What the commentators said

English football has long been “infected by bungs, brown envelopes and numbered Swiss bank accounts”, said Tom Bower in The Sunday Times. As far back as 1993, an entire culture of secret payments was exposed when Brian Clough was revealed to have taken a £50,000 bung to sanction a transfer. But the FA has regularly proved to be unable or unwilling to tackle the “spivs and criminals” profiting from “the national game”. That’s why the Government must now step in to regulate the sport, said George Turner and Alex Cobham in The Independent. The FA has had every opportunity to reform itself. Yet all it has managed to do in the last five years is to introduce a “fit and proper person test” for club owners that has proved “farcically unworkable”. As evidence of that, just consider the way Massimo Cellino was allowed to take charge at Leeds despite a conviction for tax fraud. Of course, the FA will bleat about “political intervention”. But it can’t really complain, not since happily accepting £160m in public money for the rebuilding of Wembley Stadium.

All credit to the Telegraph, said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. Its exposé was a “classic example of what newspapers ought to be doing”. Indeed, it stands comparison with the MPS expenses scandal: everyone knew MPS were fiddling their claims but it took the press to find proof. I’m all in favour of “journalistic stings” – but what was Allardyce’s crime, asked Matthew Syed in The Times. Yes, he was ready to accept £400,000 but he made quite clear that he would have to run the deal past the FA. And surely there’s nothing wrong with explaining how to evade the ban on third-party ownership. I’ve had that discussion with “at least a dozen managers and probably 50 agents”. He never broke any FA rules: he just explained how they could be “circumvented”. “People should be sacked for what they say in private only when they breach a high bar of wrongdoing.” Allardyce “didn’t come close”.