Panorama investigation into corruption in football: Undercover investigations by the BBC's Panorama programme into football's "bung culture" have produced footage of a leading agent alleging that he knows of "six to eight" managers willing to receive illegal payments.
The agent Charles Collymore, whose CS Sports Management firm has represented Premiership players such as Salif Diao, Khalilou Fadiga and Eric Djemba-Djemba, is captured on film, to be broadcast tonight, making remarks about football's undeclared incomes. "There's managers out there who take bungs all day long," said Collymore. "(Unnamed manager), you know that, takes bungs all day long. We've got (unnamed club), yep all day long."
Collymore was last night identified by Luton Town's manager Mike Newell as the agent who offered him a bung, an allegation that helped launch the current English Football Association and Premier League investigations into illegal payments.
It is understood Panorama executives intend to reveal the identities of the individuals Collymore, who did not know he was being filmed, names in the programme entitled Undercover: Football's dirty secrets.
Referring to proposals by Panorama's undercover reporters to provide "bungs", Collymore adds: "I would say to you comfortably there's six to eight managers we could definitely approach and they'd be up for this, no problem."
Collymore's comments to the television investigators come just 13 days before Lord Stevens is set to deliver a report to the Premier League chairman Dave Richards in which he will provide preliminary findings from an investigation of 320 top-flight transfers over a 24-month period to January this year.
The inquiry began in March after the Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore said he wished to remove the "innuendo" surrounding transfer activities.
"Officials at football clubs have allowed it to go on," said Newell on Radio Five Live last night. "Someone is benefiting somewhere along the line. I was offered money on two occasions and I have only been a manager four years. I like to sleep at night and I don't want to be offered money outside of my contract. On one occasion it was a football club official trying to make a deal go through, and on another it was an agent."
Newell also contributed to tonight's Panorama programme, in which he confirms the agent who offered him a bung was Collymore, along with his assistant Mark Wilson, who unlike Collymore does not hold a Fifa licence. "Those are the people who tried to pay me money," Newell said to the Panorama team. "It's great for me to see what I've just seen on the film. It does vindicate me and it does vilify them."
But key protagonists like Newell have irked some other managers. Portsmouth's manager Harry Redknapp insists he has done nothing wrong and challenged Newell to make public the identities of those who offered him payments.
Redknapp is one manager who is expected to feature in the investigation, although he has strenuously denied any wrongdoing. He swears he is "a one million per cent innocent party" and has never taken a back-hander to sign or sell a player.
Redknapp's former assistant Kevin Bond, who is now Newcastle's number two, is one of several protagonists preparing to sue the BBC if the programme accuses him directly of any financial impropriety. Bond denies any wrongdoing.
Bolton manager Sam Allardyce has admitted his family are "concerned" about possible allegations in the programme. Allardyce and his agent son Craig are understood to have been among those investigated by the programme.
The Bolton manager said: "We are concerned but at the moment, because I am linked with it, from a legal point of view, I cannot say any more than that."
