Being in Glasgow on the day that Ibrox is raided by the City of London Police is, as a Celtic fan, a proper grin. The fact that Newcastle, Souness and Portsmouth are also being rightfully and properly investigated only adds to a general air of slightly malicious good humour. Undoubtedly, the raids are scratching the surface of the corruption endemic in the English and, to a lesser extent, the British game. And, yet, the particular clubs and individuals that are in the public eye as a result of these police raids, the Quest Inquiry and the Premier League's targeting of selective individuals are merely selected operators in relation to the core of this corruption.
The transfer of Jean-Alain Boumsong is an indication of the degree to which characters like Souness and Redknapp together with the bigger clubs feel that they are effectively above the law. To have conducted a transfer that was so obviously a stitch-up, Rangers and Souness must have made the assessment that they were untouchable. The player was available for £8.2million having joined Rangers just six months earlier on a free transfer. But even more revealingly, Newcastle were well aware of Boumsong prior to his departure from Auxerre because Bobby Robson (the manager at Newcastle prior to Souness) had travelled to France to watch him. Robson declined the opportunity to sign the centre-half, even on a free transfer, and his doubts about Boumsong's suitability for British football were confirmed when the club's England striker Alan Shearer was marked by Boumsong in a pre-season game against Rangers and came off to speak in dismissive terms about the Frenchman's lack of physicality. How much of this £8.2 million found its way into Souness' bank accounts? One cannot help but recollect the comments of Souness on Sky to the effect that the English game is "the most honest in the world".
Harry Redknapp similarly possesses a sense of belief in his indestructibility. His inappropriate closeness to bookmaking operations, the horseracing industry and Sky Television allows him to feel a protective shield against regulatory and public observations of his financial endeavours. We would suggest anybody with any doubt with regard to Redknapp's modus operandi to do the mathematics related to his business assets in comparison with his stated earnings as a mid-tier average football manager.
Pleasurable though it has been over this summer break to see the likes of Souness, Zahavi, Joorabchian, Redknapp and Poll slither around in cesspools of their own creation, these characters are either disposable or are a distance from the core of the corruption or they are well enough protected by their own security operations to be dismissive of the progressions in their realities.
Entirely conspicuous by their absence from any of these summer upheavals has been the bookmaking industry and the new breed of hyper owners who are targeting the global betting markets as their financial strategy for growth. It is a typical feature of anti-corruption campaigns for the lesser fish to be netted (and, often, let off, think Scoober Libby for example) while the true manipulators continue with their corruption away from the gaze of the regulators. Indeed, the system establishes concentric circles of fall guys that allows the most dangerous operators their anonymity in person and strategy. This structure is replicated across politics, business and the criminal underworld as well as the game of football. The manner in which the bookmaking companies were able to hijack the inquiry into the "death" of Bob Woolmer is a typical ruse.
Still, we should enjoy our small victories while we can. The next season in the Premiership is going to be several orders of magnitude worse than anything that has gone before. And the recent seasons have been bad enough.
It will be intriguing to see how much time Mr Redknapp spends on his mobile with his hand covering his mouth in the early games of the season - there were games last season (Arsenal at the Emirates, for instance) where the phone was permanently in use.
Perhaps the spread firms could start offering markets for Redknapp's mobile phone minutes in running!
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
