I have been concerned for quite some time that we have been sitting on a time bomb in the sport of football when it comes to potential corruption both by owners and players. To be blunt I am shocked by the proliferation of betting websites becoming accepted sponsors and when I watch the games it hits me right between the eyes from the flashing billboards at the edge of the pitch. Now we have teams shirt's sponsored by betting sites and even stadiums renamed to reflect the invasion of bad money in to football and today's raids on the offices of a couple of teams could be the tip of the iceberg. The influx of overseas investors coming from regions of the world where corruption is a daily fact of life may play a part in the issue, and yet both of the teams being investigated are owned domestically, but players who live and play like they were James Bond don't exactly set a good example when you constantly see and hear of them visiting casinos. Perhaps my thought that the sport is rife with corruption and people looking the other way when convenient or fiscally sound could be the wrong impression all together but I have had integrity issues with the whole aura surrounding the beautiful game for several years and rather hope that I'm wrong about the way the sport is heading - and then again there's always Big Sam to prove me wrong. The FFP hasn't raised it's ugly head in my world for some time and is it time for it to reappear?
It's always been rife in football and in life in general. The sums of money that modern football generates are staggering so it's hardly surprising that someone is either skimming money off, or not paying what they should in tax or NI.
FFP is always in place it only becomes news when someone breaks it. But in fairness tax fraud is very common, it's just with Football it becomes big news. The Sun won't sell many papers with "Gas Engineer in tax scandal" I know some people don't like Lansdown but we've never been embroiled into these investigations tax or FFP.
