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John Coates has called for the power to decide football’s financial rules to be taken away from clubs. The Stoke City chairman believes the new independent football regulator should use its neutral status to work out what is right for the game, rather than be dictated by the people who all have self interest – including Stoke. Championship clubs did vote to change the rules for this summer transfer window, going away from profit and sustainability (P&S) – which allowed for losses of up to £39m over a rolling three-year period – to squad cost ratio (SCR), which allows spending of up to 85 per cent of revenue on player costs, with a potential £10m boost from the owner which Coates has committed to making. Stoke’s hierarchy clearly prefers SCR to P&S but Coates is frustrated that they are penalised for initiatives which do not maximise revenue, such as freezing season ticket prices since 2008 or offering free travel to away matches. FOLLOW OUR FACEBOOK PAGE! Latest Stoke City news, analysis and more via the Sentinel He said at Q&A with supporters: “We were advocates for change. The P&S rules were a terrible set of rules. They limited ambition, they limited investment in clubs to no beneficial effect as far as I could see. They were bad for everybody but I think they were particularly bad for clubs who had a relatively high cost base – which was kind of us – who were not in receipt of parachute payments – which was kind of us again. They were a terrible set of rules for us. “The SCR rules aren’t perfect but they hone in one particular thing, which is player cost, first team costs. You take the wage bill of your first team squad and add in cash in from transfers, cash out from transfers. You arrive at a figure and you’re able to spend a percentage of your revenue, 85 per cent, on those players. You’re able to top it up with £10m worth of equity, which I’ll do. “They are better for us but you have to bring in revenue. Income is one of the issues we’ve got. Simon King, the chief commercial officer, and his team have done an amazing job of raising revenue and non-match day revenue. We try to monetise the Boothen Quarter and all these things are beneficial. Every incremental of income there we can spend directly on the squad under the rules. “However I’ve got this other thing where I want to make supporting Stoke City affordable and that doesn’t help. In fact that works in the opposite direction. If I say to Simon that I don’t want season tickets to go up, I want our shirts to be reasonable and I want to offer free coach travel, all those things don’t sit well with any of the financial rules. “But I feel we are in a better place with these rules, as you can see from some of the business we’ve done. Net is a positive but it’s not perfect. “One of the questions we have to ask ourselves is what happens now we’ve got a regulator? To my mind, the financial rules should now come away from the clubs and just sit with the regulator. Clubs will always vote out of self interest, as will we. The financial rules are probably sat over there. But that’s one for another day. “It’s been a good change, not perfect but a good change.” What do you think? Click HERE to join the debate