Following her initial discrimination complaint against former England Women’s head coach Mark Sampson, the FA agreed a settlement payment with Aluko in order to avoid “disruption” to the England squad ahead of the Women’s Euro 2017 campaign over the summer.
Aluko was due to receive a second payment but it was revealed at last week’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) hearing in Parliament that the FA were withholding the settlement after she posted a critical tweet they claimed to be defamatory.
The England international alleged that the FA had asked her to issue a statement saying the body was not institutionally racist, accusing them of “blackmail”, a claim the FA denies.
Taylor was “pleased” to confirm Aluko had received her second and final payment, but insists there is need for change at the FA in terms of how they deal with player welfare, claiming the current framework is not “satisfactory”.
“She’s gone through a lot. I’m pleased to say a couple of days after [evidence in Parliament] they paid the second and final instalment,” Gordon Taylor told Sky Sports. “But there’s a lot of areas in this issue that weren’t satisfactory and we need to get these right.”
The PFA chief executive also revealed that FA chairman Greg Clarke had “profoundly apologised” to him following his strong criticism of Taylor during last week’s hearing.
“We need to work really hard on the issues that were raised by the Eniola (Aluko) case with the safe guarding of players.
“Players are the key people of the game and if they have a grievance it needs to be heard fairly and there’s a lot of things about it that they’ve got to learn from.
“The essence about football, the people’s game [FA] needs to reflect diversity.”
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