Allardyce faces having to explain deals in court
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Tension at Newcastle as pressure mounts on new boss
Newcastle manager Sam Allardyce’s past transfer dealings will come under further scrutiny on two fronts as the fall-out from the Stevens Inquiry continues to overshadow preparations for his first season at the club.
There is understood to be growing unease at St James’ Park about the bad publicity surrounding the former Bolton manager, who has been handed a £3 million-a-year salary and generous transfer budget to revive the club’s fortunes.
The latest developments came within 24 hours of Lord Stevens unveiling the controversial findings of his Quest team’s £1.3m probe into Premier League transfers, which made public 16 deals involving five clubs that remain under suspicion and named 15 agents and three managers worthy of more investigation.
Investigations into a 17th deal are so sensitive that it has not been identified.
With Graeme Souness out of football and the reasons for concern about Portsmouth boss Harry Redknapp remaining unspecified beyond his alleged ownership of a bad horse, Allardyce is the figure most damaged by the revelations.
Quest’s report recommended further inquiries into the apparent conflict of interest which existed when Allardyce’s son, Craig, was involved in transfers at Bolton, and it is understood solicitors for Allardyce are considering a request for their client to be re-interviewed about up to four deals, involving Julio Correa, Ali Al-Habsi, Blessing Kaku and Tal Ben Haim.
And now Allardyce also faces having to explain in court how Bolton came to sign Israel international Idan Tal last year.
Unlicensed Israeli agent David Abou has launched legal action against Craig Allardyce in a bid to receive half the £135,000 commission he negotiated for himself from Tal’s free transfer.
It was Abou, through The Mail On Sunday, who revealed how he had acted for Ben Haim, Kaku and Tal in breach of FIFA rules forbidding unlicensed agents from being involved in transfer negotiations, and who then provided Quest and the FA with documentary evidence to support his claims.
Abou said that he and Craig, then a licensed agent, received secret payments from another licensed agent, Jamie Hart, after the Ben Haim and Kaku deals in 2004 which fall within Quest’s remit. Abou also claimed that when he acted for Tal in last year’s transfer, Craig agreed to split his £135,000 commission with him.
But having never received what he says is his rightful share, Abou has now launched legal action to obtain it and to recover from Bolton the $1,194.50 he spent on his credit card to buy plane tickets for himself and Tal to fly to England on March 5, 2006.
Top sports lawyer Mel Goldberg, of Max Bitel, Greene, who is representing Abou, confirmed "letters before action" had been sent out to Craig Allardyce and Bolton.
Goldberg said: "If we do not receive a satisfactory response, legal proceedings will be issued."
Allardyce Snr, who is aware of the development, would be a key witness if the case against his son reached court.
Abou, who will be in court in Tel Aviv tomorrow for the start of a separate case against Tal Ben Haim, also wants to prevent Bolton paying any further instalments of Craig Allardyce’s commission.
The £135,000 corresponds to the agent’s traditional 10 per cent of Tal’s three-year, £8,500-per-week basic contract and the first instalment of £45,000 was paid in October last year.
The next tranche of £45,000 is due in the coming weeks but there are signs Bolton are in no mood to do the Allardyce family any favours.
Having backed Sam to the hilt while he was still at the Reebok Stadium, Bolton chairman Phil Gartside has apparently begun the process of distancing himself from his former manager, offering to provide Quest with the results of the club’s own internal investigation into how transfers were conducted.
As a member of the FA Board, Gartside has his own future to consider and his comments in the wake of the publication of Quest’s report could hardly have been more pointed.
"I’m glad that we found that every person who continues to work at this club has been totally exonerated by our inquiry," he said. "I don’t believe it’s my job to talk about individuals working for other clubs."
Lord Stevens’ report pulled no such punches, as Allardyce’s new employers are also painfully aware.
Newcastle chairman Freddy Shepherd has already suffered the embarrassment of seeing one of his sons, Kenneth, named in the document, along with former manager Souness, as having provided evidence which contained inconsistencies.
Just as at Bolton, four transfers involving Newcastle remain uncleared by Quest and it was hardly an auspicious week for billionaire Mike Ashley to move a decisive step closer to gaining full control of the club by taking his stake past the 75 per cent threshold for delisting the company.
Sources indicate that Shepherd Snr, despite striking a deal with Ashley to stay on as chairman after selling his family’s 28 per cent holding for £37m, may not stick around much longer to support the manager he appointed.
It is also understood that Allardyce would not have been the new owner’s first choice as manager and that the bad publicity about the Bolton transfers, on top of Ashley’s problems with his own company, Sports Direct, has not impressed him.
If Allardyce thought his move to Newcastle would draw a line under the past and herald a glorious new chapter of his career, he was mistaken.
The day after the fixture computer decreed his new team would begin next season with a match at the Reebok Stadium, the ghosts of Bolton, in the form of the Quest report, came back to haunt him in a potentially far more damaging way.
And there is every sign that they will continue to do so for some time to come.
