England’s new football regulator could force club owners to sell their teams and launch its own investigation into Manchester City once the club’s appeal against a finding of 114 alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules is resolved, its chair, David Kogan, said.
Kogan, who leads the Independent Football Regulator, said the body would assess club owners and senior officials against its own standards and had the authority to remove those who failed to meet them.
“We have the power to ask an owner to step away from a club if we believe that they run a club in a way that is neither fit, fair or done with propriety,” Kogan told The Rest Is Football podcast.
Asked by co-host Alastair Campbell whether an owner could refuse to comply, Kogan replied: “No, no, no. We’ve got absolute power to do so.”
Established in July 2025, the Independent Football Regulator is tasked with protecting the financial sustainability of English football. It has the power to scrutinize club owners and directors and intervene when clubs face financial risks.
The regulator’s powers have come into focus amid Manchester City’s appeal against the verdict.
Kogan said the regulator would wait for that process to conclude before deciding whether to launch a separate investigation.
“I am not going to get pushed into making any judgment on this until we’ve seen all of those questions being answered, and then we will have to decide whether we’re going to mount our own investigation and come to a conclusion on that and what we’re going to do,” he said.
“And pre-empting that would be a colossal mistake.”
Kogan said the regulator’s role differed from the Premier League’s because it would focus on the individuals running clubs rather than imposing sporting sanctions on the clubs themselves.
“We would judge against the tests of ownership and senior directors and executives. We would judge the actions of those individuals,” he said.
“We’re not there, we can’t, unlike the Premier League, who obviously can take action against the club in terms of fines or points deduction or whatever it may be.”
Kogan also said the regulator could not automatically prevent a state-backed takeover of an English club under the legislation establishing it.
“That legislation does not allow for us to block something just because it’s a Norwegian sovereign fund, as an example,” he said.
“But we’re bound very much by the way the legislation has been written, which doesn’t preclude that from happening.”
In the wide-ranging interview with Gary Lineker and Campbell, Kogan also outlined proposals aimed at resolving the long-running dispute over the distribution of money between the Premier League and the English Football League.
“The Premier League is now talking about more than doubling the amount it pays every year in what are known as solidarity payments, money flowing down to the other (lower) leagues,” Kogan said.
Under the proposed arrangement, parachute payments to clubs relegated from the Premier League would be reduced, while funding for the Championship would increase substantially, Kogan said.
He said the changes would narrow the financial gap between relegated clubs receiving parachute payments and their Championship rivals, making the division more competitive.
Kogan also criticized spending on agents, saying fees had exceeded 500 million pounds.
“Agents’ fees are ridiculous. Over 500 million pounds. It’s half a billion pounds,” he said. “Hell, I’d much prefer to see it being spent on players.”
Kogan said another concern was the amount clubs owed one another, which he put at billions of pounds, adding that transfer debt was rising dramatically.
