Absolute Power and the Legal Vacuum: What England's Football Regulator Said, and What Was Left Unsaid

On the evening of October 21, in Manchester, David Kogan sat in front of a microphone for The Rest Is Football. He did not read out a statute. He spoke like a man who had already made up his mind. Asked what his organisation could do about a club owner who failed the standards, Kogan produced a phrase that stopped English football in its tracks: absolute power. He said the regulator could ask an owner to step away. The test, he said, is whether an owner is "fit, fair, done with propriety."

I heard that clip around eleven at night in Guangzhou. The city had not gone to sleep. I rewound it three times, not because the sentence was strong, but because I know the distance between a sentence on a podcast and an enforceable ruling.

Across the thirty-seven information points in the original report, there is not a single line about tactics, formations or passing metrics. This is a story about the architecture of power, not about football on the pitch. And that is precisely why it is the most important story of the week.

A regulator three months old

England's Independent Football Regulator — the IFR — was established in July 2026. Three months. At 62, I have watched enough sports bodies launch with grand promises and then die slowly in paperwork. This one is different in one specific respect: the IFR has jurisdiction over the fitness of owners and senior directors across the entire English pyramid, from the Premier League down to the Championship.

David Kogan chairs it. He chose The Rest Is Football, hosted by Gary Lineker and Alastair Campbell — not an accident. That is a channel to the general public, not to lawyers or financiers. The audience is supporters. Once a message is delivered straight to the stands, it gets remembered differently from a press release.

This is the most sensitive point in any regulator's life cycle: the doctrine-setting window. In the first three months, every sentence carries the weight of precedent. Three years from now, people will go back to statements made in October 2026 to work out what this body actually wanted.

"Absolute" is a reading, not a ruling

The word "absolute" is an interpretation of the statute, not a legal finding. Kogan is describing how he reads the law. Whether the power is genuinely absolute will be decided by courts, not podcasts.

And here is the point I want readers to hold on to: a strong sentence on air can become evidence against the person who said it. If the IFR ends up in court, the other side's lawyers will open that exact recording and ask whether the statute really grants power to that extent, or whether this was simply overstatement.

What the statute actually grants the IFR is the power to assess individuals. Not the power to fine clubs. Not the power to deduct points. Kogan says this repeatedly in the same conversation: his body judges people, not clubs. That is a deliberate separation of powers from the Premier League, and it is the single most important legal anchor of the whole architecture.

People see contracts; I see the people sitting behind the negotiating table. The same applies here. People see a regulator; I see a set of individuals trying to define their own powers before anyone has had the chance to test them.

Manchester City: two tracks and the discipline of waiting

The pressure epicentre of the entire story is one name: Manchester City. The club is appealing a verdict relating to 114 alleged breaches of the Premier League's financial rules. That 114 is the only hard number in the whole report on this matter, and it is stated as the subject of an appeal — contested, not settled.

What is striking is how Kogan handles it. He does not dodge. He confirms a separate IFR investigation is entirely possible. But he also makes clear the regulator will wait for the appeal to conclude before deciding whether to open one. He calls acting before the appeal resolves a colossal mistake.

I read that and see discipline, not hesitation. An IFR investigation launched while the appeal is live would be vulnerable to procedural challenge, potentially prejudicing the regulator's own case. Waiting is the only way to make later action stand up.

At the same time, confirming the possibility of a separate track keeps the second rail visibly open. It is a dual message: we are not rushing, but we are still here.

From a risk standpoint, this is dual exposure. Manchester City faces sporting sanctions from the Premier League and individual-conduct sanctions from the IFR. Two mechanisms, two standards of proof, two timelines. For a club, that is doubled risk. For an owner, it is personalised risk.

Five hundred million pounds in agent fees: money leaking off the pitch

In the same conversation Kogan offers another number, and in my view it carries more public weight than the Manchester City case: more than £500 million a year paid in agent fees in English football. He calls it ridiculous. He says plainly he would much rather see that money spent on players.

I understand why he said it on a mainstream podcast. It touches the rawest nerve in the audience. Fans buy tickets, shirts and subscriptions, and they watch part of that money flow to people who never play a minute.

But it must be said clearly: this is a statement of concern, not a policy announcement. The IFR, by Kogan's own account, has no remit over agent activity. It assesses owners and directors, not representation contracts. So the £500 million figure functions as a legitimacy lever — it builds public support for intervention before any intervention mechanism has been proposed.

That is how a new regulator builds political capital. Not through regulation, but by pointing at where the money leaks.

"Billions" in transfer debt: the risk nobody is watching

This is the part I want to sit with longest.

Kogan says clubs owe one another "billions of pounds" in transfer obligations, and that the figure is rising dramatically. Two sentences. Only two in the entire report. But in my assessment, this is the largest systemic risk disclosed anywhere in the piece.

Consider the mechanism. Club A sells a player to Club B for £60 million, payable over four years. Club A books the full £60 million as revenue immediately and uses it to balance its financial rules. In reality, A has received £15 million. The rest is a receivable, dependent on B paying on schedule.

Now multiply that across hundreds of deals up and down two divisions. It is a network of mutual obligations. If one mid-tier club misses an instalment, the counterparty immediately finds itself in trouble — a receivable turns bad, its financial position deteriorates, and it may in turn fail its own obligations to a third party. That is a domino effect the regulator's club-level remit may not be built to catch.

This is the biggest blind spot in the entire English governance debate. People talk about Manchester City because it has a name, a number, a specific club. But a systemic debt position in the billions, rising, with no stated mitigation, is what keeps me awake longer.

Some transfers do not live on paper; they live in a promise made at midnight. And a four-year instalment promise is the easiest kind of promise to forget.

Premier League–EFL redistribution: a compression mechanism

The third section of the report is about money, and it has the clearest structural logic.

The Premier League is discussing more than doubling its annual solidarity payments to the English Football League. At the same time, parachute payments to relegated clubs are to be reduced. And Championship funding is to rise substantially.

Placed side by side, these three moves form a single mechanism: compressing the financial gap between a newly relegated club and its second-tier rivals. Kogan says exactly that in his own words — narrow the financial gap, make the Championship more competitive.

I have followed parachute payments for years. They are the economic pillar of the yo-yo club model. A relegated club still receives large sums for several seasons, enough to retain its squad and dominate the Championship. Cutting them touches the very structure of second-tier advantage.

Based on my experience watching matches and squad wages in the Championship across many seasons, I can say this in advance: this will be the flashpoint of the whole negotiation. Recently relegated clubs and promotion chasers will resist fiercely, because that money is their core competitive advantage.

And there is a secondary consequence few mention. If parachute payments are cut, the first adjustment variable for a relegated club is the wage bill. That means pressure to cut wages, pressure to sell players, pressure to break contracts will fall on the least powerful group — players who signed long deals with a club that just went down.

The summer of 2026 taught me that football can stop turning, but people never do. And in every financial restructuring, the last person to the table is always the one who pays — never the one who signs the decision.

The biggest gap: state money cannot be blocked

This is the detail the headline does not convey, and it matters as much as any claim of absolute power.

Kogan confirms plainly: the law does not allow the IFR to block a takeover backed by a state fund. He cites Norway's sovereign wealth fund. A national investment fund, transparent, uncontroversial — and the regulator has no power to stop it buying an English club.

I read that and immediately understood why he chose Norway rather than any other name. It is a way of making the legal point without touching politics. But the substance is clear: this regime polices conduct, not the origin of capital.

The regulator can assess whether an owner is running a club properly. It cannot assess where that owner's money comes from. That is a structural legal limitation, not an oversight. And it means the most politically contested question in English football today — state-linked ownership — sits outside the regulator's reach.

That is a gap that will soon be tested by a specific transaction. When it comes, this regulator will have no tool to respond with, and all that will remain is a sentence on a podcast.

The risk matrix: three vectors converging

When I put three things side by side — a three-month-old regulator asserting untested absolute power, a live 114-breach appeal at the league's most prominent club, and a multi-billion-pound inter-club transfer debt still rising — I see something few reports mention. These are not three separate stories. They are three independent risk vectors converging in a single news cycle.

Any one of them, alone, would be enough to produce a volatile season. Together, they mark a structurally volatile period for English football governance.

I rank severity differently from the media. The media put Manchester City first because it has a name. I put transfer debt first because it has no boundary. The City case is bounded — a club, allegations, a process, an endpoint. A multi-billion systemic debt has no endpoint, no resolution mechanism, and nobody politically accountable for it.

The second risk is the symmetrical risk of the "absolute power" claim. If exercised successfully, the regulator is established. If challenged and narrowed by a court, its credibility is damaged exactly when it needs it most. That is the trap of speaking too early.

The headline says more than the article

One small detail is worth pausing on. The headline says the regulator has absolute power to force club owners to sell. Kogan's actual quote is softer: the regulator can ask an owner to step away.

Between "force to sell" and "ask to step away" there is a considerable legal distance. One is a sanction on assets. The other is a sanction on fitness. The headline pushed the frame to its maximum and that is a deliberate editorial choice to maximise attention.

This does not make the report wrong. It means readers need to know which part is the quote and which part is the interpretation. In every governance story, the gap between those two is where misunderstanding is born.

I hear the news from the meeting room, but I write in the voice of the stands. And right now the stands are cheering a sentence that may take eighteen months to verify.

The contrarian view: the thing to fear is not Manchester City

This is where I step away from the consensus.

The popular framing puts Manchester City at the centre: a tough new regulator ready to take on the most powerful club in England. It is compelling, shareable and memorable.

But look closely at the statutory architecture and a different picture appears. The IFR cannot deduct points. It cannot fine clubs. It cannot block a state-backed takeover. It has never once exercised the power to force an owner out. Three months old, no precedent, no case law.

So the real story is not "regulator gets tough with Manchester City." The real story is a young body trying to build credibility by speaking forcefully while acting cautiously — entirely rational strategy, but not what the headline wants you to believe.

The second concern is the gap between public expectation and actual capability. When a regulator is welcomed as a saviour, every failure to act reads as weakness. Every action that loses in court reads as incompetence. That is a trap built on day one.

And the third, most important point: the biggest risk in this entire report is not a club. It is a faceless number — billions in cross-club debt, rising, with no resolution mechanism and no accountable owner. Nobody cheers for a number like that. Nobody shares an article about instalment obligations. But that is what can bring a system down.

I have followed football through eight World Cups and many transfer windows. The lesson that repeats most often is this: the biggest collapses never start at the loudest club. They start with an unnoticed debt at a club nobody reads about.

Looking forward

There is a question I want to put to myself, and to anyone following this story.

When a new regulator is born, it is usually judged on two things: what it says in its first six months, and what it does in the six years after. The distance between those two is the true measure of power.

With the IFR, the first six months have produced a strong sentence. What remains is to see how the first real enforcement action plays out — and whether it survives in court. If it does, the whole of English football will have to rewrite how it thinks about ownership. If it does not, we will have a regulator narrowed in its twelfth month.

For supporters, the more practical question: of the two stories running in parallel — the loud Manchester City case and the silent multi-billion transfer debt — which one reaches their wallets first?

I have a private belief. At 62, I no longer chase breaking news; I wait to see how people keep their word. In this story, the word has already been spoken. What remains is to see whether anyone can keep it through the next season.