Managing director Simon Corney firmly believes that a salary cap is the only way to ensure the survival of clubs that are in the lower divisions. With Darlington recently entering administration things are not at all rosy and it will only need one club to fold for a knock-on effect to begin. Clubs will have to ensure that they cut their cloth to match their suits. It could be that some clubs may have even to go part-time professional to ensure their survival.Mr Corney said, "Having a salary cap is something which we have favoured for some time as we believe it is the only way football clubs can survive. From our conversations with officials from other clubs, many are struggling. Unless something is done soon, I can see one or two folding in the next year. The salary cap would be based on gate receipts so the bigger clubs would have more to spend. There is too much pressure on chairmen to do silly things, and this would remove that danger and, hopefully, help all clubs to survive."
"Lord Mawhinney has been very receptive and has a good understanding of the needs of clubs. I have every confidence that he will come up with the right solution. We [our own company] have had to downsize and make redundancies. Whereas we employed 300 at our peak, we are now down to around 90. We are going to have to adopt a more pragmatic approach to the football club and there is no way we will be able to put in sums like £500,000, £600,000 or £800,000 each year as we have been doing. Our spending is at a manageable level, but now we have to get it down to a practical level and it is up to us to be smarter in the way in which we run things."