DODGY DEALS?

Last updated : 24 September 2006 By Ed

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?