Aston On Bungs


By Aston
September 20 2006

In a rare move, I’ve decided to do something that almost resembles an opinionated column, about bungs in football.

This article is my personal opinion and in no way related to any one at Sportnetwork.net.

 

With all the fuss made over the last few months about bungs in football and the hype around the Panorama broadcast on Tuesday night which turned out to be a damp squib and while we are on the subject on of that Panorama I think we will stick with it.

 

If Town had remained in the carling cup I like a lot of football fans would have either been at the game or watching Gillette soccer special, but as Peterborough knocked us out I thought I’d settle down and watch it, hoping to see hard evidence that football managers had been taking bungs as an incentive to take players to their club, but all I saw was a lot of half truths coupled with some clever film editing to make it look like money was or has changed hands between agents and managers which from the evidence I saw last night did not happen. The show did a spend a lot of time focusing on Bolton manager Sam Allardyce and he was the only manager that anything even close to firm claims about him made, why was that? Perhaps the reporter supports one of their local rivals and just wanted to damage the clubs image. Towards the end of the programme the focus changed to Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp and Blackburn player Andy Todd’s agent having a chat about Todd (according to his agent) not being to happy at Ewood Park and wanting a move away, Harry does admit he is interested in the player but nothing related to money in anyway is talked about, it would be the same as Harry going on Sky Sports saying he would like to sign Wayne Rooney.

 

Now I will leave the managers alone because from the ‘evidence’ of Panorama I don’t think there is much to say so I will move on to agents, who many people see as a parasite, huge bright red yellow-head zit on the face of the beautiful game and yes that could well be true of some of them, but like in every walk of life you get good honest people and people whose head is turned by temptation at every turn but should the few good ones really be looked upon badly because of the few bad ones? And are the bad ones really that bad? Yes their was the case highlighted last night on Panorama of agent Peter Harrison talking to Chelsea about taking Middlesbrough youth defender Nathan Porritt to Stamford Bridge (touting the players name around) with out permission from Middlesbrough which is illegal and of course I can understand why Middlesbrough would not be pleased about this, as they had invested in the development of Nathan, but it was not Jose Mourinho taking any money or even involved in the talks it was solely the agent who in my opinion wanted to get his client to Chelsea (or any big club for that matter) and on big money which he will of course take a cut of. Two other agents were also named and partly shamed last night:

 

Craig Allardyce: reportedly took payments from other agents in three transfers involving Bolton Wanderers while banned from doing any Bolton deals. Craig has since said he was simply exaggerating his importance to the undercover reporter.

 

Charles Collymore: The agent that Mike Newell claims offered him a bung, he has since said he lied to find out more about the undercover reporter and what he was doing.

 

Teni Yerima: Said he had bribed Sam Allardyce but he has since claimed he was making that up, again to uncover the reporter.  

 

Finally bungs, the whole reason behind this mess, well what can I say? Backhanders happen in most walks of life somewhere, it might be paying a builder cash in hand to avoid VAT or it could be something as small as accepting a coffee from a car salesperson, it might be cold and taste like reheated dirt but he offered you that to try and convince you to buy a car from him which you might not want to do which is very close to the description you will find for a bung in the Cambridge dictionary: a payment made to someone to persuade them to do something, usually something dishonest. You can make them illegal but policing it would be dam near impossible to police so just leave them, it’s money coming from the agents and that means they have less which a lot of people want.

 

One final note for young players, if you have an agent get rid of him, use the PFA that way you can be assured your named won’t be in a tabloid newspaper because of some tapping up scandal, which always good for your image.    

 

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