Richard Scudamore's motives for commissioning the Stevens inquiry have been opaque from the outset so it is hard to be certain how the Premier League chief executive reflected on yesterday's publication of the findings.

If the aim was to apply a veneer of respectability to a game awash with allegations of bungs while undermining the authority of the FA, Scudamore will have travelled home happy. If he is truly committed to rooting out corruption among member clubs, yesterday should be seen as at best as a missed opportunity, and at worst an abject failure.

In publishing a report that questions the probity of almost five per cent of transfer deals and blames the FA for failing to detect numerous breaches of basic regulations, while claiming that all 20 of his member clubs are blameless, Scudamore betrayed the political currents that have swayed the inquiry from the moment it was conceived nine months ago. It also sparked a fresh round of conflict that could fundamentally undermine well-intentioned efforts to clean up the game.

Taken at face value, Lord Stevens' conclusions, incomplete and unsatisfactory as they are, contain more than enough to support the suspicions of those who believe financial malpractice exists in the Premiership. Some 17 transfers remain sufficiently suspicious for Stevens to seek FA and Fifa assistance in cracking them. The opening seven pages of his recommendations contain evidence of incompetence, obfuscation and rule-breaking.

Three clubs "are not familiar with the applicable rules" six years after they were introduced; 16 clubs failed on at least one occasion to document financial arrangements connected to transfers; three clubs paid agents without an invoice being raised and six failed to identify an agent on transfer forms; eight clubs produced documentation that was "vaguely worded or drafted in a manner that did not reflect the reality of the underlying arrangements"; in 15 transfers Premier League clubs failed to disclose all agents' payments to the FA, and at seven clubs Stevens has "concerns about the degree of influence of particular agents within the club and its transactions".

It is a litany of malpractice, yet Scudamore felt able to declare: "In one sense they (the clubs) are in the clear in that the investigation into them has finished."

The declaration is premature in the extreme given Stevens has failed to get to the bottom of almost five per cent of the deals he was asked to probe, even allowing for the possibility the investigators will return to the clubs with new evidence.

It will ease the concerns of those Premiership chairmen deeply uncomfortable at enduring a prolonged period in the cross-hairs. Bolton chairman Phil Gartside, an FA board member whose club's deals are among those investigated by Stevens and probed by the BBC's Panorama programme, admitted as much in an interview three weeks ago, where he repeated denials of any wrongdoing.

Judging by Stevens' silence on the issue the clubs' position is the source of some tension between himself and Scudamore. Every time the question of the clubs' guilt or innocence was put to him Stevens referred the question to Scudamore. When asked if Scudamore had prevented him going public with the names of clubs that had breached regulations, Stevens offered only "no comment". It was one of several uncomfortable moments for Stevens who yesterday failed to find football's brown paper bags. That did not stop him offering the FA a prescription for how they might do the job better in future however.

The FA's compliance unit, under-resourced and in the past poorly led, is far from perfect, but Stevens' 39 recommendations are remarkable for the fact all but one has already been adopted, or is in the process of being adopted, by the FA.

One of the central measures in new regulations that come into force next May, the outlawing of dual representation by agents, was in fact opposed for two years by Premiership clubs who complained it prevented them competing in Europe. Little wonder then Stevens's withering criticism yesterday left officials in Soho Square fuming.

Scudamore concluded yesterday's proceedings by claiming the Premier League and the FA are "as one" on the desire to regulate the game effectively. Not for the first time we have to hope the sentiment is genuine.