watchdog established after the MPs expenses scandal. The delay to the appointment of the IFR's inaugural chair will do little to dampen recent speculation that Sir Keir Starmer wants to pare back the powers of the football regulator amid a broader clampdown on Britain's economic watchdogs. Both 10 Downing Street and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have sought to dismiss the speculation, with insiders insisting that the IFR will be established as originally envisaged. The establishment of the regulator, which will be based in Manchester, is among the principal elements of legislation progressing through parliament. The Football Governance Bill has just completed its journey through the House of Lords and will be introduced in the Commons shortly, according to a DCMS spokesman. The establishment of the regulator, which was conceived by the previous Conservative government in the wake of the furore over the failed European Super League project, has triggered deep unrest in English football. Steve Parish, the chairman of Premier League side Crystal Palace, told a recent sports industry conference that the watchdog "wants to interfere in all of the things we don't need them to interfere in and help with none of the things we actually need help with". "We have a problem that we're constantly being told that we're not a business and [that] we're part of the fabric of communities," he is reported to have said. "At the same time, we're…being treated to the nth degree like a business." Interviews for the chair of the football regulator took place in November, with a previous recruitment process curtailed by the calling of last year's general election. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, will sign off on the appointment of a preferred candidate, with the chosen individual expected to face a pre-appointment hearing in front of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee. It forms part of a process that represents the most fundamental shake-up in the oversight of English football in the game's history. The establishment of the body comes with the top tier of the professional game gripped by civil war, with Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City at the centre of a number of legal cases over its financial dealings. The government has dropped a previous stipulation that the regulator should have regard to British foreign and trade policy when determining the appropriateness of a new club owner. "We do not comment on speculation," the DCMS said when asked about the process to recruit a chair of the football watchdog.
The Independent
01-04-2025
- Sport
- The Independent
The Premier League has never been more popular but it has never had more problems
There was a strange feeling around some Premier League training grounds on Monday, especially for the modern game. It was one of refreshment. The sun was out for a lot of teams, and many players haven't even had a game for two and a half weeks. That represents the longest break the Premier League has had since the summer. That would normally afford the same sense of refreshment to the actual games, but then this is also a strange time for the Premier League as a whole. Normally so used to being the biggest show around, 'the world's best league' last weekend witnessed the FA Cup bringing some actual storylines back to a relatively drab season. That was something else that fed into the feeling at some training grounds this week. There is a sense of a season winding down, rather than building up to a crescendo. The title race is all but over, and Liverpool 's recent drop-off has raised a slightly unfair debate over their standard as champions and whether this has been a good season in terms of quality. Such races are just the way it falls sometimes, and Arne Slot has obviously done a fine job with a strong team. There are still issues for the competition related to what it is in 2025, and its very political economy. As impressively defiant as Liverpool have been in ending Manchester City 's long run, it remains a problem that so few clubs can actually win the Premier League, and the wealthiest can just streak away in the campaigns when they get it right. The phoney conflict of the relegation battle has meanwhile brought more questions about the financial gap lower down the pyramid, all at the same time as there is ongoing debate about parachute payments. Some in the Premier League would say that is circumstantial. Ipswich Town weren't quite ready to come up, and could no longer avail of their deal for Brighton's recruitment analytics just at the point when signings were most important. Southampton have had their own long-term issues. The fear is that there is a trend emerging, though, and more of the same teams are coming up and then going straight back down. Premier League executives have still been most exercised about the forthcoming independent regulator, and whether it will be 'light touch'. Some would prefer no touch at all. Short-listed candidates for the chair like Christian Purslow and Sanjay Bhandari have been at Wembley for major matches of late, but there is still a sense the eventual appointment could be a surprise name. While a widespread Premier League view is that the regulator won't address any of the issues they need it to address, and could mess with ones they don't, it may be a blessing in disguise. The reality is that it is unlikely to affect any of the issues that make the Premier League so globally popular. The executives should maybe be looking within the league for potential issues there. The independent regulator may instead serve as a lightning rod, especially when regulatory issues arise. The body would have no influence on cases comparable to the recent Everton or Nottingham Forest points deductions, for example, but an inevitable question will be how this happens with a regulator. The Premier League was criticised for 'making it up as it goes along', for not having graded punishments ready in such cases, but there is a fair reason for that. They don't want such sanctions to merely become wealth taxes, where teams become willing to take calculated risks on PSR. Some club executives are pointing to how Aston Villa's wage-to-turnover ratio was 96 per cent last season, making their current Champions League run all the more valuable. Nottingham Forest have meanwhile been the story of the season, but you won't find too many other clubs overly effusive about that. There are still resentments about their points deduction last season. This is the thing with the modern Premier League. Even one of its better stories has this edge. It's also fair to say that Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis isn't necessarily the most popular. Forest now generally form a voting bloc with Villa, Newcastle United and Manchester City in Premier League meetings, which have become increasingly fractious. One senior executive says there are now just too many competing interests. It is within that kind of vacuum that all of Crystal Palace, Brighton and West Ham United are said to have become among the most influential voices. The gaps can be seen in some of the discussion around the issue hanging over the competition, the sword of Damocles that might yet change everything: the Manchester City case. The club insist on their innocence. In the meantime, there are still some clubs who want them expelled from the Premier League if they are found guilty of the most serious of the 130 charges. By contrast, a minority are talking about 'the need to come together as it is damaging the competition'. There was some consternation over the weekend, as The Athletic reported that Jaber Mohammed – who had previously been named as a mystery £30m broker in the investigated Etisalat deal – was a senior aide to Abu Dhabi ruler Mohammed bin Zayed. This surprised those involved in the initial 2020 Uefa hearing, since the detail about his state connections was not revealed. For Uefa's investigators, however, it was sufficient to know the payment wasn't made by Etisalat. City were initially given a two-year ban, a decision overturned at the Court of Arbitration for Sport due to key Etisalat details being time-barred. Although the accounts for that deal had been submitted inside the May 2014 time limit, the payments had been made earlier. The judges ruled it was payments that mattered by a majority of 2-1. There is no time-barring on the Premier League case, although it remains to be seen what they look into and how. So little information has come out. The process has been viewed as very disciplined, and it certainly isn't rushed. An outcome has been described as 'imminent' for about three months now. Some believe it could yet go into the summer. This has baffled those with knowledge of the Uefa hearing, since that finished in a day. If the decision comes out before the end of the season, it could have significant effect on the one major storyline left in this year's Premier League: the race for the Champions League places. Even that could be diluted, though. The Premier League is almost certain to get five places, which makes the race that bit less exacting. It remains possible, or even likely, that all of Liverpool, Arsenal, City and Chelsea could get back in – four of the old big six. The Premier League could become a victim of its own success in that sense, which is how you might also describe the prospect of the world's best league having no Champions League semi-finalists for the second successive season. Neither Arsenal nor Aston Villa are favourites for their quarter-finals against Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain, respectively, with both having endured injury crises due to the intensity of these seasons. Liverpool also dropped off at the wrong time. Then again, both LaLiga and Ligue Un would love to have some of the Premier League's issues. Executives within both look at its wealth with envy. The Premier League may be the ultimate illustration of modern football right now. It has never been more popular, but it has never had more problems, in part due to that very popularity. It could certainly do with some good games being back on, starting with this week.
Sky News
01-03-2025
- Business
- Sky News
Ex-Villa chief Purslow among contenders to chair football watchdog
Why you can trust Sky News A former chief executive of Aston Villa and Liverpool is a surprise contender to become the inaugural chairman of the government's controversial football watchdog. Sky News can exclusively reveal that Christian Purslow, who left Villa Park in 2023, is on a three-person shortlist being considered by Whitehall officials to chair the Independent Football Regulator (IFR). Mr Purslow, an outspoken character who has spent much of his career in sports finance, was this weekend said to be a serious candidate for the job despite having publicly warned about the regulator's proposed remit and its potential impact on the Premier League. A former commercial chief at Chelsea Football Club, Mr Purslow spent an eventful 16 months in charge at Anfield, spearheading the sale of Liverpool to its current owners following a bitter fight with former principals Tom Hicks and George Gillett. He joined Aston Villa in 2018 when the club was in its third consecutive season in the Championship, seeing them promoted via the play-offs at the end of that campaign. It was unclear this weekend how much of the football pyramid would respond to the appointment of a chairman at the regulator who has been so closely associated with top-flight clubs, given ongoing disagreement between the Premier League and English Football League (EFL) about the future distribution of finances. One ally of Mr Purslow said, though, that his independence was not in doubt and that his experience of working outside the Premier League would also be valuable if he landed the IFR chairman role. In the past, he has both welcomed the prospect of further regulatory oversight of the sport, while also warning in a BBC interview in 2021, during his stint at Villa Park: "The Premier League has really always been the source of funding for the rest of football and the danger here is killing the golden goose, if we over-regulate a highly successful and commercial operation. "I think we have to be very careful as we contemplate reform that it does not ultimately damage the game. "We already have a hugely successful English football Premier League - the most successful in the world." Two years later, however, he told Sky News' political editor, Beth Rigby: "I like the idea that the government wants to be involved in our national sport. "These [clubs] are hugely important institutions in their communities, economically and socially - so it's right that they [the government] are interested." The disclosure of Mr Purslow's candidacy means that two of the three shortlisted contenders for what will rank among the most powerful jobs in English football have now been identified by Sky News. On Friday, it emerged that Sanjay Bhandari, the chairman of Kick It Out, the football anti-racism charity, was also in the frame for the Manchester-based position, which will pay £130,000-a-year. A decision is expected in the coming weeks, with the third candidate expected to be a woman given the shift in Whitehall to gender-diverse shortlists for public appointments. The establishment of the regulator, which was originally conceived by the previous Conservative government in the wake of the furore over the failed European Super League project, has triggered deep unrest in the sport. This week, Steve Parish, the influential chairman of Premier League side Crystal Palace, told a sports industry conference organised by the Financial Times that the watchdog "wants to interfere in all of the things we don't need them to interfere in and help with none of the things we actually need help with". "We have a problem that we're constantly being told that we're not a business and [that] we're part of the fabric of communities," he is reported to have said. "At the same time, we're…being treated to the nth degree like a business." Interviews for the chair of the football regulator took place in November, with a previous recruitment process curtailed by the calling of last year's general election. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, will sign off on the appointment of a preferred candidate, with the chosen individual expected to face a pre-appointment hearing in front of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee. The Football Governance Bill is proceeding through parliament, with its next stage expected in March. It forms part of a process that represents the most fundamental shake-up in the oversight of English football in the game's history. The establishment of the body comes with the top tier of the professional game wracked by civil war, with Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City at the centre of a number of legal cases over its financial dealings. The government has dropped a previous stipulation that the regulator should have regard to British foreign and trade policy when determining the appropriateness of a new club owner. The IFR will monitor clubs' adherence to rules requiring them to listen to fans' views on issues including ticket pricing, while it may also have oversight of the parachute payments made to clubs in the years after their relegation from the Premier League. The top flight has issued a statement expressing reservations about the regulator's remit, while the IFR has been broadly welcomed by the English Football League.
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ex-Villa chief Purslow among contenders to chair football watchdog
A former chief executive of Aston Villa and Liverpool is a surprise contender to become the inaugural chairman of the government's controversial football watchdog. Sky News can exclusively reveal that Christian Purslow, who left Villa Park in 2023, is on a three-person shortlist being considered by Whitehall officials to chair the Independent Football Regulator (IFR). Mr Purslow, an outspoken character who has spent much of his career in sports finance, was this weekend said to be a serious candidate for the job despite having publicly warned about the regulator's proposed remit and its potential impact on the Premier League. A former commercial chief at Chelsea Football Club, Mr Purslow spent an eventful 16 months in charge at Anfield, spearheading the sale of Liverpool to its current owners following a bitter fight with former principals Tom Hicks and George Gillett. He joined Aston Villa in 2018 when the club was in its third consecutive season in the Championship, seeing them promoted via the play-offs at the end of that campaign. It was unclear this weekend how much of the football pyramid would respond to the appointment of a chairman at the regulator who has been so closely associated with top-flight clubs, given ongoing disagreement between the Premier League and English Football League (EFL) about the future distribution of finances. One ally of Mr Purslow said, though, that his independence was not in doubt and that his experience of working outside the Premier League would also be valuable if he landed the IFR chairman role. In the past, he has both welcomed the prospect of further regulatory oversight of the sport, while also warning in a BBC interview in 2021, during his stint at Villa Park: "The Premier League has really always been the source of funding for the rest of football and the danger here is killing the golden goose, if we over-regulate a highly successful and commercial operation. "I think we have to be very careful as we contemplate reform that it does not ultimately damage the game. "We already have a hugely successful English football Premier League - the most successful in the world." Two years later, however, he told Sky News' political editor, Beth Rigby: "I like the idea that the government wants to be involved in our national sport. "These [clubs] are hugely important institutions in their communities, economically and socially - so it's right that they [the government] are interested." The disclosure of Mr Purslow's candidacy means that two of the three shortlisted contenders for what will rank among the most powerful jobs in English football have now been identified by Sky News. On Friday, it emerged that Sanjay Bhandari, the chairman of Kick It Out, the football anti-racism charity, was also in the frame for the Manchester-based position, which will pay £130,000-a-year. A decision is expected in the coming weeks, with the third candidate expected to be a woman given the shift in Whitehall to gender-diverse shortlists for public appointments. The establishment of the regulator, which was originally conceived by the previous Conservative government in the wake of the furore over the failed European Super League project, has triggered deep unrest in the sport. This week, Steve Parish, the influential chairman of Premier League side Crystal Palace, told a sports industry conference organised by the Financial Times that the watchdog "wants to interfere in all of the things we don't need them to interfere in and help with none of the things we actually need help with". "We have a problem that we're constantly being told that we're not a business and [that] we're part of the fabric of communities," he is reported to have said. "At the same time, we're…being treated to the nth degree like a business." Interviews for the chair of the football regulator took place in November, with a previous recruitment process curtailed by the calling of last year's general election. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, will sign off on the appointment of a preferred candidate, with the chosen individual expected to face a pre-appointment hearing in front of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee. The Football Governance Bill is proceeding through parliament, with its next stage expected in March. It forms part of a process that represents the most fundamental shake-up in the oversight of English football in the game's history. The establishment of the body comes with the top tier of the professional game wracked by civil war, with Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City at the centre of a number of legal cases over its financial dealings. The government has dropped a previous stipulation that the regulator should have regard to British foreign and trade policy when determining the appropriateness of a new club owner. The IFR will monitor clubs' adherence to rules requiring them to listen to fans' views on issues including ticket pricing, while it may also have oversight of the parachute payments made to clubs in the years after their relegation from the Premier League. The top flight has issued a statement expressing reservations about the regulator's remit, while the IFR has been broadly welcomed by the English Football League. A Department for Culture, Media and Sport spokesman said: "We do not comment on speculation. "No appointment has been made and the recruitment process for [IFR] chair is ongoing." Mr Purslow was abroad this weekend and did not respond to a request for comment.
