This doesn't seem even close to as bad as the Serie A scandal. This seems more like a warning to managers and agents to keep things above board than an institutional league-wide top-down-mandated match fixing/doctoring scheme. My first thought was that Allardyce might lose his job over this, but I don't even see that happening, and no one's getting relegated over this, at least as it stands. I could be wrong, but in my mind I'm filing this under "Rules were meant to be bent, but watch yourselves."
This looks to me like a case of the BBC desperately trying to make the news, rather than report it. Never trust a man called cnut!
Especially if he works at fcuk!
The 'bung' has a history that goes back to the amateur origins of football, where the notion of players being paid was considered scandalous to the public-school types who established the FA. Clubs would get around the ban on wages, and then on the maximum wage, by stuffing money into players' boots. The Graham/Clough bung investigations came at a time when clubs ceased to be the fiefdoms of chairmen and became publically-traded companies. Now that the reverse is happening, and many once-traded clubs return to private ownership, it's time for yet another look at the world of brown envelopes and tapping-up.
Bung is such an England English word--I can't imagine something like it every becoming mainstream in American English. Like all those extra 'u's.
