Blog

Members may recall that at our 20^th Anniversary Dinner, Gordon Taylor, Chief Executive of the Professional Footballers Association became Patron of the FSOA, following meetings with our colleague John Newsham.

He spoke at our conference, and we looked forward to a mutually beneficial relationship, particularly as many of our members find themselves responsible for players safety, not only on match days but in their general lives. In return, we were perhaps looking for either financial support or guidance as to how we could create a more profitable FSOA which in turn would assist us with our desire to help football at the grassroots level.

Neither of these came to pass. Gordon carried on doing his “thing” with the PFA and we have had to develop other means of trying to assist grassroots football.

Following the betting scandal, the FSOA decided to part company with Gordon and over the last few days, there has been a vehemence of opposition towards the man who has been in position for 37 years and whose level of pay has been called into question. According to many news sources, this exceeded £2million last year.

The 5-live phone-in has been alive with detrimental comment about Gordon, with pundits Robbie Savage, Chris Sutton and Ian Wright airing their thoughts and this morning on Talk Sport, Vinnie Jones was controversial and scathing in his comments, referring to him as a “dinosaur”.

Following is an article from the Guardian on the subject.

Read More