Graham Kelly: Crozier ran out of luck when the forces of reaction bit back

One significant fact has been overlooked amid all the spin and hypocrisy which has accompanied the story of Adam Crozier's resignation as the chief executive of the Football Association. He leaves office with accolades from all sides for dragging the FA into the modern era, even from some of those who were responsible for his astonishing downfall. That's football.

However, Crozier actually inherited the truly groundbreaking, modernising edict, the one which allowed him to change the public face of the FA and – as Ken Bates, the Chelsea chairman, says – gave him far more power than I had ever had during my 10 years in charge. At an extraordinary general meeting on 14 December, 1999, virtually 12 months to the day after I was forced to resign in intrigue-ridden times somewhat similar to the current climate, the FA set up a small executive board of directors comprising equal numbers of representatives, six from the amateur and six from the professional game, plus the chairman and chief executive.

Geoff Thompson was in the chair as this milestone constitutional amendment went through, having beaten off the challenge from the Ipswich Town chairman, David Sheepshanks, in the summer to win a four-year term. The council obviously preferred the safe hands of "one of their own" to the gregarious and more outwardly ambitious Old Etonian Sheepshanks, whose printed election manifesto could almost have been produced by Saatchi and Saatchi.

Until that key date all the council members – the octogenarians, the lieutenant-commanders, the majors, the representatives of the far-flung dominions – were, nonsensically, directors of the Football Association Limited. The worthy backwoodsmen whom Bates belatedly lauded in his campaign to oust Crozier, but who, to paraphrase the old Burnley chairman Bob Lord's words, might never have even run a chip shop, shouldered corporate responsibility to a degree that would have given them many a sleepless night had they but fully realised it.

Over the years many attempts at reform foundered on the rock of suspicion. Rational voices argued that change was needed, but when it came to the vote to install a more dynamic board of directors, there was always the worry that the whole sorry shooting match of privileges, perks and precious protocol might go up in smoke.

No one can say that I went there with stars in my eyes. Before I moved from the Football League in 1988, the FA was indulging in navel-gazing. There was a special meeting of the council to debate a costly management consultancy report. Twenty minutes after voting to give the chief executive a seat on the new management board, they decided not to have a board after all!

When Crozier entered Lancaster Gate in January 2000 armed with a clear mandate for change, which the public relations machine had been spinning for a year, he already had the biggest weapon at his disposal, the authority granted to the board under the new articles of association to run the "business affairs" of the FA. This impetus for reform allowed him to bypass many of the traditional committees, 31 of which still exist.

When the committee men were left standing on the pavement outside the swanky new headquarters to which he moved the FA, while the young office girls went in to conduct the FA's business affairs, it was subsequently manna from heaven for Bates, who was able to write about the former affection in which the grass-roots representatives had been held. I have heard Bates talking about "the men from the shires" many times and it could be excruciatingly funny, but words of endearment they were not.

Crozier's brilliant presentational skills demonstrate that he is highly intelligent, so I find it hard to accept that there has been any fundamental misunderstanding between him and the board about the limits of his authority. It is very difficult to get to the bottom of this dispute without jumping to easy conclusions, when he has said little and Bates has said a lot. Exactly what threat did Crozier pose?

Anyone who is tempted to believe that the proposed "professional game board" will exercise a benign influence over international development has only to witness the withdrawal already of Wayne Rooney from yesterday's England Under-19 squad because he was needed for Everton's Premiership match at Elland Road on the same day. Such details that the suddenly transparent Bates has shared with us reveal that these matters would in future be handled by a board on which Leeds are currently represented.

Crozier had allegedly been secretive in renegotiating the Team England agreement, which was merely an extension of a principle that had commenced many years earlier.

And did the Premier League chief executive, Richard Scudamore, really ask us on Radio Five Live on Saturday to remember that Premier League chairmen "give of their time"?

Unless I have missed something, the FA has not joined sundry Nationwide League clubs in administration, although it could conceivably become impoverished if it continues to lie back and not think of England whenever the rampant Premier League lion roars.

The England manager, Sven Goran Eriksson, and the FA's head of marketing, Paul Barber, and media chief, Paul Newman, whose comments became increasingly preposterous as the week wore on, would do well to remember that their lucrative contracts of employment bind them to the game, not to the former official who signed them on football's behalf. The rush to modernity has fostered some misguided, if understandable, loyalties

With Crozier following Howard Wilkinson out of the door, it is not only the national football centre at Burton-on-Trent that will suffer a setback, but also the concept of a mid-season break, which Crozier joined Wilkinson, Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger and Gérard Houllier in advocating.

Anyone who has allowed his name to be publicly linked as a successor already is patently unsuited to succeed Crozier. Equally, how Thompson's predecessor, Keith Wiseman, managed to be elected chairman from his position on the Southampton board in 1996 is remarkable. I cannot imagine any successor to Thompson coming from the Premier League in these post-Enron days, unless he devises a cast-iron non-beneficial trust for his shareholding.

The last time Crozier and I met was in March after the memorial service for Sir Walter Winterbottom, a man who was unfairly passed over for the job because he was too inspirational, and I left him with the words: "Good luck. You'll need it."

grahamkelly@btinternet.com