Managers brace for 'bung report' from Kirkwhelpington

Managers braced for allegations over 'bung culture'
By Owen Slot, Chief Sports Reporter



AS SCRUTINY increases into the activities of agents in football, a vote is pending that may go against the big four clubs — Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal — and deprive them of the use of agents and, thus, access to players.
Before then, the football industry must endure tonight’s BBC Panorama programme, which promises to name leading agents, clubs and managers who are allegedly cheating their supporters.



Panorama has threatened to “rock football to its foundations” and last night released a small taster in which Charles Collymore, an agent, of CS Sport Management, is secretly filmed bragging: “There’s managers out there who take bungs all day long. XX, you know that, takes bungs all day long. We’ve got XX FC all day long.”

In the programme, we are informed, there will be names in place of the XXs.

Collymore adds: “I would say to you comfortably there’s six to eight managers we could definitely approach and they’d be up for this, no problem.” Collymore has issued a statement denying any involvement in illegal payments. He said: “I can categorically state that I have never offered nor accepted a ‘bung’, to or from anyone.”

The naming of names would increase pressure on football’s authorities to introduce regulations to police the game. However, indications from the top of the game suggest that the FA Premier League clubs may decide to police themselves anyway.

The next meeting of the Premier League, on October 2, will be treated to Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington’s preliminary report into the dealings of the transfer market, but the chairmen may also vote to curb the dealings of agents, regardless of what Stevens tells them at the end of his six-month independent inquiry.

The majority of clubs want agents to be paid by players and not by clubs. When this matter was discussed at the last Premier League meeting, all bar the big four were in favour. The reason that the minority were against, according to Dave Whelan, the chairman of Wigan Athletic, is: “If you are Manchester United, you’ll be thinking: ‘If I’m not paying the agents, they won’t be bringing the best players to me.’ They would lose their advantage.”

A two-thirds majority is required to enforce a change of regulation and Whelan is confident that they will get this. “I think this would keep money from flowing out of the game and it would stop some agents engineering moves for their players,” he said. “That is how they are making their money.

“We lost Pascal Chimbonda and Jimmy Bullard [who joined Tottenham Hotspur and Fulham, respectively] at the end of the transfer window and it was completely the agents that did that.”

This move for regulation in the agents industry comes at the same time that a report from Sports Nexus, an independent body, has been arriving at all the Premier and Football League clubs, calling on them to refuse to employ agents. In the report, Phil Smith, of the First Artist agency, says: “The regulations are not tough enough, the governance is not good enough and no one is policing it. The system is left open to abuse.

“At Portsmouth, for instance, it is open house at the moment. Everyone thinks they have got money. One of our players down there says it is an agent-fest. There’s more agents than players at the training ground.”

“If the clubs were prevented from using agents, then all this would stop,” Jon Holmes, of Sports Nexus, said. “But the fact is that the clubs want it to continue. They seem to turn a blind eye to this continuously. I have been calling for a long time for proper regulation. My view is that the authorities have done precious little to get their own house in order and it’s been left to the media.”

Mike Newell, whose comments about a climate of backhanders in the game prompted the Stevens inquiry — the Luton Town manager names Collymore as someone who allegedly offered him money — said that the Panorama programme vindicates his views. Bungs, he says, have “become a culture in football and it’s almost accepted and brushed under the carpet”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,27-2364104,00.html