Peterborough United chairman wants superstar support to stop the proposed FA Cup changes and he's attacked the FA for their stance on transgender issues

MacAnthony, and seemingly the rest of English football outside the Premier League, are aghast at the scrapping of FA Cup replays, games seen as potential financial lifelines for lower division clubs.

Bellingham started his stellar career in the EFL with Birmingham City and Kane played on loan at Leyton Orient and Millwall before hitting the big-time with Spurs.

The majority Posh owner believes the so-called ‘big six’ Premier League clubs are driving the changes and, while speaking strongly on a wide range of subjects on Friday’s edition of his ‘Hard Truth’ podcast, he also launched a broadside at the FA for supporting male-born players performing in women’s football.

Hard Truth

MacAnthony said on a podcast episode entitled ‘Civil War’: “Why do Premier League clubs care about what happens in the first two rounds of the FA Cup? Why does lower league clubs getting £30k of replay money matter to Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool? It certainly matters to the likes of Peterborough and Bradford as every amount matters at our level when you are losing millions every year.

"They don’t care and, let’s be honest, there are only six of the 20 Premier League clubs who really matter. The reality for the other 14 who voted with them is the big six don’t care about you. They would have left you behind and joined a European Super League if they could a couple of years back so stop pretending you are sitting together at the same table. They would still turn around and go ‘bang’ we’re off if they could.

"I suspect what has happened here is a pre-emptive strike by the Premier League against the EFL who are seen to support the appointment of a Government regulator in football, something the Premier League don’t want. This is their way of saying ‘get back in your box.’ We’ve had negotiations around an increased distribution of Premier League money and giving something up in the FA Cup and League Cup was discussed, but they’ve walked away from those negotiations now and decided to play a longer game and now they don’t need to write any cheques just yet.

"I’m not sure a regulator would work anyway. I’ve never seen Governments work at any pace and whatever they come up will be legally challenged by the rich clubs which will just bang it down the line. I’m not sure this regulator is not going to save the day as some people think. I watch Governments struggle to protect their own borders because things get overturned by lawyers in courtroom who have nothing to do with Government, and the same thing could happen in sports as big clubs have rich lawyers.

"The EFL now need to come up with strong ideas and a collective show of strength in our response. I’ve messaged Rick Parry (EFL chairman) as we’ve been caught cold by all this. We could boycott the FA Cup next season, but we’d need all 72 EFL clubs and all of non-league to buy into it and I’m not sure clubs can afford to do that with the prize money on offer.

"What I’d love to see happen is the PFA to reach out to their former EFL players like Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane to come out and say ‘this is wrong, we don’t agree with this and we stand with the EFL.’ They won’t lose anything by saying it even if they upset their paymasters. They won’t get stuck on the transfer list. They’d still be getting their £100k a week salary.

“And to the FA I’d say stop this nonsense about playing all sides and filing quotas, behaving woke and politically correct, and start doing your jobs. You can come at me as hard as you want for saying it, but you allow players who were born as men to play in women’s football and I’ll never agree with that no matter how people are identifying. I’m absolutely against that. I’m not a transphobe. I have two daughters and people who disagree with me usually don’t have children and certainly not daughters, if they do they are a disgrace.

“The FA need to sort the FA Cup out and then they need to sort out allowing males to play in women’s football.

“I don’t want to talk about the Cup in the media until I know what’s happening. I’ve seen EFL statements I agree with, but I need to see a course of action. We need everyone with us on this. I support Liverpool, but not to the detriment of Barnet, Forest Green or Peterborough. I love our football pyramid and our EFL family, but families only work if we are all in it together.

"I don’t think the big boys will win like they didn’t win with the Super League. They gorged themselves over that and suffered from short-sightedness. It’s now a great opportunity for someone like Todd Boehly, who gets a lots of stick as Chelsea owner, to come out and say ‘I don’t agree with this and Chelsea stand with the EFL as it’s all against the principles of the game.’”