Thomas throws his weight behind 'Project Big Picture' and says '90 per cent of it' would be 'very positive' for football

Cobblers chairman Kelvin Thomas has thrown his weight behind 'Project Big Picture' and believes '90 per cent' of the plans would be 'very, very positive' for football should it be voted through in some form.

The proposals, reported initially by the Daily Telegraph on Sunday, have been worked on by Manchester United and Liverpool and would see radical changes to English football at all levels.

The plans would hand more power to the so-called 'big six' in the Premier League in return for redistributing greater funding down the football pyramid. A rescue package of £250million would be provided to the EFL followed by an increase of 25 per cent in revenue.

The Cobblers, as with all League One clubs, currently receive around £1.5million. Under Project Big Picture, that would increase to close to £5million. And while Thomas has reservations over some of the plans, he believes they would go a long way to solving football's reliance on onwership funding.

"I think once you get past the initial shock of what happened over the weekend and what I call the 'social media outrage', and when you actually look at the proposals, I would say 90 per cent of it most of football could get behind and see it as being very, very positive," said Thomas.

"There's some of it that everybody would question and look for answers, the main one being the Premier League governance and scrapping the League Cup, but when you look at the rest of it from an EFL club perspective, this has to be seen as a potential way forward.

"We had a meeting of EFL clubs on Tuesday and out of 72 clubs, I think there were only three or four that voiced any major concerns but if the governance issues can be resolved within the Premier League, it looks very positive.

"Certain aspects of it, selfishly from our view, is fantastic, such as the increased revenue. We're talking about three times our current revenue and going from £1.5million a year to £4.5million a year.

"The biggest problem we had in football, before coronavirus, was reliance on owner funding but this proposal actually does something to address that. These discussions were happening prior to the pandemic but COVID has shone a light on it.

"This is just an idea to be presented to clubs but a lot of detail has gone into it and it's not just about the governance of the top six clubs. Owner funding has been an issue in the EFL for a long time and this goes a long way to addressing that issue.

"Bailouts and rescue packages are essential at the moment due to COVID but they will only get us back to where we were and where we were wasn't sustainable. From the club's view, we've looked at this in detail and talked about it within the club and we would be supportive of a proposal like this."