Big Story

The scale of Portsmouth’s debts have astonished onlookers, documented this week by administrators. As the Times summarises:

A report compiled by Portsmouth’s administrators has laid bare the extent of the financial mismanagement at Fratton Park.

The 70-page document reveals the club owe unsecured creditors £92.7 million, while overall debt has spiralled to £119 million – far higher than the most pessimistic estimates

Most stunning (The Sun: “Shocking and shameful, wicked and wild, irresponsible and incompetent.”) to people is the revelation in the document that  local charities, non-profits and businesses are still owed relatively trifling sums. £9 million is owed to 15 football agents, but no-one is crying for them; instead, quite rightly, the outrage is about the debts like these:

• Priority Community Sports Centre: £11,000
• St John Ambulance: £2,700
• Faith & Football: £1,998
• Carol Moore, a local florist: £995
• Boy Scouts: £697

The Times features outraged fans:

“What is it that we have been ‘supporting’ in the last months and years?” one fan asked on a local newspaper message board. “From the big stuff, the millions sloshing around like bilge water in a [sinking] ship, to the pathetic non-payment to the Boy Scouts [£697], I am coming to the conclusion that this is not a business which we can want to have anything to do with.

“After the Cup Final, I am not sure anyone who supports Pompey can ‘support’ this business or any of the events it organises. This is not Pompey any more.”

The outrage is, of course, justified. A company bringing in millions of pounds of revenue each year through football and failing to pay basic debts to local companies and community organizations is a disgrace.

What it should not be is a surprise: Portsmouth are the 54th insolvency in British football since 1992, the year the Premier League launched, as David Conn mentions.  As has been usual practice in England, football creditors, such as other clubs, are paid in full before any other debts when a club becomes insolvent, due to Premier League (and Football League) rules, leaving the creditors above unpaid while other clubs receive millions.

This is a rule that, whilst understandable from a business standpoint, severely damages football’s reputation in many local communities, and makes a mockery of the idea football should be given any exemptions as a key part of community life. St John Ambulance, providing a voluntary service for clubs assisting the injured and sick, should not be left out of pocket by Portsmouth’s collapse. For once, tabloid outrage is fully justified and the Premier League should be ashamed of its own rules.

Quick Hits

• We’ll look at this in more detail tomorrow, but it’s heartening to see a politician call for safe standing areas to be allowed in the top tiers of English football (even if it is in the heat of a general election campaign…).
• British journalist David Smith of the Guardian is in South Africa, and given the negative coverage of the country ahead of the World Cup in the British press, is being asked: “why do you hate us?”
• Chris Nee has a good piece at EPL Talk explaining the relative dearth of good British football blogs.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

When this week-long series on fan ownership was conceived a few months ago, it was practically unthinkable that the dominant headlines in recent weeks would be about a potential supporters’ takeover of England’s biggest football club.

Yet, at the time of writing, the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust (MUST) has seen membership rise to around 128,000 since the wealthy Red Knights group announced their intention to take over the club with the help of the fans. At the other end of the pyramid, Chester City look set to start again under Supporters’ Trust ownership, and trusts across the land are ever more prominent in the media.

Fan ownership, then, is more relevant in English football than it has ever been, yet it also stands at a crossroads. Will we see the idea of Trust ownership take hold across the English leagues and many more clubs going into the hands of their supporters? Or, when we revisit articles from this period five years on, will it be a curious footnote as the billionaire single owner model reigns supreme?

And what of those clubs already under fan control? Will Brentford revert fully to the wealthy benefactor model? Will Exeter’s rapid rise through the ranks be the undoing of their fan ownership? Will AFC Wimbledon resolve their ground issue? And if a member from a Trust the size of Scarborough comments on here that there is a two-tier membership, what hope is there for a model that involves all fans?

Where, then, does fan ownership go from here?

Fan Ownership vs. the Benefactor Model

Whether the Trust movement takes off or not in the Premier League, the free market idea that billionaire owners are the best way forward has taken one hell of a kicking over the past 12 months. The Glazers at Manchester United, Hicks and Gillett at Liverpool, Mike Ashley at Newcastle and any one of the myriad of owners at Pompey have all galvanised the respective supporter bases at each club in opposition.

For Dave Boyle, the CEO of Supporters’ Direct, it’s not a surprise that the fans are starting to think towards a different ownership model. “I think there were two types of negative response to supporter ownership this time last year,” he says.

“The first was that it was only for the little clubs but with the discussion around Man Utd that’s not really tenable anymore, which in itself is on top of increasing understanding of the way German clubs work.

“The second response was that people could see some advantages to supporter ownership, but couldn’t see what the problem was that meant it was a solution worth pursuing. Linked to that was the idea that the current model delivered cash for player expenditure in an effective and efficient manner.”

It is Manchester United who are currently making the most waves in this area, and for Boyle, the whole saga has opened fans’ eyes to the dealings of the boardroom.

“It seems to me that a lot of people didn’t know how much the Glazer business plan bleeds them dry and how risky it is to the club in the medium-term and beyond. That information has been the catalyst for everything which happened subsequently. But the ground work was done back in the years leading up to the takeover in the campaigns against the club’s various takeovers, and in the anger which was fuelled by the inflation-busting ticket prices.

“But shy of sequestration of the club they need to be bought out, and that means people with money need to come to the table, and clearly, what one might like – 100% mutual ownership – must be balanced against the real world pressures. I’m hopeful that something can come together which will both lessen the need for the club to be so rapacious in its treatment of its supporters, and means that the club has a very strong, inalienable voice for the supporters’ trust.

“Ideally, I’d like to see the a situation where there is a year-on-year increase in the proportion of the club under the trust’s control through a levy on season tickets and merchandise, so the supporters whose revenue drives the club are given increasing ownership of it. That would seem to be both a narrative that fits the rhetoric and would be the only way to ensure that out of this sorry mess, something truly wonderful could emerge.”

But United will be one of the lucky clubs who can call upon a vast global fanbase, should they go down the supporter-owned route. Like Barcelona, the modern-day incarnation of Newton Heath FC will be unlikely to want for cash. Many other clubs are Premier League level may not be able to do the same.

It’s also worth pointing out that if United were to succeed as a fan-owned club in the cash-rich Premier League, they would first need to establish a Trust with a membership of millions rather than hundreds of thousands. Unlike lower league clubs with more modest ambitions, United fans will be unlikely to want to balance a commitment to fan ownership with a modest level of success on the pitch.

The Greatest League in the World

At the other end of the table, Portsmouth’s Trust are engaged in a battle for the very survival of their club. Soundings have already been made to the Conference about re-starting Pompey down the football pyramid, should the worst happen at the end of this season. They could also be joined by their opponents from the 2008 FA Cup Final – Cardiff City have been handed yet another postponement at the High Court as they look to pay huge unpaid tax bills.

Elsewhere, other Premier League chairmen look nervously at their finances. Bill Kenwright has already said Everton need a billionaire if they are to compete, while Eddie Davies at Bolton has just become the club’s main banker. Relegation would hit the Trotters hard.

For Vic Crescit from Arsenal’s Supporters’ Trust, in the context of all this, it’s ever more evident that having an active Trust is vital for any Premier League club.

“The Manchester United Supporters’ Trust has played an indispensable role along with the Independent Manchester United Supporters’ Association in holding the Glazers to account,” says Crescit. “The current campaign simply wouldn’t be happening without them.

“Fulham very probably would have lost their historic Craven Cottage ground if it hadn’t been for the Fulham Supporters’ Trust. Pompey would probably be out of business today if it weren’t for the work of the recently-established Pompey Supporters’ Trust. Arsenal would probably be in sole ownership of either Stan Kroenke or Alisher Usmanov if it weren’t for the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust.”

Crescit points to Spain where, in 1994, the law was changed to require all clubs to convert themselves into Sports Limited Companies. Only four clubs – Barcelona, Real Madrid, Athletic Bilbao and Osasuna – were financially stable enough to avoid this and remain owned by the fans. The rest of La Liga have seen their debts increase tenfold.

“The commercialisation of professional Spanish football is a failed experiment,” says Crescit. “Valencia currently has debts of nearly €600 million (US$810 million). That’s simply unsustainable and living proof that private ownership isn’t the panecea it was made out to be.”

As a concept, then, the Trust movement is currently riding a wave of momentum. But in the final piece of our series on fan ownership tomorrow, we will look at the practicalities of this from the perspective of the bottom line.

Big Story

In a curious parting move, Sulaiman al-Fahim, the first of Portsmouth’s four owners this season and lasted a full forty days before selling 90% of his share to Ali Al-Faraj, has offered to donate his remaining ten percent of the club to fans via the Portsmouth Supporters’ Trust.

al-Fahim said that “This is a community club and should be owned by the fans and supporters. They should be involved and have full transparency in their club. The supporters should have a say in it. And the club should be managed with financial transparency.”

This might have been more helpful as a statement by al-Fahim when he owned the entire club, and was actually in a position to do introduce that transparency and the supporters’ say in things that might, just might, have helped steer the club in the right direction. It’s hard to see how it could have things any worse, at the least.

The offer now from al-Fahim has been met with bewilderment from the club, whose spokesman said they “are surprised as only last week he was saying he wanted to buy the club again”.

Meanwhile, the Trust is sensibly treading cautiously in response to the offer, releasing a statement saying:

The Pompey Supporters’ Trust working committee met with Suleiman Al Fahim at the end of January to discuss the possibility of Mr Fahim donating his 10% share in Portsmouth Football Club to the Trust. The working committee agreed that the offer had been made in good faith, but due to the circumstances of the Club we required financial and legal advice before we’d be in a position to comment further.

No formal offer has yet been made to the trust, but appreciating the need for urgency in the current dire situation, the Trust and it’s advisors will deal with any formal offer immediately after it’s been received.

A recomendation based on financial and legal advice will be put to the Pompey Trust’s members, who ultimately approve any decisions of this scale.

Would receiving 10% of a club in dire trouble and deep debt be good for the Trust at this point?

Meanwhile, Portsmouth’s Chief Executive Peter Storrie, whose middle name may as well be “embattled” at this stage, has defended the club’s parlous position today, and almost inadvertently revealed why Pompey have attracted a stream of new owners and further suitors despite the perilous position of the club: the potential for retail land development the club has: “the potential for 100,000 square foot of supermarket. You can imagine what that would be worth.”

Quick Hits

• Writing in the Guardian, Martin Kelner suggests that contrary to much common understanding in England, many NFL fans feel the same way about their clubs as English fans do, looking at the documentary about the move of the Baltimore Colts to Indianapolis in 1984 by owner Bob Irsay: “The people of Baltimore, into whose own autobiographies the story of the Colts is inextricably weaved, owned the club, not Irsay, in much the same way as Manchester United belongs to Manchester not to the Glazers, Leeds United to Leeds rather than Ken Bates, and Portsmouth FC to Portsmouth, rather than (fill in name of this week’s owners here).” Kelner comments on the team’s band, who played on without their team until the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996 and began supporting the new/old team. . .a rather unfortunate happy ending to the story for Browns fans themselves, a fact not explored by Kelner.
• FIFA takes a look at the AFC Champions League, as the nine-month tournament gets underway.
• The headline to Tim Vickery’s piece this week, “Is the Copa Libertadores better than the Champions League?”, is a little mis-leading as Vickery sensibly doesn’t go down that path. But he does point out that if UEFA’s elite competition is the Beatles, that doesn’t make South America’s version Herman’s Hermits, pointing to the unpredictability and the remarkable young talent on show as a reason we should all pay more attention to the tournament.
• Blue Square Premier side Chester City could yet be “saved” by the rather bizarre prospect of a Danish takeover, a possibility that may not have fans who believe it’s simply time to start over jumping in the air with joy.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

News has emerged today that Portsmouth FC must come up with £22 million (give or take whether the club end up relegated) by a March 1st High Court date, or else the club will be declared insolvent and fold as a result of the HMRC’s winding-up petition for unpaid taxes.  The news follows the Premier League’s declaration it would not allow Portsmouth to sell its players outside the transfer window to raise emergency funds even though FIFA was open to the move, a decision taken either because, depending on who you read, the Premier League was afraid it would encourage the club to avoid administration and the subsequent nine point penalty, or because Scudamore and co. are still confident Portsmouth will find an interested investor in time.

In addition to administration, the other measures under consideration by the club’s current owners won’t exactly leave Portsmouth in an advantageous position to stay solvent in future.  The Guardian’s Jaime Jackson:

Even if Portsmouth were to enter administration, a total of around £14m would be required….In a move that will anger fans, sources also claimed that the owner, Balram Chainrai, will be sold the freehold of Fratton Park to pay off £10m of the £17m the Hong Kong businessman is owed. He would then lease it back to the club for a minimum of 15 years for a rent of more than £1m for the first year, before the rate rises.

Fans of Crystal Palace, or Simon Jordan himself, will tell you how easy it is to stay financially afloat when you don’t own your own ground, which CPFC haven’t since 1985.  Anticipating the news yesterday, Arsene Wenger pleaded yesterday for the Premier League to give Portsmouth a “minimum payment” to prevent the club folding at least until the end of the season.

Whether Wenger’s pleas are based on some measure of self-interest in the league is for others to judge, but he did remind everyone of something that has been forgotten by owners and Premier League officials alike: “It’s terrible that some clubs will go out of business because it’s part of the history of the country.” Pompey have played at Fratton Park since 1897.  There is a long fan legacy involved here in England’s south coast, and Portsmouth’s example should motivate Supporters Trusts in pushing for greater debt regulation for English clubs in the coming General Election.

Quick Hits

• It appears Didier Drogba has put his differences with Caf aside and is on the short list for African Footballer of the Year, reports the BBC and the Independent.
• When Saturday Comes takes notice of the “unusual” rise of newly-promoted Montpellier in Ligue Un: “What makes Montpellier’s achievement all the more remarkable is that they didn’t spend a single euro on transfer fees last summer.”
• Is there such a thing as an MLSnob?

This week, Chester City FC supporters called for their own club to be put out of its misery and wound up, so they could start over under their own democratic ownership — to ensure they would never again be at the whim of owners who do not have the club’s best interests at heart.

To be forced to the extreme of calling for your club to be put out of business and having to begin again at the lower reaches of the English pyramid system is hardly a decision to be taken lightly. But the beauty of the English set-up is that such a drastic action can be taken yet still fans can have hope for their new club to rise again to former heights, and this time under an ownership system that does not put the club at the mercy of selfish individuals.

Take AFC Wimbledon, famously formed in the aftermath of the franchising of their club to Milton Keynes, an unforgiveable crime against football perpetrated by club owner Pete Winkelman with an eventual, killer rubber stamp from the Football Association as Wimbledon became the Milton Keynes Dons.

The fans’ new club began in the Combined Counties League, the nether regions of English football, but four promotions in seven seasons see them now in the Conference National, the fifth tier of the game and within touching distance of the Football League. They have their own stadium, and crowds that sometimes surpass those they had in the top tier of English football a decade ago.

And so Niall Couper, a former member of the AFC Wimbledon Trust Board, suggests Portsmouth follow the same path in a piece today in the Independent:

I’m an AFC Wimbledon  fan. I will always remember being in the room when a bunch of naive South Londoners filled in a London FA form to formally register the club. Eight years on and that same club is now plying its trade in the Conference having been promoted four times.

Yes, I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss turning over the likes of Liverpool, Manchester United and, most of all, Chelsea – but since AFC Wimbledon emerged from an FA Commission’s decision to allow my club to be stolen away eight years ago I have gained so much more.

I now support a club bedded in the local community. It is run by the fans and for the fans. Gone are the days of dodgy owners – and Pompey have had more than their fair share of those. Gone are the days of players with huge egos. Each new AFC Wimbledon player undergoes an initiation into the club that stresses its ethos, its commitment to fan ownership and its fervent opposition to football franchising. I seriously doubt Sol Campbell ever underwent such a similar experience at Fratton Park.

AFC Wimbledon also owns its own ground – bought by the fans – and now gets attendances around the 4,000 mark. Indeed, when we played Luton earlier this season our attendance was higher than the equivalent fixture years ago in the top flight.

Yes, there are huge logistic problems in setting up your own club, but there is help to be found through the likes of Supporters Direct, the masterminds of the growing Supporters Trust movement across the country.

Pompey fans should get in touch with them now, get organised and go for it. After all, Wimbledon were never the biggest club – and look what we have achieved. Portsmouth are a far bigger club than we ever were – just imagine what AFC Portsmouth could do.

Pioneers that they were, in some ways the decision to start over for Wimbledon fans was made if not easy, but logical for them by the move of their club to Milton Keynes. But their progress sets an example in the context of what would be an even harder decision for Pompey fans in some ways.  Just as Chester City’s Supporters’ Trust this week called for their club to begin again with the help of Supporters Direct, it may be time for Portsmouth fans to consider similar, drastic action.

Big Story
Portsmouth have seven more days to breathe after a stay of execution was given to them in the High Court over £11.5 million that they owe the taxman, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

Meanwhile, Cardiff City were also in court today, receiving a 28 day adjournment on they £2.7million they owe HMRC.

And Southend United also procured an adjournment from the court over the £200,000 debt they have to HMRC.

Noticing a theme?  David Conn at the Guardian sums it all up:

Yet the very appearance of two of football’s bigger clubs – and Southend United – who continue to receive millions of pounds in TV and other income, in a court where scores of small, hard-hit businesses will be wound up today, has concentrated minds again on the game’s inability to balance the books, even in this boom time.

Since 1992, the year the Football League’s First Division clubs broke away to form the Premier League, and therefore not share their TV rights bonanza with the other three divisions, Football League clubs have fallen into insolvency a staggering 53 times.

For three of them – Aldershot, Maidstone and, later, Scarborough – the histories of the original clubs did truly end, in liquidation before subsequently being re-established. For others, administration meant they could be bought by new owners, who paid a fraction of the debts that were owed – except at Southampton, where last year Markus Liebherr paid Saints’ debts in full. Since 2002, when ITV Digital’s collapse helped push 10 clubs over the edge, an estimated £200m due to creditors has been left unpaid, including sums owed to the police, local ­councils, hospitals, universities and other public bodies, a Yellow Pages-worth of small businesses and, most unforgivably, St John Ambulance.

Appallingly, as Conn mentions, St John Ambulance, whose volunteers tend to the sick and injured at football stadiums, are often left unpaid as the Premier League and Football League’s rules ensure footballing creditors (other clubs, players) are paid first.  HMRC have been unhappy about this for themselves for some time, and have this past year stepped up their efforts to get paid for debt owed to them, with King’s Lynn already wound-up.

Two Hundred Percent, a month ago, foresaw today’s events, with three clubs now facing a final chance to pay the taxman or go under:

All of this brings us back to the question of whether it is right that HMRC should pursue football clubs this aggresivlely, and the answer to this is, of course, “yes”. Football seems to continue to exist in a world in which all that ever matters is what happens on the pitch. Even now, clubs seem fundamentally immoral in their financial dealings. Why should Portsmouth pay hundreds of thousands of pounds per week on players’ wages and not settle their tax bill? Why should Cardiff do the same? And the ultimate responsibility for this sort of fiasco lies with the authorities that run the game. They have it within their power to make it compulsary that all clubs settle all of their debts in full each month before they even start thinking about signing new players or even starting to pay the ones that they already have. It’s their choice. The fact of the matter remains a stark one: one of these days, HMRC will catch up with another Kings Lynn, who can’t settle their bill in full, and that club will close. Just like that. In the middle of the season. And everyone will be shocked that it has happened, when the bitter truth of the matter is that the biggest surprise of all is that it hasn’t happened already.

What to make of all this? Supporters Direct says there is no “magic bullet” to sort football out, but that it’s time to look at “solutions; they may be salary caps, luxury taxes, loss caps, a more comprehensive, single Fit and Proper Test, built in supporter-representation at clubs to ensure protection against grounds like Crystal Palace’s Selhurst Park being split from the club, or the countless number of small London clubs seeing their homes sold to pay for wreckless spending (in some cases, something a little more sinister at play by property developers).”

Quick Hits

• A very impressive football archive is on the Daily Mirror’s site, including a timely look at the 1957 clash between Manchester United and Aston Villa in the FA Cup final.
• The Seattle Sounders have made an interesting choice for their new commentator, with the BBC’s Arlo White taking over.
• The latest on Subrata Roy’s interest in Liverpool, with the Times’ Tony Evans offering vague confirmation that the Indian billionaire is in the early stages of planning a takeover.
• And EPL Talk tells us ESPN will be showing much more Premier League football in the United States from next season.

The Sweeper appears every weekday, and once at the weekend. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Big Story
Chelsea are debt-free. Their owner and benefactor Roman Abramovich has converted no less than $541 million in interest-free loans to the Premier League club into equity, apparently in advance of possible forthcoming UEFA financial regulations that will require clubs in the Champions League to be breaking even to enter the competition by 2012.

But this does not mean the future is necessarily rosy for the club. Chelsea’s hopes (expressed early into Abramovich’s reign by Peter Kenyon) of becoming profitable by 2010 have clearly not been realised. As generous as Abramovich has been with these loans, now converted to equity, the question remains whether the club can continue at its current competitive level without further massive cash injections from the Russian, which seem unlikely to come.

Indeed, this may be exactly why Abramovich has recently taken a different strategy to squeeze his rivals in the coming years, culminating in this debt-relief. It was a visit from Abramovich himself to Michel Platini at UEFA that gave considerable momentum to the plans for the proposed new “financial fair play” regulations in European competition.

This of course is convenient for Abramovich and Chelsea, as their main rivals do not have the same option of their billionaire owner converting debt into equity. The banks will not be so kind to Manchester United or Liverpool. Abramovich remains rich enough to do this, even if he is not crazy enough to keep pumping in hundreds of millions of more dollars into the club to keep up. He has attempted to make the club big enough to generate serious cash itself, and is now using the unsustainability of the Premier League’s madcap spending that he helped generate in the first place to push UEFA to restrain the rest of the elite as he draws back.

Pretty clever, if you think about it.

Worldwide News

• Yet the dangers of reliance on a benefactor are clearly shown elsewhere in the Premier League. Portsmouth have been given until February 10th to clear their debts to HM Revenue and Customs, a deadline they are unlikely to be able to make, and are thus likely to be made bankrupt. A long saga of mismanagement and broken promises is ending in disaster. As John Beech comments, looking at the club’s history back to the 1970s, “Portsmouth provide a textbook example of the unsustainability of the benefactor model.”
• Gary Megson is fired as manager of Bolton, and it’s the fans blamed by Barney Ronay at the Guardian for “a rather grisly, bullying version of “fan power”.”  It’s curious, though, that the piece never mentions who actually fired Megson (hint: it wasn’t the fans.).
• Everton’s stadium plans are back at the drawing board, though there remains hope the city council can help the club find a new home. Maybe it’ll help that the council leader is an Everton fan.
• Anyone want to read about Ronaldo telling us how “real” football fans should behave? Thought not.

The Sweeper appears every weekday, and once at the weekend. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Editor’s note: Brian, whose own marvelous Run of Play blog you really should be sure not to miss out on, will be bringing his brand of insight and irreverance weekly to Pitch Invasion.

In light of yesterday’s sensational arrests for fraud and corruption in football (scene: Police officers in riot gear swarm through the door of a modest Portsmouth home. MRS. HARRY REDKNAPP, clad in a nightgown, with curlers in her hair and a rolling pin in her hand, retreats with a shriek while her HUSBAND, flexing enormously, disappears under a mountain of policemen. Suddenly, a roar comes from under the pile, and Harry heaves them off, standing with a gleam of mad laughter in his eye as cops go flying) today seems like a good day to take a look at the state of the various corruption investigations in recent English football. I can’t keep them straight to save my life, but it doesn’t matter, because the first rule of any good corruption investigation is that you never worry much about the facts.

There are three basic levels of corruption in football: trivial, apocalyptic, and Italian. The lines of demarcation between these levels are extremely well-defined. Apocalyptic corruption becomes Italian corruption at the precise moment when a falling human body completes its descent from a seventh-story window. Trivial corruption becomes apocalyptic corruption when it happens within fifty feet of a reporter from the Daily Mirror. Of the three major corruption investigations in English football recently, all have involved merely apocalyptic corruption, although a full-scale Italian rating could still be achieved if someone makes Harry Redknapp angry at a sufficient height above sea level. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

1. The Lord Stevens/QUEST Investigation

What prompted it? The airing last September of “Undercover: Football’s Dirty Secrets”, a responsibly constructed and sensibly promoted BBC Panorama report which alleged, among other things, that football agents like money and so does Sam Allardyce. Any evidence that football agents and Sam Allardyce had pursued their shared interest beyond the limits of FA regulation remained purely in the realm of conjecture.

Who did the investigating? One John Arthur Stevens, Baron Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, the former police commissioner previously known for his unsporting attempt to quash conspiracy theories after the death of Princess Diana. Assisting him was QUEST Ltd., a specialist flooring contractor whose aim is to provide the complete flooring solution. Why the Stevens Report could not have been called the Kirkwhelpington Report is apparently down to a conspiracy to crush all whimsy in the universe.

What happened? The promise of fireworks did not result in a fireworks show. Lord Stevens investigated 39 separate transfers involving 8 clubs, but announced in June, to a great deal of hoopla, that there was “no evidence” of irregular payments to club officials or players. However, 17 transfers were flagged for “outstanding issues” involving agents. These included the transfers of Didier Drogba, Michael Essien, and Petr Cech to Chelsea. (Total value: £55.4million.) Somewhat less salaciously, they also included the transfers of Ali al-Habsi and Blessing Kaku to Bolton. (Total value: Less than I spent on lunch. And I didn’t eat lunch.)

Where are we now? Over and done with, essentially. Having tantalizingly crept up to the brink of concluding that football agents like money, the Baron of Kirkwhelpington adjourned, leaving the public to answer the question for themselves and the FA to pursue any disciplinary charges. So far the FA has seen no reason to bring Chelsea’s name into the mix so long as they can continue to pummel Luton (see below).

2. The Luton Investigation

What prompted it? The highly public meltdown between then-manager Mike Newell and the Luton board during 2005-06, during the course of which Newell winked theatrically at the press and elbowed them sharply in the side as he mentioned that the transfer dealings of the current board were entirely above board and would not bear looking into. Newell also spoke to the BBC Panorama program last September and heroically offered to expose anyone who had offered him money, ever, for anything.

Who’s investigating? The FA. High-profile members of the landed gentry are not that interested in League One clubs, evidently.

What’s happened? So far, the FA have handed down 55 charges, the majority relating to improper documentation of payments to agents made through Luton Town’s holding company…I know, you can’t bring yourself to care, and it’s brutal. Basically, Luton Town are owned by a parent company called J10. Various routine payments to agents during player transfers were made by J10 rather than by Luton. It’s sort of all the same thing, but if you don’t get your paperwork right the FA will crush you like a snake. (Two members of the Luton board have resigned and the club has gone into administration since the charges were handed down.) What’s worth noting, and what you probably missed in the hammering Luton took in the press, is that the payments themselves were largely not corrupt, only the way they were recorded. Burn in hell, Luton Town. Suffer the long night of the damned.

Where are we now? At an exciting moment, you’d think, as the parties have to respond to the charges tomorrow. But since everyone’s stopped paying attention to this story, it’s really anyone’s guess. As a piece of choreographed media frenzy, the moment has probably peaked.

3. The City of London Police Investigation

What prompted it? Mike Newell may have been doing some undercover work. It really isn’t clear. The scope of the investigation covers “allegations of corruption in football and its impact on investors and shareholders.” Striking a blow for the common supporter, then.

Who’s investigating? The Economic Crimes Unit of the City of London Police. It’s no Kirkwhelpington, but it will do in a pinch.

What’s happened? So far, a great deal of innuendo, a couple of high-profile raids, and the incredible arrest of Harry Redknapp. Because of the people involved in yesterday’s arrest, it’s believed that the investigation is focused on the transfer of Amady Faye from Auxerre to Portsmouth (where Harry was manager and his fellow incarceree Milan Mandaric was chairman) in 2005 and his subsequent move to Newcastle in 2006. Willie McKay, the agent who arranged both transfers, once bought Harry a racehorse called Double Fantasy. McKay was also arrested yesterday. Double Fantasy remains at large.

Where are we now? Right in the thick of it. Harry is somewhat bizarrely claiming that being arrested proves his innocence and Portsmouth are portraying the arrests (which also took in Pompey CEO Peter Storrie) as polite requests for assistance from the police. The Daily Mail (sorry) are claiming that “another high-profile manager” is being probed. It’s impossible to say whether this is all a media stunt by the police, as Harry has alleged, or whether anvils are about to drop on the heads of the rulers of Portsmouth. If you work as a travel agent, and Sam Allardyce wanders into your shop in the next few days to book a ticket for his long-dreamed-of vacation to Panama, please do contact this space.

Brian Phillips is accepting bungs all day long at The Run of Play.