Chairman David Sheepshanks says Ashley Cole's appeal against the Premier League's guilty verdict in the tapping up enquiry could cause the end of the transfer market as we know it. Sheepshanks feels that clubs outside the Premiership would be particularly badly hit.

The Town chairman, who has had his own issues with Cole's agent Jonathan Barnett in the past, says an appeal victory for the Arsenal defender could cause catastophic changes to the game: "It wouldn't be a huge step for that to happen.

"It would hurt all the clubs outside the Premiership in a big way, and I would venture to say that clubs who are not in the Premier League will be ostracised for ever because there would be no other way of supplementing your income.

"I do fear for the game if it goes that way, but I don't think that will happen.

"For most if not all the Premiership clubs, their interests are best served by the retention of the transfer market.

"Many of the Premiership clubs have got big debts and investments in players, and if the transfer values are struck out in one swipe they would all be in difficulty.

"It's the Championship that will suffer the most though. You could say that a lot of the clubs in the lower divisions are already operating without a transfer market.

"But at Championship level, because we are caught between working to a budget and trying to get into the Premiership, the transfer market is crucial.

"If players are free to walk out of a contract when they want to or are free to talk to whoever they like, there will be anarchy and the game would have gone mad."

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