Last week’s withdrawal by the preferred bidders for Sheffield Wednesday further reinforced the sad fact that English football is not the investment magnet those that look little further than the upper echelons of the Premier League would have us believe. But this announcement was not a crushing disappointment for many Wednesday fans given their doubts over the bidding consortium member’s long term commitment to the club and ability to meet its immediate and on-going financial needs.

It doesn’t need saying to Derby County supporters, but it’s clear that for clubs in crisis securing credible new owners that also enable Administrators to achieve the best deal for the club’s creditors is a Herculean challenge. It would obviously be better to pre-empt and avoid such crises altogether, a point addressed in a February 26th speech by David Kogan, Chair of the Independent Football Regulator (IFR).

In February the IFR’s Board was supplemented by five new non-executive directors, including Kevin Miles, the Football Supporters’ Association Chief Executive, and is now rapidly mobilising for the imminent full-scale launch of the new regulatory regime.

In his speech David Kogan referenced the IFR’s interaction with clubs to date, and presented a depressing picture featuring multiple clubs who will be unable to survive a month if owners pull their funding, with relegation for many described as “a near death sentence” if they don’t bounce back quickly, and the whole pyramid facing various financial cliff edges. Against this backdrop he believes the time has come to address the topic he says no-one wants to discuss but that underpins all these issues – that of revenue distribution. If football can’t find its own solution to this problem he would regard this as a failure and stands prepared to activate the Regulator’s backstop powers to resolve the matter if asked to do so.

The issues affecting the game will be analysed in detail in the State of the Game report to be issued by the end of the year, with the IFR’s statutory powers providing it with unprecedented access to information. The report will address how money flows through the pyramid and the strength of club balance sheets, as well as issues surrounding debt, liquidity, ownership models, broadcast rights and player wages.

The overriding impression given by David Kogan was of considerable confidence in the ability of the IFR to deliver positive change for the game as a whole and to identify and address problems at individual clubs earlier, in order to avoid similar situations to that at SWFC (and at DCFC in 2021/22) arising in future. Let’s all hope his confidence is justified.

If you would like to read the full text of David Kogan’s speech, please go to the IFR website here.