Unsuitable owners could be forced to sell clubs – chair of football regulator

Unsuitable owners could be forced to sell football clubs, the chairman of the new independent regulator has said.

David Kogan, who was appointed on Monday, also labelled Sheffield Wednesday’s perilous situation a “significant problem” and said the regulator is seeking powers to investigate clubs in such predicaments.

Wednesday have been placed under various embargoes amid tax debts and after failing to pay players and staff on time on five separate occasions this year, including last month.

Kogan this week met four supporter groups associated with the beleaguered Owls.

He expressed sympathy with fans of the South Yorkshire club, who sit second bottom of the Sky Bet Championship table with six points from nine games following Saturday’s 5-0 home defeat by Coventry.

“If your question is, ‘would we intervene in the final instance?’, the answer is once we gather the evidence and know what’s going on, we will,” Kogan told BBC Sport.

“It’s a last resort (forcing a sale) because the last thing we want to do is start getting involved with an individual club, an individual owner, without being able to work with that owner to try and resolve the issues that the club’s facing and the owner’s facing.

“But the truth is, when you look back over the history of football, over the last 20 or 30 years there have been some owners, not many, but some who have been irresponsible in the way which they’ve been managing their clubs and ultimately don’t wish to take responsibility for the future.”

Wednesday owner Dejphon Chansiri, who took over in 2015, indicated during the summer he would be willing to sell the club, but he has been unable to secure a deal.

A host of first-team players and coaches, including former manager Danny Rohl, departed