THE GOVERNMENT-FUNDED initiative designed to give football fans a bigger say in the running of their clubs could one day lead to a Premiership club being controlled by supporters.

That's the startling declaration made by Supporters Direct, the London-based national organisation set up four years ago to help fans achieve their dream of being more involved in the day-to-day running of their clubs.

As Richard Chorley has stated elsewhere on this page, the idea of a supporters trust being set up by Saints fans is not a radical concept - there are currently 118 in England, Wales and Scotland.

There are a handful of clubs that ARE run by supporters through trusts - including York, where the fans own 85 per cent of the shares.

Of the 118 groups, only a few can be found in the Premiership - at Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham, Aston Villa, Norwich, Fulham and Crystal Palace.

The Palace trust raised over £1m to try and buy a stake in the club before chairman Simon Jordan arrived to save them.

The Shareholders United group have been high profile in the past fortnight - using their 10,000-plus membership and 19 per cent holding in the club to acclaimed effect to battle against a series of takeover bids.

At the other end of the scale, Arsenal's group have recently acquired their FIRST share - but shares in the Gunners do cost around £1800 each!

And Supporters Direct spokesman Kevin Rye said: "Premier League fans are starting to wake up to the fact that they deserve to have a bigger say in the running of their clubs.

"There's been a lot of successful schemes run in the lower divisions - now the time has come for Premier League supporters to have their say.

"Fans have taken over the running of clubs like York and Lincoln and they have run them well.

"When the groups first started the critics just said 'oh don't let the fans run the clubs, they'll just spend all the money on new players' - but the opposite has happened. They haven't just made emotional decisions.

"At York the trust has had to make some very, very hard decisions in order for them to get ownership of their ground - decisions that culminated in the club getting relegated to the Conference.

"I wouldn't rule out the idea that one day a Premiership club could be controlled by a supporters trust - it will just take longer because of the larger amounts of money involved."

Rye added: "I have no message for Rupert Lowe but I know that chairmen have been very supportive of trusts around the country.

"At Tottenham their trust has regular meetings with chairman Daniel Levy. As a result, they have some influence.

"Supporters with shares should be treated just the same as any other shareholder, and they deserve an input - it's their money that keeps the clubs going.

"If fans were allowed on the board, they can ask questions like 'is that decision made with the club's best long-term interests at heart or is it being made with one eye on the share price?'

"The supporters just want to be involved with their club, and the best way of exercising that is by having a degree of ownership and having a bit of influence."

Rye added: "There are great examples of what supporters trusts can achieve - at Bradford they have been widely accepted in the boardroom after raising over £250,000 to keep the club in existence earlier this year.

"And at Telford the fans got together to form a new football club. In the world of the media that's not as important as the Manchester United shares story, but to the people of Telford it's probably more important."

Supporters Direct is a government initiative, funded by public money, with offices in London and Glasgow. Our aim is to help people "who wish to play a responsible part in the life of the football club they support".

With a combined membership of over 75,000, supporters trusts have now put over £10 million into football and own or control nine football clubs in the UK.

The eight owned by the fans are AFC Wimbledon, AFC Telford United, Chesterfield, Clydebank, Enfield Town, Exeter City, Lincoln City and York City.

Trust members also control Brentford.