But even leaving that aside, are foreign owners such a bad thing?

When only 37 percent of players in the Premier League are qualified to play for England, and three of the so-called Big Four, as well as the England national team, are managed by foreigners, why should foreigners not get involved in other areas of the game?

The Premier League is, after all, the global league, although that may change given the fall in the pound and the new 50 percent tax bracket that will come into effect for those earning more than 150,000 pounds a year next April (by contrast, foreign players in Spain pay just 23 percent, if registered as an executive).

The 'fit-and-proper-persons' test is toothless, but then how could it be otherwise?

Football is not above the law, and the law says that anybody who has not been convicted of a criminal offence is entitled to buy any business.

But why, anyway, other than xenophobia, should it be assumed a foreign owner's intentions are less likely to be pure than those of a local owner?

After all, it's not as though a club owner can, as a foreign investor in another industry could, simply leave and relocate the business elsewhere.

UEFA president Michel Platini has spoken of wishing to 'protect English clubs', asking what will happen if the television revenues - at the moment worth 2.1 billion pounds over three years - dry up.

It is a fair question, given the chaos caused to Championship clubs when ON-Digital, which owned their rights, collapsed, but it will affect British owners just as much as foreign ones.

There are problems and inequalities in the financing of the game that ought to be addressed, but it is hard to see any justification in making foreign owners the scapegoat.

Just ask fans of Newcastle United, Leeds United, Sheffield Wednesday, Wrexham, York City, Brighton and Hove Albion, Derby County, Chesterfield, Oxford United or a host of others what they think of the British owners who led them into difficulty.