All of UK’s professional football clubs should publish full accounts, says Kieran Maguire in his new book ‘The price of £ootball’.
He said the Football Association could easily make it a rule that all professional clubs are obliged to publish full accounts, if they want to participate in FA competitions. “But they have done nothing,” he says.
Maguire is worried that the FA’s indifference towards public scrutiny of stewardship of individual clubs by owners does not reflect well “on an organisation that is supposed to be the guardian of the game”.
Consequently, he explained clubs can end up just following Bradford City’s example, where its accounts consisted of three pages and very little detail.
Maguire ventured that fans are kept in the dark and the opportunity for financial abuses merely increases. He said: “Many small club owners are fantastic and work tirelessly for little reward or appreciation, by the scope for abuse increases if there is an information vacuum.”
*Check our indepth feature on Derby County and football quiz in the July issue – out now.
