The Football Association’s plans to restructure women’s football, announced last week, have divided opinion. What unites everyone is the intention behind the proposals.

There is much to be lauded about the seriousness with which the FA has turned to the women’s game. The governing body has been shrouded in controversy in recent months, with Eni Aluko’s complaint and Mark Sampson’s sacking raising huge questions about its competence and ability to govern.

However, there is no doubting the commitment of the organisation to righting the wrongs of the 50-year ban and decimation of women’s football. Bringing Baroness Sue Campbell, former chair of UK Sport during the hugely successful 2012 Olympics, in as head of women’s football to mastermind their Gameplan for Growth was a strong statement of intent.

The new plans look good in isolation. The FA is proposing to make the top tier a fully professional league of up to 14 teams, who will be required to provide academies and an elite environment, including strength and conditioning, performance preparation and medical welfare. The number of non-English players in match-day squads will be restricted to encourage home-grown talent.

The second tier is to be rebranded as a wholly part-time and semi-professional environment for up to 12 teams. Both tiers will be licensed. Applications will close to the current 20 Women’s Super League clubs on 10 November. Clubs from the Women’s Premier League will be welcome to apply from March depending on availability.

Full-time clubs will need to provide full-time staff that deliver a minimum of 16 hours of daytime contact per week, in addition to matches, increasing to 20 hours by 2021-22. Part-time clubs will be required to provide at least eight hours a week, plus matches, with semi-professional players. They will also have to meet minimum levels of investment.

It is clear the FA has an eye towards aligning the branding of the top tier with the men. The Premier League and a Women’s Premier League becoming the elite leagues in football in England makes sense and would aid understanding of the tiers in the women’s game. But the FA’s implementation is off. The current WPL teams are not being consulted until this weekend, after the fact. These lower-league and grassroots teams are crucial to the long-term health of the game.

Everyone involved in the women’s game wants it to grow, to be sustainable in its own right and to have strong competitive leagues that offer a pathway to the national team. We also want women to be able to make a living out of something people enjoy and want to watch. The key is bums on seats. Interest in the game drives investment from clubs, sponsorships and media rights. No one has a definitive answer as to how we reach that point. There is a wealth of experience and talent within the women’s game and there are many voices that would add huge value to a comprehensive review of the game and what it takes to create a professional structure.

How the FA has split the room is the seemingly haphazard nature of its decision-making and implementation. It is the Tinkerman of women’s football. There has been small incremental quantitative growth in the domestic game for a number of years, at a frustratingly slower pace than the national team’s development, and across the board there is a hunger to see a more qualitative leap in its development.

As is often the case, the devil of these proposals is in the detail. Women’s football has faced constant change. The WSL was launched in 2011 (replacing the Women’s Premier League as the top tier). Three years later 10 teams were added and the league was split into two, WSL1 and WSL2. The WPL became a regional third tier. This season the women’s football calendar has switched from the summer to the winter, a move which places it alongside the men and fits better with the international schedule. At the same time 2017-18 is the first time WSL1 and WSL2 have expanded to 10 teams each. Now the FA’s new changes will come into force for the start of the 2018-19 season.

Women’s football is a long way from sustainability. It is extremely fragile. The constant change does not allow for long-term planning and targets. This year saw Notts County wound up on the eve of the Spring Series because the club were not willing to support it any longer. Sunderland reverted to part-time status and will fall out of the top flight unless they make the switch back. In private some players are fearful about the long-term viability of other clubs in the WSL.

The pace of change has also meant there has been no time to test the product. We have no idea whether these leagues would work in their current incarnation or what effect switching to a winter league will have. The announcement of these proposals, that cancel relegation and promotion this season, have moved the goalposts with the campaign barely underway.

The timing is poor. Clubs have just over a month before they have to commit to a huge financial undertaking. They have to make it workable within a year. Already very beholden to the philanthropy of men’s clubs, the success of this plan is reliant on their further and increased commitment. Those without the full backing of their male parent club or big investment from elsewhere stand to fall by the wayside. Already there is a big gap in quality between the tiers. A fully professional league followed by a semi-pro second tier will see that gap increase.

At a time when the FA should be looking to create unity behind its strategy for growth, it has instead sown division and discontent. Many question just how likely it is that the FA will be able too find enough clubs willing and able to go full-time — there are currently only six full-time teams in the WSL — however it must be confident, having consulted at the top, that it will be possible.

There is undoubtedly a hope that men’s clubs currently working in the lower tiers of the women’s game (or not working in it at all as the case is with Manchester United) might be attracted by the opportunity to leap in at the top by meeting the requirements for league admittance. Currently only eight Premier League sides have women’s teams in the WSL (five in WSL1 and three in WSL2).

Already West Ham, who took their WPL side in-house only last year, have announced their intention to apply to play at the top. But the question of whether clubs who have historically neglected their women’s teams should be allowed to leapfrog clubs that have climbed the leagues on footballing merit remains a serious one.

Yeovil joined the WSL2 in 2014, winning the league two years later. The club have earned their right to compete at the top. They are serious about their women’s team and have won FA WSL Club of the Year twice in recognition of both their on- and off-pitch success. While they have not found themselves able to make the type of cash injections required in the new licensing for the top tier (the club estimate they will need to raise £350,000 on top of the £120,000 FA subsidy they receive), it has found other ways to boost the side.

“YTFC [are] the only EFL or Premier League outfit to host all their female counterparts’ FAWSL 1 league games in the club’s main stadium,” they state proudly in their statement which details their dismay at the FA plans. It is a move that has given them some of the highest attendances in the WSL.

“We have the structure, facilities and ambition to become a full-time professional club given time but we currently do not have the financial support to do this,” it said. “We do not have the budget to allow our players and coaches to become full-time athletes, unless further investment comes our way soon.” Yeovil will be just one of the casualties as a result of this change if there is an inflexibility at the top.

Millwall’s Megan Rose Wynne similarly expressed her distaste on Twitter: “A big blow for WSL2 today... months of hard work & prep from clubs & players only to find out after the 1st game there is no promotion.”

Angry voices are not the only ones out there. Others, like West Ham see opportunity in the plans. Derby County have said they are “excited” about the change. “Having managed to establish ourselves within the third tier of the pyramid, which is also the top tier of the regional structure, we have made no secret of our ambition to take the next step to what is currently WSL2. As part of that we have been diligently putting into place the foundations blocks to not only take that next step but to sustain us at that level once we do,” their statement reads.

There is a case to be made for these plans. But the consultation process has been seen as lacking. Very few would disagree with the proposals if they came with a longer time-frame, a staggered approach and one which included a more coherent and inclusive strategy for the bottom of the pyramid as well as the top.

If the FA can tinker its way to a correct formula for success, then many doubters would be delighted, but at the moment it feels as if the Gameplan is being written in the dark.

Talking points

• Manchester City have signed the Denmark Euro 2017 finalist Nadia Nadim from Portland Thorns. Nadim, who comes from Afghanistan and began playing football in a refugee camp after fleeing to Denmark, will move to Manchester in the new year after finishing the season in the United States. The striker has 22 goals from her 74 caps and has 13 goals in her 29 games in Portland who host Orlando Pride in the first NWSL play-off semi-final on Saturday. North Carolina Courage host Chicago Red Star on Sunday in the second semi-final.

Manchester City’s new signing Nadia Nadim. Photograph: Tom Flathers/Manchester City FC via Getty Ima

• The England Under-19 manager Mo Marley has been promoted to manage the Lionesses for their next three games following the sacking of Mark Sampson. Marley is a popular choice having worked with the current crop of players at youth level and was Hope Powell’s assistant during her tenure at the top of the women’s game. She will be in charge for the team’s friendly against France this month and the World Cup 2019 qualifiers against Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kazakhstan in November.

• Barcelona released a brilliant photo last week which saw the men’s side and women’s team lining up together for their club team photo.

• The US National Women’s Team Players Association has donated $16,000 to the NSWL Players Association to help get it off the ground. Its formation earlier in the year will provide a body through which league players can work to improve their working conditions and pay.

• The Brazilian national team has been rocked by the retirements of Changchun Zhuoyue recruit Cristiane, Stjarnan’s Francielle and North Carolina Courage’s Rosana. Their announcements follow the sacking of manager Emily Lima who lasted just under a year in the job and stems from dissatisfaction with the treatment of the side by the Brazilian Football Confederation. The star player Marta has said she will continue to play for the national team.

