AFC Fylde chairman hopes salary cap proposal will be finalised this week

The Coasters chairman has been at the forefront of a campaign to introduce wage limits in the top two tiers of non-league football, and a working party of 12 clubs has been discussing the issue.

A wage cap of £900,000 for each club in non-league’s top division and of £600,000 for clubs in its two regionalised feeder leagues has been proposed.

In his latest video interview for the AFC Fylde website, Haythornthwaite said: “We started the discussion probably three months ago, when I contacted a number of clubs in the league, and now we have a working group of 12 who have a framework I think everyone is comfortable with.

“Our final meeting on salary caps is scheduled for next Thursday. League One and Two have their meeting on August 6 to finalise their salary caps of £1.5m and £2.5m.

“We are then going to issue a document to all the other clubs in all three divisions (the National League, NL North and NL South), and they will be able to share their opinion. We then want to get it onto the AGM of the National League in August and hopefully get that passed so it will start next season.”

Haythornthwaite admits it will be difficult to enforce immediately as allowances have to be made for existing player contracts.

He added: “The difficulty will be the administration and making sure that people stick to the rules. The framework is quite difficult but we’ve been able to take a lot from rugby union and rugby league. They have learned all the lessons and I’m very hopeful that will be adopted, though obviously there has to be a transition period.”

Though Fylde would welcome the cap, Haythornthwaite revealed the club has more cash to spend than may have been anticipated and certainly won’t need to sell players cheaply.

He added: “I’ve been open about the financial situation of Fylde as a standalone club but fortunately my business is able to support it.

“We’ve made clear we had to make cutbacks and furlough staff, and we didn’t know what the situation was going to be with the business that supports the football club (Haythornthwaite’s VetPlus company).

“Luckily that business is not in bad health, and therefore we haven’t had to make the longer-term cuts we thought we would have to and there’s more money available than maybe we thought.

“I’d rather be open with the fans from the beginning and then deliver more than maybe we promised.

“I’m quietly optimistic about the football side. We are going to make sure Jim (Bentley, manager) has the funds available to compete with the very best teams in that league.”

As for keeping hold of Fylde’s contracted players, he added: “We’ve had interest in some players. I won’t name the clubs but I think they think they can come and steal them. We’ve had one or two silly bids. We don’t need to sell. We haven’t in the past and we won’t start now.

“Somebody offering £60,000 or £70,000 for a player may seem attractive but you have to replace that player. Every player has his price but our intention is to keep hold of the players we’ve got and sign better ones to support them, and we are restarting that process.”