is due for public release on Wednesday, anyone think we will be implicated in any manner whatsoever?
Doubts over FA's ability to cope with investigations; Quest offer to take over compliance unit's duties
Matt Scott
Monday December 18, 2006
The Guardian
All transfers could be subject to random probity tests under a raft of recommendations due to be discussed by Premiership chairmen as a result of the Stevens inquiry. The nine-month bungs investigation into all 362 Premiership transfers between January 2004 and 2006 reaches its next phase on Wednesday when the Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore and Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan Police commissioner whose Quest team led the investigations, hold a joint press conference.
That is when Scudamore and Stevens will make public the proposals the corporate intelligence firm has drafted for the consideration of the Premiership's 20 shareholder clubs. The idea of investigating transfers at random is one that is expected to gain favour as an inexpensive means of ensuring the existence of an effective transfer watchdog.
A system of random checks is employed in drug-testing procedures under the Wada code and it is felt this can easily be copied by the transfer system. It has been the subject of such intense speculation that Scudamore felt obliged to announce the inception of an investigation in January. Stevens' Quest investigators have been working on the subject since March.
Responsibility for the probity of transfers lies with the Football Association. However, there are understood to be reservations about the handling of transfer transactions by the FA's under-resourced compliance department. The FA's compliance officials must deal with all on and off-field disciplinary matters but the department can call on only three full-time investigators. Adding to the pressures on the compliance team is the huge burden of paperwork required in each transfer, a document mountain that is believed to have astonished Quest during its probe of football's processes. In September, the FA announced that it would bolster its compliance department in accordance with the demands of the Burns report, although it is not known what shape that pledge will take in practice.
Quest is understood to be open to the idea of taking a future role in football compliance but, having run up a £750,000 bill over the past nine months, careful discussion would be required to establish who would pay for such a service.
The FA is steadfast that compliance must remain in-house, though there were signs yesterday that the Premier League was manoeuvring to undermine this position.
"It's little more than a one-man-and-his-dog operation, without the money or muscle to seriously tackle the threat of corruption at clubs, by managers or agents," one "football figure" was quoted as saying in a Sunday newspaper. "This report could actually spell the end of the FA as we know it. After this they could be left with simply the responsibility for the England team and the game at grassroots level with nothing in between."
The FA is likely to consider that to be the articulation of long-held Premier League ambitions. It is certain to resist calls for the league to absorb one of its key responsibilities on the basis of what has been a Premiership-sponsored report.
Whatever comes next, it will not be until February at the earliest that any of Stevens' recommendations will formally be discussed by the Premiership chairmen, so their adoption by the Premier League is at least two months away.
Those chairmen will have no role in how to deal with any errant clubs. That is a decision for the three-man executive of Scudamore, the chairman Dave Richards, and the company secretary Mike Foster. It is understood that Stevens remains unsatisfied with a number of the transfers he has investigated; however, the findings regarding which specific transfers the report has highlighted will not be made public on Wednesday.
Doubts over FA's ability to cope with investigations; Quest offer to take over compliance unit's duties
Matt Scott
Monday December 18, 2006
The Guardian
All transfers could be subject to random probity tests under a raft of recommendations due to be discussed by Premiership chairmen as a result of the Stevens inquiry. The nine-month bungs investigation into all 362 Premiership transfers between January 2004 and 2006 reaches its next phase on Wednesday when the Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore and Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan Police commissioner whose Quest team led the investigations, hold a joint press conference.
That is when Scudamore and Stevens will make public the proposals the corporate intelligence firm has drafted for the consideration of the Premiership's 20 shareholder clubs. The idea of investigating transfers at random is one that is expected to gain favour as an inexpensive means of ensuring the existence of an effective transfer watchdog.
A system of random checks is employed in drug-testing procedures under the Wada code and it is felt this can easily be copied by the transfer system. It has been the subject of such intense speculation that Scudamore felt obliged to announce the inception of an investigation in January. Stevens' Quest investigators have been working on the subject since March.
Responsibility for the probity of transfers lies with the Football Association. However, there are understood to be reservations about the handling of transfer transactions by the FA's under-resourced compliance department. The FA's compliance officials must deal with all on and off-field disciplinary matters but the department can call on only three full-time investigators. Adding to the pressures on the compliance team is the huge burden of paperwork required in each transfer, a document mountain that is believed to have astonished Quest during its probe of football's processes. In September, the FA announced that it would bolster its compliance department in accordance with the demands of the Burns report, although it is not known what shape that pledge will take in practice.
Quest is understood to be open to the idea of taking a future role in football compliance but, having run up a £750,000 bill over the past nine months, careful discussion would be required to establish who would pay for such a service.
The FA is steadfast that compliance must remain in-house, though there were signs yesterday that the Premier League was manoeuvring to undermine this position.
"It's little more than a one-man-and-his-dog operation, without the money or muscle to seriously tackle the threat of corruption at clubs, by managers or agents," one "football figure" was quoted as saying in a Sunday newspaper. "This report could actually spell the end of the FA as we know it. After this they could be left with simply the responsibility for the England team and the game at grassroots level with nothing in between."
The FA is likely to consider that to be the articulation of long-held Premier League ambitions. It is certain to resist calls for the league to absorb one of its key responsibilities on the basis of what has been a Premiership-sponsored report.
Whatever comes next, it will not be until February at the earliest that any of Stevens' recommendations will formally be discussed by the Premiership chairmen, so their adoption by the Premier League is at least two months away.
Those chairmen will have no role in how to deal with any errant clubs. That is a decision for the three-man executive of Scudamore, the chairman Dave Richards, and the company secretary Mike Foster. It is understood that Stevens remains unsatisfied with a number of the transfers he has investigated; however, the findings regarding which specific transfers the report has highlighted will not be made public on Wednesday.
Well, yes, you may have a point about my approach. Then again he was the police chief who instituted a secret shoot-to-kill policy that resulted in the death of an innocent man the very first time it was used.
Comment