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Leeds chief executive Angus Kinnear has taken a distasteful aim at the fan-led review of football governance - comparing its recommendations to the Maoist regime in China that was responsible for a famine killing millions.

The review, which was commissioned by the Government and published last week by MP Tracey Crouch, proposed an independent regulator and for Premier League clubs to pay a 'transfer levy' to support the football pyramid.

However, writing in his programme notes ahead of Leeds' match with Crystal Palace on Tuesday night, Kinnear said: 'Football is a private sector business and has flourished that way.

Leeds chief executive Angus Kinnear (left) has compared the review into football governance's recommendations to the regime under Mao Zedong (right) in China

The review was commissioned by the Government and published by MP Tracey Crouch (right)

'Enforcing upon football a philosophy akin to Maoist collective agriculturalism (which students of 'The Great Leap Forward' will know culminated in the greatest famine in history) will not make the English game fairer, it will kill the competition which is its very lifeblood.

'Teams further down the pyramid do not need their means artificially inflated, they need to live within them.'

China's former communist leader Mao Zedong was responsible for the Great Chinese Famine which took place between 1959 and 1961 and is estimated to have killed tens of millions of people.

Kinnear's comments sparked an angry reaction from football fans and Salford co-owner Gary Neville, who tweeted: 'Anyone remember when Leeds United were in the Championship sweating like crazy over their own financial state if they didn't go up. How has it come to this within 12 months?

'A sorry state of affairs. Surely even Leeds fans don't like these programme notes on the fan-led review.'

It proposed an independent regulator and for Premier League clubs to pay a 'transfer levy'