double standards from the FA https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/nov/08/sammy-lee-sam-allardyce-fa-england-double-standards The Football Association parted company with its England manager, Sam Allardyce, because it found his unmoderated Big Sam demeanour, covertly filmed for a newspaper by people posing as investors, boorish and “unbecoming”. The FA has subsequently admitted that Allardyce broke no rules; he did not, as widely misreported, advise how to break football regulations forbidding third-party ownership, and that was why the FA had to give him a £1m payoff.
Interesting article, but what I'm not sure about is exactly when sammy lee gave the alleged false witness evidence. The judgement was in 2014, but the evidence could have been years earlier and it may be that the fa deem the matter "stale". A couple of other points though. It doesn't change what allardyce did. The article states that the evidence sammy lee gave was probably false, but they could not show he was being deliberately dishonest, so the fa would be on dangerous ground using it as an excuse for not hiring him or sacking him. What Allardyce did was clear for all to see and imo deserved the sack. The real disgrace with this is the amount of managers that offered their sympathy to him and saying "it could have happened to any of us". I can tell you now, it wouldn't happen to me because I would not have my nose in the trough like allardyce did.
Thing with Allardyce is he was high-profile and so people demanded a sacking. Not just football fans even. People with no interest in football will have heard about the England manager being in trouble, and won't have realised that as the article states, he didn't actually break any rules. The FA's hands were forced.
Firstly, he implicated himself as being part of the culture of agents and others in football that her around rules on player ownership. The fa don't have to prove his involvement beyond reasonable doubt, it is the balance of probabilities and I believe this was part of the fa's decision. Also, he took 400 k to do some keynote speaking? Well! I researched going rates for keynote speakers and the highest I could find was 10 to 15 k per go for people like Steve Redgrave, David milliband, Ellen mcarthur, Karen Brady etc. Presumably he would be in a similar price bracket. That is a lot of keynote speaking to earn his cash, especially for someone with a full time job. It may be that the fa concluded (on the balance of probabilities) that he was doing more than simply speaking, and considering the conversations on player ownership, it's easy to see what the fa though his fee was for. I would question the judgement of anyone that looked at the available video evidence and concluded that allardyce was clean.
Other than admit he had got round third party ownership deal rulings when at West Ham and that he'd be happy to advise how to do so in future?
But he didn't actually do anything apart from spout off about how you could do something if you wanted. You could advise how to break into a house but if you didn't do it you wouldn't be charged with it. That is why they had to,pay him off. If he had done anything wrong they could have dismissed him, but they didn't have grounds to.
If you actually read the article about this you would see that they had no grounds to dismiss him. They didn't like what he had said, and thought it brought disrepute on to the game, so they couldn'tndismiss him and had to pay him off. Ironic when someone who had done something remains in their employ. I am not defending him, people getting paid millions for a job the fans would do for nothing being greedy bastards who want even more make me sick.
Forget what the article says, the fa did have grounds to dismiss him and they came out and said as much, and the proof is in the pudding, he was dismissed. I don't think the decision would have been different if he had objected. The payout was a fraction of his overall contract and this shows that between both sides, they agreed a deal that was satisfactory to both. If allardyce did nothing wrong and objected, he would have claimed his full contract, he did not. This is what employment law is like, there is little black and white, lots of grey areas. That the fa paid him off does not mean they had no grounds to dismiss, it was to mitigate any potential for allardyce to take the fa to court and draw out the process, they acted to nip the situation in the bud and £1m was deemed a fair trade off. A newspaper journalist does not decide what is grounds for dismissal, he was just expressing an opinion as fact.
He said he did it at West Ham. That's the point. You can't have an England manager talking about he circumnavigated the rules in a recent job.
Rob Harris @RobHarris City of London police open "criminal investigation into a single suspected offence of bribery" following Telegraph football investigation. It's not Allardyce.
