Read what Ben Clasper had to say in his programme notes ahead of our National League South clash with Tonbridge Angels.

It only took the Premier League 31 years to get around to charging one of their own for a breach of their rules and it would be the height of cynicism to note that the announcement came the day before the Government were due to announce their plans for an independent regulator for football having concluded that football at the highest level has shown a consistent inability or unwillingness to govern itself.

Manchester City have been a state-owned club for 15 years hoovering up 6 league titles since Agueroooooo lit the fire under their run back in 2012 and you would be hard-pushed to find anyone involved in football that has not raised an eyebrow about how level a playing field the league has been contested on, well, anyone except the Premier League apparently who even managed to take 8 more years than UEFA to come to the conclusion that City had driven a truck through the financial fair play rules.

We are led to believe that it is the other members of the so-called big six providing most of the support for sanctions against their rival and it is also reported that there is a belief that this will send the message to Government that they can govern themselves. That a small elite who turned on the rest of their fellow clubs to try to secure the riches of the European Super League for themselves would turn on one of their own group when another opportunity came into sight should come as no surprise. They may be right to feel aggrieved that their playing field has been far from level but based on the evidence of the last few decades what drives clubs at the top is self-interest, not self-governance.

To say that the Premier League has resulted in huge positives and huge negatives for football both in England and beyond our borders is not sitting on the fence, it’s stating a fact and it is also a fact that it is possible to address the negatives while leaving the best aspects of our top flight intact. The narrative that a fairer redistribution of wealth will kill the goose that laid the golden egg should be consigned to the same bin into which trickle-down economics has been cast. At Dulwich Hamlet we see some of the positives first hand, some are intentional (Crystal Palace are a great example) some are less so (there’s no denying some of our crowd increases are dissatisfied ex-Premier League fans) but not all clubs can be trusted to act in the best interests of the rest of the game.

If the sad fact that clubs at the top will step over each other as well as those below who depend on their support is not reason enough to back an independent regulator then the contradiction at the heart of the Premier League’s treatment of Manchester City surely is. The Premier League ask us to believe that more than half of their titles have been unfairly contested and that their self-governance model meant they were unable even to investigate, let alone act, until after it was too late but then also ask us to accept that their governance model is so strong that there is no need for an independent regulator.

Many will argue that we can exist in our non-league oasis, staying out of the commercially driven affairs of the game higher up but every season that world drifts further into the pyramid so much so that the model we are working on for our own club is now having to contend with the reality that our league and even the league below is now defined by the same economic model as the Premier League. The level of financial investment from an owner is now the most significant factor in determining the top spots and our predictions for the National League South that apply that model are remarkably accurate.

The annual and cumulative losses of the clubs at the top of the National League seeking entry to the Football League now resemble the economic disaster that is the Championship who seek the promised land of the Premier League. With the three most resourceful clubs to have been promoted from the National League South in our time (Torquay, Dorking and Maidstone) all in the bottom five spots in the division above the yo-yo pattern originally defined by the Premier League glass ceiling finally looks to have reached the top of the non-league game.

The Government has now delayed the release of their white paper by at least two weeks, we can only hope that the efforts of the many over the past few years to design a workable solution are not passed over for the last-minute efforts of the few seeking to reject the fan-led review.