Great. Another inquiry into bungs, even though we are already awaiting the conclusions of what is promised to be the most thorough investigation ever conducted. Thanks a lot, Panorama, it's good to know in these corrupt and decadent times that at least licence-payers' money is not being wasted.
The trouble with the Lord Stevens report, due to be published on October, is that it is widely expected to be a whitewash, having been commissioned by the Premier League for the Premier League with the express purpose of showing that rumours of dodgy dealing between clubs, managers and agents have been exaggerated. The BBC obviously thought it could cut straight through this laborious and hopelessly undramatic process by catching someone on camera with his hands in the marmalade, to adopt an expression from the recent Italian scandal.
That would have been fine had they managed it. Unfortunately they failed by a distance. The mark in the hotel room failed to turn up to collect his suitcase full of used notes, leaving the most trumpeted BBC programme this side of a royal wedding with a few secretly taped conversations that have embarrassed the Allardyce family and the Chelsea and Liverpool training staffs, but little in the way of hard evidence. Panorama's motives might have been laudable but Jeremy Beadle has been responsible for harder-hitting and better edited video clips. The programme succeeded only in stirring the pot of innuendo and suspicion that already surrounds transfer dealing, without shedding much useful new light on its contents. It was an opportunity lost because, quite simply, the BBC was looking in the wrong place.
Even if Manager X had turned up on cue to pick up his £50,000 it would only have been a great television moment. Possibly as good as Del Boy falling through a bar, though perhaps not quite as funny. Because in terms of Premiership riches, £50,000 these days is Del Boy money. Half the Chelsea first team wouldn't get out of bed for that - it would only take Michael Ballack about three days to earn it legitimately.
That was the main problem with the Panorama investigation. The deals they were questioning involved sums that pale into insignificance beside what people in the game are earning on the level. Yes, Craig Allardyce might not be the brightest kid on the block, and yes there might be managers and agents out there who scratch each other's backs, but so what? Never mind the money in suitcases and untraceable offshore accounts, what about the £1.2million Manchester United declared paying to Rodger Linse for helping to negotiate Ruud van Nistelrooy's new contract? How difficult can it be to agree terms with a player who is already at the club?
Bernie Mandic's company received £2m in a single transaction when Harry Kewell moved from Leeds to Liverpool, when the Yorkshire club were desperate to sell him and the player had his heart set on a move to Merseyside. Similarly, when Louis Saha made 'the move of my life' to join Manchester United from Fulham, his agent Branko Stoic made the deal of his life in pocketing £750,000.
These are just the transfer deals we know about, largely due to Manchester United's openness in making them public.
The point is that while dishonesty among small-scale agents and greedy managers is not an attractive aspect of Premiership football, it is a minor blemish compared with problems of governance further up the scale. We all know more than we possibly wanted to about Craig Allardyce now, but how much do we know about Pini Zahavi, say, or the new owners of Portsmouth, or the backers of the proposed takeover of West Ham? How much do we even know about the Glazers, come to that, and the precariousness or otherwise of the mountain of debt with which they have saddled Manchester United?
The backgrounds of club owners can be difficult to investigate, just like backhanders, sweeteners or bungs, but rather patronisingly we are being peddled the myth that agents on the take and managers on the make are all that is amiss in modern football.
There is no doubt that some managers, chairmen and agents are corrupt - an under-regulated game offers many opportunities - but if football is haemorrhaging money, as Mike Newell originally said, then it is mostly doing so over the counter in broad daylight. It is the officially sanctioned and above-board transactions that disfigure the game's values every day.
Talking of Newell, it was ironic that Panorama blamed the Luton manager's comments for spooking their manager into not showing up for his bung. The biggest sting operation since Paul Newman and Robert Redford rigged the racing results, and the most honest manager in the League spoiled it. Typical.
