David Gold has called on every English football club to follow Birmingham City's lead by slashing ticket prices and urged them to stop treating fans 'like mushrooms'.

The Birmingham co-owner last night claimed that ordinary supporters were being 'kept in the dark and fed manure' as they are over-charged for a product that isn't always good quality.

He also claims he would 'sit down tomorrow' with his counterparts at top-flight rivals to negotiate a significant and permanent reduction in admission charges.

Gold wants all four divisions to make a sequence of 20 per cent reductions for two to three years in a bid to make football more affordable for regular supporters and fill stadiums that rarely sell out.

He believes that if all 92 clubs committed to doing the same thing, the effect would be to drive down wages and payments to agents while ensuring more games in front of full houses.

But he is not optimistic his plan - whereby every club cuts prices by more than half - will even be considered by other clubs, indeed when he discusses the matter with other chairman self-interest means they barely consider the notion.

Gold's call comes days after Birmingham put down their prices for their match with Bolton Wanderers and were rewarded with their biggest crowd of the season which, he believes, played an important part in their 1-0 win.

Despite being a relatively unattractive fixture, more than 28,000 supporters were tempted to St Andrew's by the offer of admission for only £15.

"We have got to fill the stadium; if we have 20,000 fans there, it is not going to get us going as much as the near full-capacity did against Bolton," Gold said.

"We have to get the stadium full and if that means having to reduce prices that's what we have got to do. We believe even if you take a bit less money, it is not as important as filling your stadium. You could argue it was those extra

fans who won us the game against Bolton. Where did Stephen Kelly get the energy to make that tackle, where did Sebastien Larsson get the drive to perform the way he did? From the 30,000 fans who were driving him on in a way 15,000 never could."

Better performances are only one reason why Gold thinks the sport should be more accessible. Packed grounds and more passionate atmospheres are more attractive to the wider world and - more importantly - sponsors.

"It is about time someone addressed it," he said. "The greed in football means we preclude the very people who made the game great, those thousands and thousands of fans who used to cram into Wembley. They made the Premier League what it is.

"Clubs keep getting money and giving it to agents and players but fans get nothing. That's obscene. The average bloke and his two kids can't afford to go to matches.

"If the whole league agrees to reduce prices by a certain percentage - say 20 per cent for two or three years - no-one would be worse off. If they all have £1million a year less, at least they all have it.

"Cutting prices will not make a dot of difference to clubs but it will to fans. At present, we are treating them like mushrooms - keeping them in the dark and feeding them manure."

However, with the Premiership too fractured in terms of wealth and aspiration and many clubs selling out on a weekly basis, Gold thinks the scheme should be brought in just below the top flight. Clubs in the Championship, he says, are commonly 75 per cent full and could make football more affordable.

"You could only pull it off if the whole league agrees and, in the Premiership, there are three leagues including the top six who are competing for players with Barcelona and Real Madrid. It takes only one club to bring the whole thing down," he said.

"Nobody listens to me, they think I'm potty. I chat to friends, other chairmen, and within two minutes they've switched off because football clubs are all about today.

"All these five-year plans are nonsense to clubs like Bolton and Derby, or anyone else who doesn't give a damn about anything but staying in the Premiership."