Sam Allardyce is at the centre of embarrassing and potentially damaging revelations that will warrant a Football Association investigation into the new England manager only two months after he took the job.
Allardyce will have to explain to his new employer why he apparently told what he thought were Far East businessmen, not realising they were undercover reporters for the Daily Telegraph, that it was possible to “get round” the rules about third-party player ownership.
The FA has been thrust into the highly embarrassing position of its most important employee saying it was “not a problem” to bypass the rules his own organisation had introduced in 2008.
Allardyce, implicated in a Panorama documentary earlier in his management career, tells the reporters he knew of certain agents who were “doing it all the time” and added: “You can still get around it. I mean obviously the big money’s here.”
Allardyce will have to explain whether he was merely giving an honest account of what happened in the sport or if he was advising the “businessmen” to follow those practices, in which case the matter could be serious enough for his position to be in question.
The FA has requested the full transcripts of the secretly taped recordings in which Allardyce uses his new status as England manager to negotiate a £400,000 deal whereby he would fly to Singapore and Hong Kong four times a year to address investors in what he thought was a firm wanting to buy football players.
Allardyce is also caught on tape making several remarks that will go down badly at FA headquarters, including referring to his predecessor, Roy Hodgson, as "Woy" – mocking his voice in a way the FA described as "unacceptable" when the Sun did likewise in a front-page headline.
Among his other statements, Allardyce, who has not commented on the revelations, says the FA's rebuilding of Wembley was "stupid" and describes Gary Neville, Hodgson's assistant, as "the wrong influence", saying the former Manchester United player should have been told to "sit down and shut up".
However, it is the comments on the “ridiculous” third-party transfer rules that the FA will view as the more serious matter by some distance.
(Guardian service)
