Martin Smith: The onus is now on our clubs to work with Project Big Picture and make it better

Hands up who wants Joel Glazer running English football?
Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United. Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesOld Trafford, the home of Manchester United. Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United. Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

No-one?

Thought not.

Times journalist Henry Winter told Talk Sport that the Premier League would be inviting the Manchester United-owning Joel Glazer and his much-loathed American family to do exactly that if English football accepted the Liverpool /Manchester United proposals for a new relationship between the Premier League and the Football League.

On the upside Project Big Picture would mean more cash for such as Wednesday, Rotherham, Doncaster and Barnsley with a cut of a £250m kitty followed by a 25% cut of future TV revenues.

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For that the top clubs - presumably led by the Manchester United-owning Glazer family and Liverpool owners Fenway Sports - want more say for the top clubs in how things are run.

As self-serving and voracious beasts go the Premier League is right up there.

If that earning power were to be shared with the lower clubs that would be a win for the game as a whole – hence the Big Picture angle.

A lot of Football League clubs will be happy to take the money and live with the consequences rather than go out of business.

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If you offer a hand to a drowning man he doesn’t ask if it’s clean, he grabs it.

So who is fit to make this decision?

The Premier League clubs outside the elite aren’t keen either, West Ham sources have already dismissed it out of hand.

But no-one else has come up with any better ideas.

Instead of wailing and snarling because they don’t want the mega clubs going giga, someone needs to come up with an alternative before the Football League’s financial house of cards starts to tumble.

The Project Big Picture plan may come from a self-interested elite but at the moment it’s the only proposal in town.

If the clubs don’t like it they should take it, work on it and make it better.

Or come up with their own plan.

Doing nothing is not an option.