Harris was 'as good as they will get' says Noades

The Brentford chairman, Ron Noades, feels that the Football League chairman, Keith Harris, and the chief executive, David Burns, who both resigned yesterday five days before the start of the season, have made responsible for mistakes made by the previous regime.

Harris, who will receive a pay-off which could be as much as £75,000 resigned shortly after Burns had announced he was to leave his post as chief executive after last week's failure of the League's case in the High Court to recover £178.5m from Carlton and Granada after the collapse of ITV Digital.

The resignations were tendered yesterday morning at a meeting of the League's board of directors in London. Burns' departure was expected, but Harris' was a surprise since he had been talking in terms of taking over the chief executive's job on a temporary basis. "Reluctantly, I am giving the asylum back to the lunatics," he said after yesterday's announcement.

Both men have been criticised by club chairmen, for the nature of the original agreement with ITV Digital, for the subsequent four-year £95m deal with Sky, and for last week's defeat in the High Court. Yet Noades believes Burns and Harris are not to blame for the lost court case.

"I am disappointed that we've lost Keith," he said. "I can understand David deciding to resign and I'm sure Keith's resignation is as a result of him trying to insist on certain changes to the Football League organisation which the directors felt [they] were unable to agree to... Neither Keith nor David were involved in this contract. The problems were with those who were in charge at the time."

Noades feels the League will find it difficult to replace Harris. "They will end up looking for another chairman and chief executive and end up with another two people who they will blame for something," he said. "They had a good independent chairman in Harris: he is as good as they will get. If they can find someone to replace him who is as capable as he is I would be very surprised."

However, the Crystal Palace chairman, Simon Jordan, an outspoken critic of the pair, believes their positions were untenable.

The League's case against Carlton and Granada was lost on their failure to commit to writing a clause contained in the original bid document which promised ITV Digital would be backed up financially by the media giants, Carlton and Granada.

Jordan said: "They stood behind this contract, they told the clubs 'it's rock solid'... and their record speaks for itself.

"They presided over the demise of the ITV Digital deal. They presided over the demise possibly of the internet deal. They have taken two court actions – one against Wimbledon and one against ITV Digital – and they've lost both of them and millions of pounds have gone west."

Millwall's chairman, Theo Paphitis, said: "The negotiations with Carlton and Granada could have been different. The league has to look at itself and restructure to bring itself up to modern-day standards. The way the Granada and Carlton farce was handled is one a lot of us were unhappy with. But unfortunately those views were not listened to by the executive. Maybe if they had been the outcome would have been different."

The Portsmouth chief executive, Peter Storrie, dismissed renewed talk of a breakaway by First Division clubs. He said there are more urgent needs to be addressed as the league looks to restructure and strengthen.

Storrie said: "I'm not sure about any breakaway. I believe the structure and finances of the league need to be looked at more urgently than a breakaway league."