Clubs morally obliged to live within their means, says League chairman

• Greg Clarke warns against 'Cassandra' mentality
• 'I have a different skill set to Brian Mawhinney'
Greg Clarke
Greg Clarke, the new chairman of the Football League, is a lifelong Leicester fan and led a consortium that rescued the club after it went into administration in 2002. Photograph: Football League/PA

The sun will shine on Wembley this weekend for what has become one of the most eagerly awaited and best remunerated matches in the football calendar. Amid the silly hats, tears and triumph there will be the usual hype about how tomorrow's play-off final is the most valuable match in world football.

Greg Clarke, the new Football League chairman, says: "It just works. The fans love it, it's great television, it helps us make some money for the clubs. The players love it, the managers love it, the boards love it."

According to Deloitte, victory is worth £90m due to the increased Premier League parachute payments the Football League eventually agreed to this month despite a backlash from League One and League Two clubs. "Usually, you get a bit of an induction, a bit of a honeymoon period, you haven't got pitbulls hanging off each arm within two weeks," Clarke says ruefully.

Football League attendances have hit a 50-year high, at more than 17.1m, despite gloomy predictions this time last year. But in his first interview, Clarke warns of trouble ahead. "We will see major corporations crash and burn, we will see major economies crash and burn. Fundamental economic problems have social consequences, they have consequences for businesses, they have consequences for football," he says.

"I don't want our clubs to adopt a Cassandra mentality. The attendances are brilliant, the number of young people coming into our grounds is great. But the reality is that we live in perilous economic times."

Clarke's predecessor, Lord Mawhinney, helped resuscitate a Football League brought to the brink by the ITV Digital fiasco. Yet many clubs continue to spend recklessly on wages as they gamble on reaching the next tier. Clarke, who illustrates his points with examples from a high-flying and globe-trotting business career in telecoms and construction that may or may not resonate in lower-league boardrooms, says his style will be different from the Tory peer's: "I am not going to be a poor man's Brian Mawhinney. I have a different skill set."

A week into the job, Clarke was forced to try to heal a bitter divide over whether to accept a "take it or leave it" offer from the Premier League that proposed a vastly improved £400m deal on parachute and solidarity payments, but came with strings attached. The proposal faced serious opposition from League One and League Two clubs, who feared it would open a financial chasm between the Championship and the rest. Clarke carried the day but a substantial minority voted against, many angry at what they saw as the "bullying" attitude of the Premier League.

"What I saw was a tough commercial negotiation. If the Premier League hadn't chosen the best possible time to get their deal done quickly, they wouldn't be the highly effective commercial outfit they are," reasons Clarke, who met with all League One and Two chairmen to hear their concerns and stresses his "humility". "It's not my way or the high way," he says.

He promises to continue work done by his predecessor. "Do people deserve to know who owns their football club? Yes. Do we want fit-and-proper people running our football clubs? Yes. Do we want to make sure that clubs can't take huge risks and not pay the taxman? Of course, it's outrageous." But he warns there is "no silver bullet" and that the league will continue to balance costs and benefits.

"It is impossible, even if I wanted to, to tell the clubs what to do. We have got good cost management in League Two and we'll be debating how to drive that into League One and the Championship. But the higher you go up the harder it gets."

Clarke has yet to decide whether the football creditor rule – which demands debts to other clubs and players are paid first and in full – is good for the game. "We use the football creditor rule to make sure if one clubs fails it can't easily drag down the rest. There are benefits but there are also moral hazards. If you are selling assets to football clubs because you are protected from risk, are you doing dumb things? It's not clear to me where the balance of that argument is."

He has sympathy with recent public outrage. "How on earth can you screw the local pie supplier and St John Ambulance and your charity partner, and pay other football clubs? That's morally indefensible."

Clarke, who ran Cable & Wireless and Australian property giant Lend Lease, has first-hand experience. A lifelong Leicester City fan, he was chairman when the club went into administration in 2002 and led a consortium which included Gary Lineker that brought it out again. "We nearly lost the club. I mean altogether. My mum lives there, my two sisters are there, I've got loads of mates there. It wasn't just the fact I couldn't have walked up the high street again," he says.

"Living on a council estate is a pretty crap existence. I was lucky enough to go to a decent grammar school and get out of it. But there are lots of people who have hard jobs, can't afford proper holidays, can't get off the estate. Their one ray of sunshine is that their club might get a result on a Saturday. To take that away from them and carry that burden, you can't imagine it."

He draws an analogy with coalmines. "They are businesses. But have you seen what happens to a mining community when they lose their pit? This is more than a business, this is a way of life and a defining pillar of the community."

Which brings us back to the orange and blue hordes heading up Olympic Way today, dreaming of the Premier League but knowing deep down that whoever wins is likely to be back in the Championship this time next year with memories and £48m parachute payment windfall over four years to show for it.

"They have got different risk profiles. Blackpool have run their club sensibly and prudently. They have got one of the lowest wage bills in the Championship and they don't waste money," says Clarke. "Down the road at Cardiff, they have great players and a great manager as well but they have a different risk profile and different prospects. It just shows there isn't one route to the Premier League."

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