Big Sam's big mouth isn't the all of it

• by Paul Kennedy  @pkedit, Sep 26, 2016

Sam Allardyce's reign as England national team coach could be over after all of one game. He has a lot of answering to do -- and quickly -- after being caught on tape by undercover reporters for the Daily Telegraph , negotiating a deal with men he thought were representing a Far East firm interested in getting involved in the Premier League’s transfer market and advising them they could bypass the EPL's transfer rules.

Allardyce has dodged trouble before. In 2006, a BBC investigation alleged he had taken "bungs" -- kickbacks for transfers -- when he was a manager, but an independent investigation found no evidence of irregular payments.

Allardyce's problems are being too friendly with a supposed soccer agency for whom he'd serve as an ambassador in Singapore and Hong Kong. If he took a 400,000-pound ($520,000) payment to "talk football" as a keynote speaker that would be a conflict of interest.

He also suggested how to get around the 2008 FA ban on third parties “owning” players -- extended by FIFA to all countries in 2015. On the tape, he says agents who were “doing it all the time,” noting it was done in “all of South America, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, all of Africa."

He added: “You can still get around it. I mean obviously the big money’s here.”

But Big Sam's big mouth didn't stop there. He told his new friends just what he thought about Roy Hodgson, who quit as England coach after Euro 2016. He made fun of Hodgson's speech impediment and said he "hasn't got the personality" and was "indecisive" and "cast a bit of anxiety over to the players maybe."

If that wasn't enough, he cast some shade on England players, saying they had "let him down," at Euro 2016.

Whether Allardyce stays or goes, his situation could be overshadowed by other reports from the Daily Telegraph investigation into the English transfer market.

The Telegraph said 10 managers were named by players’ agents as taking bribes to fix player transfers and two well-known managers discussed becoming "ambassadors" for the same fictitious firm Allardyce thought he was negotiating with.