Even though barmy plans to end promotion to – and relegation from – the Premier League have been shut down, the inexorable rise of powerful European clubs seems unstoppable. Mark Douglas reports

YOU have to take your hat off to Richard Bevan, the publicity-hungry chief executive of the League Managers’ Association.

Without providing much in the way of cold and hard evidence, he has managed to whip up the perfect Premier League storm this week by claiming several foreign owners of top-flight clubs favour a franchise scheme that would do away with the age-old tradition of relegation and promotion.

“There are a number of overseas-owned clubs already talking about bringing about the avoidance of promotion and relegation in the Premier League,” he said at the annual conference of the Professional Players’ Federation on Monday – prompting an outpouring of outrage from all of the game’s big figures.

Clubs with foreign owners quickly lined up to distance themselves from the talk. Aston Villa, under American ownership, said they had not been involved in any discussions, while The Journal understands the issue has never featured on the agenda at the Stadium of Light – owned by Dallas-born billionaire Ellis Short.

For good measure a Newcastle insider told The Journal the club had never raised the issue of shutting down relegation with the Premier League board, and the owner remains “very much” in favour of the promotion and demotion system, even though it cost him and his club so dearly in 2009.

They are not alone, for you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in professional football willing to speak up in favour of franchising. Even those who oversee a sport without relegation and promotion admit it is an “imperfect system” – and one of them has worked in a senior position for a Premier League football club.

British Basketball chief and former Newcastle United marketing director Paul Blake said: “There is a difference between the franchise model and cutting off entry and exit to a league through relegation. And as far as I know, no sport without franchises has ever closed their league.

“Really, the only examples you have are in America, or our own sport and Rugby League. But the franchise model – where clubs buy a franchise from the league – just wouldn’t work in football. If you close the league and don’t change the remuneration model within the league, you still have the issue of how the weaker clubs generate more income. That won’t go away.

“Look at the Everton model. They are completely maxed out and losing £4million a year. There is no way for them to generate more money, so how would cutting off entry and exit of teams help them? I don’t see how it could be done.”

Now Bevan is a smart man who talks eloquently and passionately in favour of his members’ interests but, without naming names, it is difficult to ignore the shadowy spectre of self-interest in his pointed remarks.