TRAGEDY; Newcastle coach is very angry and has announces his resignation today After facing…

Premier League chairman Gary Hoffman will retire from his position in the wake of the scandal surrounding the Saudi-led purchase of Newcastle United.

Only eighteen months into his employment, Premier League chairmen this week held an informal vote of confidence in Hoffman, with more than half of them demanding for his dismissal. The last arrangements are being worked out between him and the league, but he is scheduled to depart this week.

He will resign after the Newcastle deal’s approval process became the center of teams’ ire. Clubs said they were not given due consideration when the decision was made to approve the Saudi sovereign wealth fund’s purchase of the club; instead, they were informed of the decision over email and only after media stories had been released.

Hoffman, 61, wrote the emails and the messages were seen by clubs – particularly those outside the top six – to have been a “final straw” for their trust in the chairman. A highly respected banker who ran Northern Rock after it was nationalised during the financial crisis, Hoffman’s role at the Premier League is in a non-executive capacity. However, his short tenure has not only coincided with Covid but with the aborted breakaway plans of Project Big Picture and the European Super League, plots which incensed many of the same clubs that eventually wanted him out.

While Richard Masters, the league’s chief executive, is still believed to hold the confidence of most club owners, Hoffman became the object of intense ire at an emergency Premier League board meeting last month and pressure was put on him to stand down. Last week club owners met again informally and held a vote of no confidence in Hoffman which the chairman, unknown to him, failed.

Hoffman’s future was not brought up once during this Thursday’s formal board meeting, where clubs convened to “unanimously” reject plans for a World Cup every two years. All those present at the meeting were aware that things were becoming dire.

Hoffman is a former executive at Barclays who has also held positions at Visa Europe and Hastings Insurance. In addition, he chairs Monzo, a digital bank. He became the Premier League’s chairman in June 2020, but things haven’t been easy since because of Covid and the disastrous effort to create a European Super League.