FOOTBALL CORRUPTION IS ENDEMIC

Steve McClaren's agent yesterday claimed that tens of millions of pounds have been drained from the English game via an increasingly sophisticated web of crooked transfer deals.

Colin Gordon, 43, a much-travelled former forward who played for Swindon and Reading among others, numbers Watford's manager Aidy Boothroyd and the Premiership players Theo Walcott and David James among his clients, as well as the England head coach.

“If I buy a player from eastern Europe and find he is valued at £2m by his club I could say, 'I can sell him for £5m in England'. The club get £500,000 [more] but the other £2.5m makes its way into a separate account. Since the Premiership began I would estimate that tens of millions have gone this way,” he told the Wolverhampton Express & Star.

“The Football League trumpets about how the agents' fees are dropping but that is not where the corruption is. It is in the transfer fees. That's where the money goes missing. We pretend we are holier than thou but I've spoken to people abroad and the English game is considered the 'Dirty Man of Europe'.

“We're not talking about the £500,000 bungs or the old brown envelope stuffed with a few notes. We're talking about millions upon millions. It is a very sophisticated business. It's cleverly disguised. That [transfer] money is gone now,” he added.

“Forget it. You are never going to find it. Even the buying clubs don't want to know because it makes them look stupid - which of course they have been.”