Dons legend Eric Black has today been embroiled in the football corruption scandal that has already seen Sam Allardyce stand down as England manager.
The 52-year-old features in today’s Daily Telegraph and is filmed suggesting that “a couple of grand” might persuade a colleague at another club to pass on information about players to a company that wanted to represent footballers.
Football Association rules explicitly ban such payments, and state that club officials such as Black should immediately report any potential breaches of the rules to the FA.
In the secretly recorded footage, Black, now the assistant manager at Premier League club Southampton, names a fellow assistant at a Championship side, saying, “it doesn’t take too much to get these people involved” because “they won’t have an awful lot of money”.
The filmed meeting took place on Sept 2 at a hotel in Hampshire, with Black believing the journalist to be a representative of a Far East firm interested in breaking into English football’s transfer market.
During the meeting, arranged by long-term friend and football agent Scott McGarvey, he suggested the pair should approach the named Championship assistant manager..
Black said: “You say, ‘look, we’ve set up the company, we want to go big, you build up the whole thing and you would do brilliantly, then, y’know, if you get somebody, we’ll give you a couple of grand or something…’”
Southampton Football Club pre-empted the newspapers’ latest round of articles under the strapline ’Football For Sale’ by saying they had requested details from the Telegraph – a request they said had been turned down.
The club’s statement read: “Southampton Football Club has today been made aware by The Daily Telegraph that, as part of their ongoing investigation, the club’s assistant first team manager Eric Black will feature as part of an article in tomorrow’s paper.
“The club immediately requested to be sent, by The Daily Telegraph, the details of this article, but the newspaper declined to share any further information.
“We have today contacted The FA and The Premier League, and intend to work closely with both bodies on this matter when the facts become clear.
“Southampton Football Club is fully committed to investigating any situation that directly or indirectly relates to our club, employees or the wider community.”
A spokesman for Mr Black said: “Mr Black does not recall Mr McGarvey making suggestions that football officials should be paid during transfer negotiations – this was not the purpose of the meeting so far as our client understood it. Any suggestion that he was complicit in such discussions is false.”
The spokesman said his reference to paying “a couple of grand” related to a freelance scout he suggested the Far East company should approach.
Black was appointed to Southampton’s coaching staff during the summer as assistant to Claude Puel.
He scored the first goal in the Dons’ historic Cup Winners Cup triumph against Real Madrid in 1983.