Interesting that the Trust were involved in Birch's appointment. The feeling from Portsmouth is very positive as it was Birch who appointed the Pompey Trust as the preferred buyer of the club when was in real danger of going under. He is clearly very experienced, being the man who brought Abramovitch to Chelsea. There is a good article in the Daily Telegraph from two years ago which gives significant insight into his thoughts about teams relegated from the Premier League:
In Premier League history, only 21 clubs have indulged in the Lazarus act by spending a single year in the lower tier, and previously well-established top-flight clubs - such as Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday and Coventry - have never come back.
For those with experience of depressed institutions, the difference between rapid recovery and prolonged agony is how soon they foresee and prepare for failure. That may not be palatable to supporters craving investment to survive - Sunderland's fatalism has been a theme of their campaign - but throwing Premier League wages at a lost cause is usually disastrous. "The well-established clubs who have not been relegated recently - such as Aston Villa last season - tend to find it much harder," says Trevor Birch, who witnessed the debilitating economic consequences of relegation when called in to be chief executive of Leeds and administrator at Portsmouth.
"The mindset is that of a Premier League club, yet life in the Championship is very different. That is why you get so many who continue to plummet into League One. How quickly a club can recover depends a lot on the length and size of the contracts they have given out, which cannot be easily adjusted. Relegation clauses may not be significant enough to reduce costs, or players may not be moved on or may not want to move, especially if they cannot get the same salaries elsewhere.
"The Premier League parachute payments [currently around PS80million over three years] may make it increasingly easier to deal with this, but the shock to the system is still significant. Leeds was the ultimate example. You had players on contracts ensuring the club was going to continue to make considerable losses when they were relegated. That made selling the club extremely difficult because a buyer could see the losses that were going to made in the Championship. Nobody wants to fund losses."
Birch, now managing director of corporate financial advisers Duff and Phelps, says clubs avoid Leeds's fate by preparing for setbacks. "If a club has one eye on thinking there is a good chance they will get relegated, they will be more conservative in how they approach the situation," he said. "It seems when Burnley were first promoted [in 2014] they were thinking they might go down and were working with players in the Premier League who would be able to be retained to do a job in the Championship. Burnley were able to keep a core of players to get back up and this time they are in a good position to stay in the Premier League by taking that long-term view."
"Dispelling the myth that relegation leads to better fortunes; Sport Football; Only 21 clubs have gone straight back up after fall from top flight, and some have kept doing down." Daily Telegraph [London, England], 26 Apr. 2017, p. 6.