Bob Russell, the Liberal Democrat MP for Colchester, has called for a royal commission to look into the governance of UK football.

Speaking in Parliament yesterday (25 October), Russell said that the footballing authorities were "incapable" of self-regulation and urged sports minister Hugh Robertson to launch an inquiry. Russell said: "The minister has no doubt discovered by now that those at the top of football are as impotent as a room of eunuchs, that financially they have regimes that would make bankers blush, and that, with greedy footballers and parasitic agents, the game is being ruined.

"With that in mind, is it not time that the current government – the last government failed to do this – held a royal commission or some other inquiry, because the game is incapable of regulating itself?" Robertson accepted there was cross-party agreement on efforts to reform football governance, but said "because of the disparate nature of football club ownership, there is no one silver bullet that will deliver that".