Top Football Manager Denies "Taking Bungs"

It's been a boring day for political news today, with nothing more exciting to report than the LibDem Conference sleep-over, who's sleeping with whom in The Compass Group and the sleep-inducing merger of Labour Reform with Save The Labour Party. I have no intention of discussing these soporific stories any more than I would drone on about the latest opinion polls on the Labour Party leadership.

So the obvious topic for today, discussed widely by just about everyone without a lobotomy, is football. Being a keen football fan myself - despite having played rugger at public school - my eye was caught by this story in SoccerWorld Today.

Responding to journalists outside his Downing Street home this morning, Premiership Manager Lynton Blair strenuously denied allegations that either he or his French Coaching Assistant Valerie Giscard D'Amos had "taken bungs" in exchange for arranging the transfer of players to their House Of Lords Disunited team. He told the assembled media that he would be briefing his solicitors to put up a robust defence of his "squeaky clean reputation".

Police today re-interviewed football agent Michael "Abe" Levy, former resident of Stokie and Head Boy of Hackney Downs Grammar School. This followed last night's Panorama programme "Undercover: Football's Dirty Secrets" in which Levy was secretly filmed admitting to having arranged the transfer of several players in contravention of the FA rules, which ban the paying of under-the-table inducements.

The alleged incidents involved arrangements for the transfer of players including striker Chai Patel from Real Priory, central defender Goolam Noon from Southall Town and right-winger David Sainsbury from Turville Rovers. According to Panorama, the scam involved appointments taking place in accordance with the published selection criteria, with cash subsequently being transferred back secretly and split between the agent and the manager.

Defending himself against the allegations, Levy told reporters: "Everything shown on the programme was completely untrue and was just invented for the cameras in order to inflate certain people's egos and to discredit the investigative journalists. It may have happened many centuries ago and it is public knowledge that former Arsenal manager David Lloyd George Graham was sacked after being found guilty of it. But I've never seen it myself in the modern game."

The FA is set to ban Michael Levy from acting as a financial go-between. But late last night Levy made it clear that he was not prepared to be the fall guy for Blair and insisted that he had not had any input into the transfer decisions or the £4.5 million in bungs allegedly given as "loans" to the club.