I don’t always listen to radio unless out in the car and recently I happened to tune in to a programme with three gentlemen, none of whom had been players, coaches or managers in football.

There was one name I did recognise – Simon Jordan.

His involvement in football was buying Crystal Palace.

He was involved for around ten years in the game but now talks as if he knows everything from boardroom to dressing room and on the terraces.

One of the many criticisms he made in the last programme I heard was that the PFA – the Professional Footballers’ Association – should not be receiving £27m a year from the Premier League for another TV rights cycle.

He thought that the PFA should be self-supporting and should not be bankrolled by anyone else. He thinks the players should be funding everything but said 90 per cent probably wouldn’t pay anything because he’s yet to meet a player who attached any significant value to what the PFA do.

He thought the union, which is what is it, is outdated, outmoded and unnecessary.

I can tell him that the reason players probably don’t know what the PFA does is because the majority now are from abroad, as we noticed in the recent awards evening which announced FIFA’s World XI with not one British player in the team.

The fact that they are playing and making quite a lot of money in the Premier League means they don’t need the PFA because the people who are guiding them, I hope, are the managers, but as I have said many a time the foreign gentlemen are mainly coaches.

I think the management and guidance will come from their agents, and the agents will only have one direction to go in and that’s how much can they make and whether to stay or move on to make more.

I can tell Mr Jordan that the PFA has lots of funding, but they also represent a lot more players than those that he dealt with at Crystal Palace.

There are more in the lower leagues who are not getting a fraction of the wages that the big boys get, and I know from experience how much good work they do away from the field, the dressing room and the ground itself.

I mentioned in a column recently how one of my ex-players at Grimsby was suffering from dementia and his family wondered if I could help them get a couple of tickets. He originally came from Manchester and they were going to visit the city to show the grandchildren where grandad came from. The game turned out to be the derby between Man City and United.

I rang Gordon Taylor, who is the chief executive, and he said ‘leave it to me.’ He contacted the family who were given seats in a box at the game and not just that but he also sent one of the people who direct and help ex-players and their families when they get these sort of problems after playing.

Sports psychology of course is very much to the fore at the big clubs these days who have so many staff.

I well remember when I was with England, Graham Taylor, who was ahead of his time in lots of ways, brought in a psychologist to one of our training sessions.

He introduced him to the players and said ‘he will come to you on an individual basis and if you don’t want to talk just say ‘no thank you’.’ We were at the training pitch putting boots on when we noticed he had gone to Paul Gascoigne, who accompanied him on a walk around the pitch.

Stuart Pearce nudged me and said ‘when they come back he will need a psychologist.’ Joke that it was, when Paul finished his playing days as we all know he has had many ups and downs and the PFA have always been there for him as they are for many other big names.

Recently we heard the sad news of a player not even 30 yet who has had to retire because of motor neurone disease and I know the PFA are already speaking with his family.

Kevin Beattie, who sadly died recently, was a terrific and forceful defender at Ipswich in the good old days when Bobby Robson was manager.

He was admired by every player and manager in the game but when he finished because of gambling, drink problems etc, he was on the street and had lost everything.

He joked in a book he did once that he even contemplated suicide by placing a tube from the exhaust into the car but then remembered the car had been taken away from him.

The PFA worked as hard as they could to try and put him right and these cases could be listed forever.

This, Mr Jordan, is why they deserve funding.

If he maybe popped out of the boardroom a bit more often and visited some lower division clubs where the players struggle financially and in other ways and when past 30 often have nowhere to go, he may change his opinion.

I would always defend Gordon Taylor and his staff for the good work they do, which is not always advertised.