Speaking at the Martin Shaw King Trust conference entitled 'Living in Inner Cities', Johnson said he wanted the community leaders present at the conference to give him specific problems so that The FA can deal with them.

"We at The FA sit, along with our representative teams, at the top of the pyramid of English football," said Johnson. "And we look down, some would say from our 'ivory tower', and believe that we are putting in place throughout the pyramid the types of measures that will deliver results.

"But I do acknowledge that if you are a young man or woman or boy or girl living in an inner-city area, in a minority ethnic community, at the bottom of the pyramid looking up, then you might be able to point to a whole range of barriers that are in place that might stop you progressing through that pyramid and achieving your dreams.

"If that’s the case, we need to know what those barriers are. Where are they? How do they manifest themselves? Will you tell us what they are, make suggestions as to how they can be removed and give us the opportunity to deal with them? Because we are dedicated to removing barriers wherever we find them.

"To do that, we need your help. It’s simply not enough for mistrust and suspicion to build up, and then for people to turn around to The FA and tell us that there are too many barriers in place for people to make progress.

"I want there to be a clear pathway for somebody starting out on their career in football at the bottom of the pyramid, whether they are in it for fun or for a profession, right the way through to the top of the pyramid so that they can achieve their dreams."

He also commented on how the Burns Report can help The FA's Football For All policy but needs to be implemented in the right way. Johnson said: "I have heard the Minister of Sport on a platform say that 'the key to producing more professional footballers from the Asian communities is for us to implement Lord Burns' Structural Review'.

"Well let’s be honest, we could implement the Burns Review tomorrow and it would not, in itself, produce one single black coach or one more Asian professional footballer. But what it will do is build confidence in our decision making structures and build trust throughout those communities, who perhaps feel disenfranchised from The FA.

"We all agree that The FA’s decision making structures need to be more diverse and more representative of the society that we live in rather than the society that some people once lived in.

"But again, this is an area where we need your help – because The FA is a representative body. Everyone who sits on our Council, around our Board or around any of our committees, represents some organisation or body.

"So if we are to make our decision making structures more representative of our society, we need to find a way for us to take genuine representatives of football in minority ethnic communities."

The speech has been made ahead of the 1 December Race Equality Conference in Walsall.

To find out how you can attend the event click here.