The Case Against Rick Parry

1. Parry was Chief Executive of Liverpool F.C. when they made an illegal approach to sign the Middlesbrough full back Christian Ziege. Steve Gibson went after Liverpool and Parry was forced to pay millions of pounds in damages to avoid the humiliation of it being dragged through the High Court.

2. Parry helped set up the Premier League and was its first Chief Executive. The breakaway of the elite from the remainder of the football pyramid has been a disaster for all but the elite clubs. The Premiership, Parry's brainchild, does its own deals with Sky and other broadcasters. This money remains with the super-rich and does not trickle down to the lower tiers. Obscene amounts of money have been channelled into the very top of the game, but the remainder of the pyramid suffers. Their players are picked off by the super-rich who can afford to carry ludicrously vast squads of players and over-stocked Academies.

3. While the Chief Executive of the EFL, Parry organised secret, clandestine meetings with the "Big Six" of the Premier League, behind the backs not only of the 72 clubs he purports to represent but also the other 14 Premiership clubs. He conspired with them to try to create a new Premiership structure where only the 9 clubs with the longest tenure in the top flight would be allowed to make important decisons on how the Premiership is run, and of those 9 only 6 would be required to vote on any particular decision, i.e all decisions could be made exclusively by his "Top Six". This moonlighting for the elite clubs occurring while, under his leadership, the EFL has repeatedly proved iself to be a shambolic, incompetent organisation.

4. When threatened with being sued by Middlesbrough last year, Parry colluded with his nemesis Steve Gibson, of whom he is terrified from his previous experience at Liverpool, into supporting whimsical claims against Derby County. Parry attempts to deflect all attention from his own shortcomings and to blame Derby's administrators, whom he has hamstrung by refusing to sanction any takeover without "settling" claims by Middlesbrough and Wycombe, claims which have no basis in law and for which there is no precedent. Parry is perfectly content to sacrifice any club to prevent the spolight falling on him and his shabby, failed organisation.

5. At the height of the Covid pandemic, when Football League clubs were on their knees, trying to pay staff without income, they asked the Premiership for financial help. Parry, Chief Executive of the EFL, opposed this vehemently. He said he did not want to encourage a "begging bowl culture". We know why, and where he sees his loyalties. He seeks to get a job back in the Premiership and cares not one jot whether clubs in the lower tiers live or die.

Parry is a self-serving parasite, a man who has shown no regard for morality or ethics in his past or present dealings. He knows the days of the EFL are numbered and that with increasing scrutiny from Parliament a Regulator will be imposed before too long. He is desperate to get out before this happens and will do or say anything to stave off the day of reckoning. Rather than address the failings of his organisation he has been plotting with the wealthiest Premiership clubs in order to get a seat at the top table and to dip his snout in the trough. He has complained of excessive "noise" in the case of Derby County, by which he means scrutiny of himself. Football needs a great deal more noise about Rick Parry and his dealings. He needs his feet to be held to the fire and to asked some very searching questions. He has betrayed the 72 clubs he is employed to represent. He has installed Peter Ridsdale as his sidekick on the EFL board. Peter Ridsdale who was banned from being a company director for seven years because he siphoned money from football clubs into his personal bank account.

The EFL is poison and Parry is the head of the snake that spews it out. He needs rooting out of football and to be replaced by someone who genuinely cares for the game and for the football pyramid and who can provide structure, governance, proper tests of owners and restrictions on their activities and impose fairness of competition, not run an organisation riddled with loopholes in its regulations and which encourages ridiculous gambling by unscrupulous owners with the livelihoods of clubs to reach the Promised Land which Parry himself created.

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