Heavily indebted football clubs face being banned from European competitions to deter them from borrowing their way to success, under new plans being drawn up by Uefa, European football's governing body.

David Taylor, Uefa's general secretary, told a football conference in London on Wednesday the time had come for an upgrade in its club licensing system, which permits clubs to enter the Champions League and the Uefa Cup, because of their spending excesses.

His comments came a day after Lord Triesman, chairman of England's Football Association, took a hard line against the build-up of a debt mountain estimated at £3bn in the English game and warned clubs to expect a tougher regulatory regime to stamp out excessive borrowing.

Uefa's latest offensive follows a sustained attack by Michel Platini, its president, on the amount of money pouring into English football whose flagship Premier League attracts among the world's best footballing talent.

Wages in English football are increasing an an average of nearly 12 per cent a year per club, according to Deloitte, the consultancy, and Uefa is concerned at the impact on competition on the pitch if big clubs continue heavy borrowing to build up their squads.

About a third of the estimated £3bn debt is thought to rest in Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United, all of which qualified for the Champions League semi-finals last season.

Mr Taylor said a Uefa working party would meet next week to look at ways of tackling the debt burden in the game. While he envisaged clubs being warned or reprimanded about their indebtedness, the ultimate sanction of exclusion from competition was "entirely possible", he said.

"This is an attempt to find greater financial stability, especially at a time when banks are failing. Governments might bail out banks but they are not going to bail out a football club," he said.

"The current system needs to be looked at, it needs more transparency. We need to look at which areas we regulate to ensure the long-term stability of the clubs.

"It is not something that will happen overnight. We are still at the stage of investigating and developing solutions, but we are concerned about the longer term."

The Premier League, which continues to attract foreign owners and whose three-year domestic and international television rights deals are worth a combined £2.7bn, says the debt concerns are being overplayed and that clubs' debt as a proportion of overall income is unremarkable.