The FA say the League must either return with new plans quickly or drop the idea altogether.

The board decided the prospect of each club playing a 39th game in a foreign city would threaten to cause fixture congestion and damage their relations with FIFA and UEFA during the campaign for the 2018 World Cup.

FA chairman Lord Triesman said: "At the moment, we have not seen a sustainable plan to which we can agree.

"If the Premier League has things it wants to say about changes or new variants, well then come forward.

"But personally, I would prefer it happened sooner rather than later because I don't want this to drift on particularly as we are to launch our World Cup bid (for 2018)."

It is understood that there was almost unanimous agreement among the board members that the League's proposals could not be supported in their current format.

Triesman will however travel to Zurich on Thursday next week with Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore to meet FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who is staunchly opposed to the '39th step'.

League bosses remain insistent however they are not going to abandon their plan for a year-long consultation on the proposals.

A Premier League spokesman said: "We are pleased that the FA shares our opinion that the proposed Premier League international round merits full consideration and consultation.

"The issues raised - sanction, fixture calendar, sporting criteria and stakeholder consultation - remain the ones we identified, with our member clubs, as being critical to the progress of the proposal."

The league's hopes of persuading the FA to back them were not helped by Manchester United, whose chief executive David Gill is one of three top-flight representatives on the FA board, opposing the scheme as well.

Triesman said the Premier League had failed to answer the four issues he had outlined earlier this week - and that the rest of the board agreed with him.

The FA chairman added: "There are still a lot of fundamental issues for us.

"Firstly there are serious problems of congestion in the season.

"Secondly, I think that we have to make sure that our international relationships are in good shape. The 2018 World Cup is one of those reasons, and it is an important reason, but it is also true that we want to make sure we are working with international partners in a way that is effective.

"Third, there is bound to be continuing concern about whether the 39th game would change the symmetry of the competition or would introduce unfairness as it is perceived in the competition.

"It's also important to see that we're in a very difficult climate; people are very hostile and we've seen a great deal of that. We have to need to try to ensure that the football family as a whole feels more content with any proposal going forward.

"I think there is a consensus, that we've not seen a sustainable plan yet."

Asked if the Premier League's idea was now dead, or if the FA had sent them back to the drawing board, Triesman said quick answers were needed.

He added: "My reason for wanting it to be on a relatively shorter timescale is because I think it will help us in the discussion which we are going to have with FIFA next week.

"The whole of the process I think certainly does require some fresh thinking, some really substantive answers to the questions I've posed."

Triesman said the whole of the board shared similar views about the proposal.

He added: "I'm not going to talk about divisions in the board because I am very pleased to say that we are very much on the same page today. And that's not because members of the Premier League have suddenly abandoned the plan, they've most certainly not done that, that's not the issue."