TV cash is key to the Phoenix

That revelation will appal some of the biggest clubs in the country, who feel they have been wrongfully excluded from discussions so far.

Although Scudamore feels there are up to seven First Division clubs who would attach their star to that of the existing 20 Premier League clubs, Sportsmail believes that number will have grown to 14 before Thursday's meeting in Nottingham.

But Scudamore would resist the new league being titled Premier League Two and he said: 'There can only ever really be one Premier League by definition.'

Football officialdom's scepticism surrounds where the money is going to come from to make the new league sufficiently attractive.

Just 13 months ago, when Coventry were still in the Premier League, Richardson and his Southampton counterpart Rupert Lowe tried desperately to persuade fellow clubs below the top six to vote for a more even distribution of revenues within the Premiership. However, there were a number of sides in mid-table and lower who were happy for the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Leeds to receive proportionately more money because it would make them less likely to break away to negotiate their own commercial deals.

A Premier League chairman told Sportsmail: 'If they (the new rebels) are thinking of doing a Robin Hood on the top six, I don't believe they'd get the other 14 to go along with them.'

Another problem the top clubs envisage is how a broadcast deal can be done with the proposed Phoenix League when the feeling is that Rangers and Celtic would quickly be promoted into the top flight.

Premier League officials feel that could lead merely to a year-on-year television deal until that issue was resolved. The Phoenix idea will be discussed by the Premier League chairmen at their December 12 meeting, where it is likely to meet with resistance from the chiefs of the leading clubs.

The mathematics are straightforward. This season, the club finishing 17th in the Premiership will collect £13m from broadcast deals, rising over the period of the current three-year agreement to £16m. Clubs dropping into the new second tier would need reassurance that they would get at least £10m per season from being in the top 10 places in that division, while the remainder would probably want around £8m. That would mean seeking an initial contract-worth, say, £170m simply to finance Premier II.

A Premier League official said: 'There are two ways of doing that. Either you find the money yourself or rob it off the rest, and quite frankly I can't see the Premiership clubs giving up too much of their own money.

'If you try going to Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal and suggesting that instead of £26m they should take £18m, I know what the answer would be. It is naive to think that top clubs would let that happen.'

Then there are the clubs cast adrift in the Football League. 'You cannot leave them out of it or you will be hung out to dry,' the official added.

But Torquay owner Mike Bateson said: 'I think all this is inevitable, though I hope that someone like Geoffrey Richmond (the Bradford chairman), who started at Scarborough, will remember his roots.'