Managers’ union ‘extremely concerned’ as former sports minister demands inquiry

THE trade union for football managers said yesterday that it was “extremely concerned” by The Daily Telegraph’s disclosure that eight current or recent Premier League managers had been accused of taking bungs.

As the Football Association and the Premier League launched inquiries into the Telegraph’s disclosures, the League Managers Association said the episode had been “damaging to the game”.

Both the FA and the Premier League are now under pressure to launch an independent inquiry into the claims of managers taking bribes.

Richard Caborn, the former sports minister and trustee of the Football Foundation, said: “There now ought to be an inquiry into these allegations.

“You fetch a judge in, you fetch an investigating team in, you do that independently, it reports back to the FA in an honest and transparent way.”

He said any inquiry should also recommend what powers a regulatory body, whether it be the FA or another organisation, should be given in the future to investigate alleged corruption.

This follows the admission by the FA chairman Greg Clarke that the organisation was largely toothless when it came to digging up evidence of financial misdemeanours.

Mr Clarke has promised to overhaul the FA’s disciplinary procedures, but said that only the police had the powers necessary to root out corruption.

The League Managers Association said in a statement that it was “extremely concerned by the current situation of allegations made against a number of managers. We take the allegations very seriously as they are obviously damaging to the game.”

Football’s “bung” culture first became widely known in 1993, when Lord Sugar, then the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur FC, revealed in court papers that the club had paid a “bung” of £50,000 in cash to Brian Clough, then the manager of Nottingham Forest, to seal the transfer of Teddy Sheringham to Spurs.

In 1995 George Graham was sacked by Arsenal after taking payments of £425,000 from a Norwegian agent, Rune Hauge, to sign two Danish players, Pal Lydersen and John Jensen.

Lord Stevens, former Metropolitan Police commissioner, was hired by the Premier League to investigate five transfer windows between 2004 and 2006 following further claims of corruption. When he published his findings in 2007, he expressed confidence that by implementing his recommendations “the game and the transfer market can proceed in an untainted and transparent manner”.

Almost a decade on, the Telegraph’s disclosures have shown that a hidden culture of “bungs” and rule-bending remains very much alive.