It is not the things he did but the things he didn’t do that Shaun Harvey regrets most about his time running the English Football League.

Like failing to convince its clubs to back a rule change that might have saved Bury, or being forced to scrap plans to stage the Carabao Cup draw in space.

“Genuinely, we opened up discussions with the International Space Station,” Harvey says in his first interview since being ousted as EFL chief executive.

But it is not the Carabao Cup – or its comically-shambolic draws – that has convinced Harvey to break his four-month silence at a hotel close to the Preston headquarters of the world’s first football league. It is instead the most serious of the many things he has been vilified for from his six years in charge of the EFL, the expulsion of one of its oldest clubs.

And while he admits “nobody can be completely blameless” for Bury’s “tragic” demise, he wants it to be known he did propose measures to clubs that might just have prevented it. Namely, the EFL being given the power to take control of financially-stricken sides and, if necessary, find them a new owner.