Graham Kelly: FA needs to reassert influence over media moguls and power brokers

Critics in certain quarters may have missed the point by bemoaning the absence of past legends such as Sir Stanley Matthews from The Independent's list of the 50 most influential figures in British football, but surely the survey revealed an infinitely more depressing fact.

Compared to a year ago, when the Football Association chief executive Adam Crozier's energetic reforming zeal would have placed him, rather than the News Corporation head Rupert Murdoch, at the head of the list of the administrators, managers, agents, chairmen, media figures, bankers, and journalists consulted, the England coach Sven Goran Eriksson is now the only professional presence from the FA in the top 10 amid all the powerful television moguls and thrusting power brokers, Howard Wilkinson having left his position as technical director to manage Sunderland.

David Dein, the Arsenal vice-chairman, who comes fifth in the list, said during the controversy which resulted in Crozier's resignation that the former chief executive had "exceeded the speed limit". The impression is quickly forming that Crozier frightened the hell out of the FA and, despite all the fancy dancing pictures on FA.com, the true image now is of a governing body soft-pedalling on virtually every front.

After a review of all financial commitments, the £80m national technical centre at Burton-on-Trent originally planned by Wilkinson will go ahead to completion of the infrastructure stage in May 2004, but the FA board will reconsider the actual building costs at the earliest opportunity before giving further approval.

Crozier's aims for financial compliance by clubs were largely frustrated and, given the Independent Football Commission was formed last year "to evaluate the effectiveness of football's existing regulatory framework, to provide scrutiny of the football authorities' performance, and to suggest improvements", the launch of the Commission's first annual report a week today should provide a full and stimulating morning.

As David Conn showed last week, the case of Stockport County's breach of FA rules in connection with a Football Trust application dating back to 1995 hardly suggested that football's rulers will be beating a path to this particular press conference to glean ideas on how they might tackle the somewhat meatier issue of managers' shareholdings in companies handling players. Football's murkier corners are likely to remain shrouded in gloom until Crozier's successor arrives, and that could be delayed for some time, for a job advertisement will only be published on 2 February.

Following the FA Cup fourth-round draw a week ago, the FA was at pains to stress that the sole criterion for permitting a change of venue would be safety, then promptly allowed much of the romance conjured up by the wonderful Farnborough tie against Arsenal to evaporate by so readily facilitating a switch to Highbury, which, incidentally, contravened the secondary condition stipulating a ground in the vicinity of the "home" club.

The FA's restructuring proposals for non-League football were shelved after many months of debate and the gauntlet has now been taken up by the Nationwide Conference, which has published plans for an expansion to three divisions.

The hope is that the evidence of the survey points to a temporary instability at the heart of English football, rather than a worrying and permanent faultline in the governing body's structure, rendered by the money men in their attempts to seize control in the long term. Two of the top four places in the survey were taken by senior professional administrators: Richard Scudamore of the Premier League and Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers' Association, who, together, during the current period of drift at Soho Square, are left to provide some semblance of the stability that comes with experience.

Scudamore, as ever, has to prevent any serious collisions between the clanging egos which constitute the Premiership and is now preparing the ground for the issue of tenders for the next television contracts in May. Happily, the acrimony of the threatened players' strike of last season has now been largely forgotten and relations between the Premier League and the PFA are on an more even keel.

The Southampton chairman Rupert Lowe is hoping to replace Peter Ridsdale on the Premier League board and, once there, will presumably try to further his campaign to remove the restrictions on signing non-European Union players, which the PFA would want to retain. While this is only a small cloud on Taylor's horizon, it is interesting to speculate how the FA, with the new professional game board which prompted Crozier's departure, would react to a proposal which could further hamper the development of home-grown players.

A much bigger storm was threatening – or appeared to be until Taylor made clear his union's opposition last week – in the form of the Football League's proposals for wage capping, further details of which are due to go before club chairmen at Wigan on Thursday.

grahamkelly@btinternet.com