One of British football’s brightest former players, David Kitson, today launches a campaign to overhaul the Professional Footballers’ Association and accelerate the removal of £2.3m-a-year chief executive Gordon Taylor.
Declaring himself ready to stand as Taylor’s successor, Kitson launches a manifesto in today’s Sportsmail to drag the union out of the dark ages - returning voting power to members and vowing that the chief executive will never again command such a salary or serve more than five years unchallenged.
The 40-year-old said the drive to remove Taylor, who has been in office for 39 years, must begin now, at a time when the union’s handling of the coronavirus wage negotiations had been ‘embarrassing’ and dragged the game’s reputation ‘down into the mud’.
Taylor, 75, has clung on to his lucrative job by insisting he will only stand down at the AGM which follows an independent review of the PFA currently being undertaken by Sport Resolutions.
But that process is proving to be extraordinarily slow. Though the review was announced in November 2018, its formal terms of reference were only published last month.
Kitson is asking players to help speed up the process. He urged them to contribute to the Sport Resolutions review, accessible via the members’ section of the PFA website, to air their concerns and views.
This will ensure the evidence gathered is not that of the ‘same old self-appointed few’ and gets to the truth about the organisation.
If the review and a parallel Charities Commission investigation into the PFA inflict serious damage on Taylor, he may be forced out immediately, allowing Kitson to stand sooner in an election for which he insists every member must have a vote.
The last attempt to remove Taylor came in 2018, when current chairman Ben Purkiss tried to instigate an independent review.
Sportsmail revealed how Taylor, whose salary makes him the highest-paid union leader in the world, then tried to eject Purkiss as chairman.
Kitson believes that a former player with experience of the world footballers occupy must be installed as chief executive. If elected, he would appoint individuals with the necessary commercial and executive expertise to work with him.
In a move echoing the Daily Mail’s legendary ‘99 questions’ put by John Magnier and JP McManus to the Manchester United board in an attempt to take the club over in 2004, Kitson has published 101 questions for the PFA to answer, ‘intended to start a debate about how we shape the future.’
Kitson began his career with semi-pro Hitchen Town and went on to play for Reading and Stoke City in the Premier League.
He was at Portsmouth when they were at risk of being liquidated and played for Sheffield United and Oxford United before returning to non-league football and retiring in 2015.