Goonerholic

Just a brief comment today on the Beeb’s latest effort to drag football through the mud.

You’ll remember a few weeks back that the Newsnight team tried to drag the good name of Arsenal down for alleged illegal payments to a Belgian feeder club. You’ll also doubtless recall that in their thirst for sensation they omitted to disclose the rules that Arsenal had broken. The subsequent investigation by the Football Association found no such breaches, and cleared the Gunners of any wrongdoing.

Well in a one hour special tonight the Panorama team have taped a plant counting fifty big ones on a hotel bed in preparation for giving it to a ‘top Premiership manager’. Surprise, surprise, the aforementioned boss fails to make an appearance. They arrange for the plant to meet Sam Allardyce to discuss a transfer for Jay Jay Okoche, and surprise, surprise, Allardyce doesn’t turn up.

They secretly film a relaxed conversation with Harry Redknapp who confesses he has ‘always fancied Toddy!’ and persuade Kevin Bond to promise to discuss prospective deals with his manager at some stage in the future.

The only covert film that really makes for compelling viewing is when Frank Arnesen (yes, Chelsea did not tap him up to leave Tottenham, honest guv!) talks of offering bonus payments worth £150 thousand over three years to a fifteen year old who may fancy cutting his ties to Middlesborough. However the film is brief and cut in such a way that you have to query how much hard ‘evidence’ of wrongdoing the BBC team have.

Now don’t go accusing me of being naive. Of course football is far from being whiter than white, we all know that. What the BBC are doing however is attempting to pull off sensational scoops on the cheap, and it shows. Evidence could easily be argued as circumstancial or non-existent., the outrageous product of wannabe agents loose tongues. If stupidity was a crime then tonight Sam Allardyce would be posting bail for his son. He would not be alone though. The BBC would also be rescuing some of their employees from incarceration, or maybe they wouldn’t bother.