BRADFORD (Park Avenue) director of football Martin Knight is ready to hear the National League out, but says it is "highly likely" the club will support a vote of no confidence in the board.

National League clubs have been asked if they will support an EGM to debate the resolution: The meeting has no confidence in the chairman and the board.

A response needs to be in by midday today.

If the motion is passed, it will oblige resignations and new elections will be held, with a new era of governance possible at that level.

And Knight said: "We're giving our support to the meeting, as we want to have a conversation.

"There are two sides to every story, but there's a lot of secrets and no transparency from the National League, and we want to give them the opportunity to explain.

"Lots of clubs were angry with getting fined last week, so now Gareth (Roberts) and I just want to listen to what they have to say.

"So at this stage, we can't say whether we'll be giving them a vote of no confidence or not, though I would say it's highly likely."

Asked whether he would support a complete overhaul at boardroom level in the National League, Knight said: "The difficult thing is you have 66 clubs with 66 different business models.

"When fans are in, Notts County will average a 5,000 gate on a grass pitch, whereas we're 400 with a 3G surface.

"Notts County's revenue will always be 10 to 15 times bigger for ticket money, beer sales, their development fund and more.

"Stockport and York are in a similar position, us and Curzon get the majority of our revenue from the 3G, and the likes of Spennymoor and Darlington are somewhere in the middle.

"The National League can't look at clubs and think all 66 of us are the same. It's not a level playing field.

"The problem with sitting us all in a room is that I'll have my points of view for Bradford (Park Avenue)'s sake that aren't shared by the likes of Notts County and York."

Giving his take on what the board should look like, Knight mused: "I've suggested that we have a rotating board, where each club has one season to take their turn as chairman.

"The committee and board need to be made up of clubs in the National League.

"I'm in touch with those at the top at the likes of York, Hereford and Darlington regularly and they're sophisticated guys with a commercial background, who I'd be happy to have represent us."

Discussing another thing he sees as a fundamental issue for National League clubs, Knight said: "When the Premier League get a new sponsorship or TV deal, there's transparency on what goes where for each club.

"But we've had to agree to a deal with Vanarama and BT, with no idea of what it entails.

"The voting split is contentious too. The National League clubs all get a vote each, and we get four between us in the National League North and South, which shouldn't be the case in a democracy.

"Vanarama, BT and the National League would argue that's where the money is (in the fifth tier), but we do need better commercial deals.

"We have to buy New Balance balls and shirt numbers, which would cost a lot less if I got them from Macron.

"There's going to be a big fall out over streaming too, as the deal with BT means clubs only get about £2,500 in revenue from it each season.

"We could make 10 times that if we streamed matches ourselves, and York could be looking at around £200,000."

Regarding their £6,000 fine and suspended points deduction for failing to fulfil three National League North fixtures last month, Knight confirmed: "We appealed on Monday.

"We looked at the FA appeal process and the two clauses that we've based ours on is whether another panel would have come to a different decision and that the fine was excessive.

"It was all EFL and FA members on the panel, who are used to dealing with full-time teams, so I'm not sure how they could understand the finances of a part-time club.

"If this appeal doesn't work, we'll have to go down the legal route. We don't want to have to do that, as we want to avoid court, but we're not paying the fine, end of.

"When we voted, it wasn't to curtail the season, it was to have it declared null and void. Legally there's a massive difference between the two.

"Null and void means all the results and records are to be expunged, so how can we be fined for games that didn't technically exist?

"It wasn't that we didn't want to play and we were happy with the Covid protocols, but as we explained to the National League, we'd have ended up insolvent if we'd carried on.

"If they'd just decided to issue a suspended fine, we wouldn't be having this argument."