RAWK Meltdown is closing as well. Shit.
The next round of stuff is 'Eight Premier League managers accused of taking bungs'.
It'll have to be Ron Atkinson at this rate.
Roll up, roll up, your guesses please. I've got Malky Mackay for Manager 3.Manager 1
Ex-Premier League manager allegedly liked “bungs” in cash or deposited in a Swiss bank account. Pagliara said: “I can call [X] now and all it is with [X] is 'How much, Pino? And will it be the same Swiss bank account?’”
Manager 2
Ex-top flight manager has had “more backhanders than Wimbledon”. Pagliara said: “This is what I hate... the guy that used to need the money but he’s had so much now that all of a sudden he’s whiter than white.”
Manager 3
After managing several British clubs, he was allegedly fired by one for having “his fingers in the till”. Pagliara said he would get involved if “you understand that when we do deals I have to have a carrier bag with some cash”.
Manager 4
Pagliara said of this boss with Premier League experience: “We know him very, very well. We do a transfer, [X] has winked at us and said 'Yeah, I want the player. Is there a little coffee for me, Pino?’ Yeah, course there is.”
Manager 5
Ex-Premier League manager who, said Pagliara, would call him and say “here’s the number”, and give him details of a Swiss account. He said: “It was always numbered accounts.”
Manager 6
A former player who now manages, he allegedly likes extra money to secure deals because he is not on a big salary at his club. Pagliara said: “[X] takes a few [inaudible] because he’s not being paid big money.”
Manager 7
Ex-Premier League manager is another “we can put on the payroll”. If a player was transferred for £10m, “we’ll turn round to [X] and say, listen, if you take this player we’ll look after you. OK? OK, boom.”
Manager 8
Agent Dax Price said this long-serving manager would pick three trusted players and tell them he was paying them an extra £8,000 per month, on condition that they paid him £4,000 per month each.
They're all Barry Fry.
Except number 8.
Neil Warnock.
Some of that list will have some retired names on it. I can't imagine Pulis being a wobble but he probably is. No one is safe, except Steve McClaren.
Just realised how much I want 6 to be Sean Dyche.
Four is more likely to be Dyche. Using 'coffee' as a euphemism for 'dirty money' is a very management wank thing to do.
I really, really want Ian Holloway to be in there somewhere.
The absolute lolfest of all this is just sinking in.
Shearer probably has it right that we're a laughing stock.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p049827d
Every single one of them is an "ex-" PL manager, no? Probably a bunch of Championship dunces who got shuffled off as soon as their teams hit the big time.
Still not sure about the FA booting him, after what is essentially him just looking for the same crappy speaking and PR fees that anyone famous in the world of football rumbles along collecting, but oh well. He got greedy and he got punished.
Number 6 is a joke "a former player who now manages". Thanks for narrowing it down
Number 2, Big Nige?
Actually, having just discovered who this "Pino" bloke is - it's likely the above is just bullshit for him to try to sell some stories.
I told you this would get messy.
That win percentage
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Such a shame Fabio went to pot.
.....
There must be sone bigger shit in the bank, because this story is so underwhelming at the moment.
How overwhelming do you want it to be?
'Jose Mourinho was left fighting for his job tonight after a sting operation revealed he was prepared to murder academy players and sell their body parts to Chinese dealers for £5 million'
Just a bit more than 'yeah, football managers and agents are a bit dodgy. Here's what's going on... Also, fuck Gary Neville'
I just saw this story for the first time. How did this even happen?
You'd surely have to expect that they'd be all over the background checks.
If you banned every dodgy person in football there wouldn't be much left to watch.
The stuff resurfacing about Ravel Morrison being pushed out of West Ham because he wouldn't sign up with Allardyce's agent is quite telling.
Not like this kind of stuff isn't happening elsewhere though.
I found it interesting that Harry Redknapp's take on the matter didn't include any reference to dodgy dealings.
We need more stuff like this for the sake of the board to be honest.
Funny how David Gill didn't know about any of this during the hiring process...
This is the best thing I've read on it. It's been completely overblown, and you have to wonder why.
He had to go because of two things, both FA related:
1. He was shown seeking out a large amount of extra money whilst the highest paid employee at an organisation which has just sacked a vast number of people, including some of those who, had they still been in their jobs, might have been able to prevent this from happening.
2. The FA could not be seen to cast judgement on players, managers and clubs on moral issues if they allowed their own manager to 'bring the game into disrepute' and keep his job.
Him staying was never an option because of the nature of the transgression, no matter how 'bad' it was or wasn't.
Everybody with any sort of profile in football uses their profile to make extra money. Him lending his name to something is about the least controversial and disreputable thing imaginable.
This method of leaving the job suits Sam down to the ground. I couldn't imagine him quietly going out the backdoor after a quarter final loss in a tournament. Getting caught slagging off everyone is just perfect and this entire shit storm is just getting started. Should be great if the Telegraph release all the names.
Not in a world where you are the most high profile employee of the organisation which is responsible for administering the sport across the whole country. The rights, wrongs and severity of the thing itself are not relevant. If you're caught being morally below board and the FA then says 'yeah, whatever' then it says more about the FA than about him, so they had to act.
I don't see which part of this is 'morally below board'. Pursuing endorsements? Making fun of Roy Hodgson? Not pretending that the bollocks workings of the FA are as watertight as they think? That sort of bizarre puritan mindset would see you sack a manager for defending a diver.
So next time they want to fine a manager for kicking a water bottle or whatever, the manager can say 'What about big Sam telling shady businessmen how to contravene your own rules, never mind breaking them himself? Where was his punishment?' and very much have a point.
And the sacked employees at the FA who were helping actually run the sport can say 'Hang on, this guy's on £3 million and the FA are fine with him pursuing £400k deals with shady businessmen but they don't want me to do vital outreach work on £25k actually promoting the good of the game?' would also very much have a point.
He had to go.
And let’s be honest, while we were all up for his appointment for the ‘lols’, he wouldn’t actually have been particularly good, so it’s not as if it’s a great loss anyway. Not that that matters/should have saved him, but is worth pointing out nonetheless.
In which case, I'm looking forward to this ushering in a new Golden Age of consistency and integrity at the Football Association. Where would you even start? How about Andre Gray being banned for 'misconduct' whilst the FA Cup is sponsored by the state airline of a country that imprisons and deports homosexuals? He would very much have a point if he appealed on those grounds.
Who was it you emailed about the Arab states?
And while I'd agree that's a constant source of shame, it seems no-one, upon no-one gives a rat's arse about it.
It's coming back to me now. Was it kick Racism out? If so, you really need to see that one through/go viral as you're bang on about it.
It was, and I e-mailed them twice. I'll wing them another one about gayness.
They had to get rid of him, it's the only way out they had which allows them to appear to give a shit about bungs/corruption etc without actually ...you know...having to go to the bother of giving a shit or really doing anything at all. Classic cowardly bullshit from a sports' governing body, I for one am shocked.
Yeah big sympathy for Big Sam. As Harry Redknapp once said of Malky Mackay (two other fine upstanding citizens of the game), "He hasn't raped anyone and he isn't a paedophile".
Was anyone suggesting he was?
I'm no barrister (I'm Yevrah), but my reading of the 'Disqualifying Conditions' of the fit 'n' proper persons tests suggests that there is nothing to prevent Kim Jong-un from buying an English football club. The conditions all relate to the administration of other clubs, which he isn't involved in, and unspent criminal convictions, which I don't think he has.
The FA would have left themselves open to charges of hypocrisy every time they charged anyone with anything henceforward. In and of itself, it wasn't sufficiently bad to warrant a sacking. But in the context of his role, the organisation he works for and the role they're supposedly to have in governance then you can't really argue with booting him.
That he's a cunt means there's just a general shrug of the shoulders over the whole thing, rather than any MASSIVE feelings either way.
He said there were ways around them, and cited his own experiences at West Ham. What was he meant to do, lie and claim that they're perfect and cannot be got around?
I had the impression from the transcript that he was agreeing to give more information.
If you go bad mouthing your employers on social media, you risk the sack. Big Sam did his whinging in a much more public setting.