Former Portsmouth striker Dave Kitson seeking to oust Gordon Taylor and lead PFA overhaul

The retired striker has tabled a 10-point manifesto aimed at overhauling a players’ union he considers to be ‘deeply out of touch’.

According to the Daily Mail, Kitson has set his sights on succeeding £2.3m-a-year chief executive Gordon Taylor.

As a player, Kitson featured on 72 occasions for Pompey, scoring 12 times, in a career which also saw service at Reading, Stoke, Cambridge United and Sheffield.

Now the 40-year-old is seeking to drive change at the PFA, with suggestions including holding a chief executive election every five years, stepping up PFA involvement in studying the link between heading the ball and dementia, and more assistance for players with mental health problems.

He wrote in the Daily Mail: ‘As a professional footballer whose 15-year career stretched from the non-League to the Premier League and all points in between, I have experienced first-hand the full range of emotions, challenges and demands attached to playing the game and, inevitably, giving it up.

‘I consider myself well placed to give insight and informed opinion on the issues confronting current and former professional players at all levels. I have come to learn that we all need our union – and now more than ever – to help us cope with the vicissitudes of life throughout and after our careers.

‘Over the last few years, I have increasingly asked myself: what is the Professional Footballers' Association doing for us, the players, its membership?

‘Has it done enough? The present crisis has confirmed the union to be an organisation deeply out of touch – strengthening my belief that I can no longer personally sit idly by and do nothing.

‘A fresh vision, new leadership and vibrant management are needed if the PFA is to remain relevant and valuable. I am ready and willing to deliver all of these.

‘At a time when those who play the game have needed leadership and union leaders who can speak clearly and eloquently for them, the game's reputation has been dragged down into the mud. We just see statements from the PFA at a time like this. Never solutions.

‘Yet the chief executive earns a multi-million-pound salary. In what other walk of professional life is a chief executive paid a salary that amounts to eight per cent of the union's entire income?

‘And when trade union rules stipulate that such a leader should seek re-election at least every five years, it seems fair to ask whether the PFA has ever been balloted on the retention of the current chief executive for 39 years.

‘The chief executive would command neither the salary nor the untouchability that Gordon Taylor has enjoyed under my leadership.’

Kitson joined Pompey from Stoke in September 2010, yet struggled to win over supporters before an acrimonious exit in the summer of 2012.