The appointment by England of a manager who had unanswered questions regarding transfers in the mid-2000s hanging over him was unusual and perhaps we should not be surprised he has gone so swiftly

Somewhere in the Football Association’s Wembley archives, next to the battered bid books for the failed attempts to host 2006 and 2018 World Cup tournaments and Charles Hughes’s coaching manual, sit the files from a series of investigations in the middle of the last decade into a unique period in football’s recent history.

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It was one in which unprecedented sums of money had flowed into the top tier of the game from television deals and the Premier League had been opened up to overseas players and managers, yet when those who held sway were still inculcated with culture and practices absorbed over the previous decades.

When the now former England manager Sam Allardyce was surreptitiously filmed by the Telegraph putting a napkin over his face and, with mock indignation, telling his dinner companions “I haven’t heard that, you stupid man”, that is the period he was talking about. “What are you talking about you idiot,” he went on. “You can’t pay a player, you can’t pay a manager, you can’t pay a CEO. You used to be able to do it 20, 30 years ago. You can’t do it any more.”

It is an outburst that could in some senses have played well for Allardyce. It showed that, whatever path he was being led down by the undercover reporters, he was insistent the old rules no longer applied. And yet it was also a reminder of that period documented in those FA files, one in which the shadow of suspicion frequently seemed to fall over a cabal of managers who included Allardyce but in which nothing was ever proved conclusively.

As Allardyce was making his way to Wembley for a humiliating showdown with his employers that had echoes of so many other farcical FA episodes down the years and ultimately ended in his departure, he may have been reflecting that one of the reasons he was targeted by the sting was his apparent proximity to those earlier allegations.

Rightly or wrongly, it may also be one of the reasons why the FA and its new chairman, Greg Clarke, may have been nervous about the prospect of Allardyce’s past being dragged back into the spotlight on the back of the new allegations.

A Panorama programme broadcast in September 2006 accused Allardyce – then at Bolton and at the height of his powers – and his agent son Craig of various irregularities.

That prompted an outraged Allardyce to vow to boycott the BBC for life and sue the broadcaster, branding the allegations “outrageous lies”. Following a period when Allardyce did not speak to the BBC, the threat to sue was not followed through. There was no legal action, with Allardyce later saying in his autobiography he was advised it would cost too much money and take too long.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sam Allardyce pictured leaving his home in Bolton in 2006 after the FA said it would investigate claims made in a Panorama programme. He has always denied wrongdoing. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters

Sir Alex Ferguson, Allardyce’s great friend and ally (who played a not insignificant role in getting him the England job), maintained his BBC boycott – imposed for similar reasons following allegations against his own agent son Jason two years previously – for far longer.

At the same time, Lord Stevens had been commissioned in March of that year by the Premier League to undertake an independent inquiry into “alleged irregular payments from transfer dealings”. Allardyce recalls in his autobiography he felt the fact he had to hand over his last three years of bank statements was a “bloody liberty”.

Eventually reporting in June 2007, Stevens examined 362 transfers and felt unable to sign off 17. The inquiry ruled: “Mr Gartside [the then Bolton chairman, Phil] and the officials currently at the club have fully cooperated and the inquiry has found no evidence or suggestion of any irregular payments to them. However the following three transfers in which Craig Allardyce was involved remain uncleared ...”

After listing the transfers of Ali al-Habsi, Tal Ben Haim and Blessing Kaku, Stevens went on to add: “The inquiry remains concerned at the conflict of interest between Craig Allardyce, his father Sam Allardyce (the then manager at Bolton Wanderers) and the club itself.” It is understood Bolton wrote to the BBC amid an endless flurry of legal letters and said it effectively could not be blamed for payments of which it had no knowledge.

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Those who were at the FA at the time recall Allardyce was interviewed as part of an internal investigation alongside Gartside. They, and Premier League sources, confirmed on Tuesday night the transfers have never been signed off.

The FA investigated, then passed the files on to Fifa because they all involved overseas players or agents. Its loosely phrased rules were, in the words of one of those involved, “among the shittest regulations ever drawn up”. Fifa, which had other things on its plate, sat on the files and did very little because it tended to act only if one party or another within football actively brought a complaint. Eventually, Fifa relinquished control of regulating agents. The suspect transfers were kicked into the longest of Zurich grass.

All of which led to the unusual situation of the FA in 2016, off the back of a woeful showing in France and a defeat against Iceland, appointing as manager a man who effectively had those outstanding questions still hanging over his head.

Along with Allardyce, others implicated by Panorama also threatened to sue. Kevin Bond, Harry Redknapp’s former assistant at Portsmouth, took his case the furthest – but dropped his libel action against the BBC six days before the case was due to start.

In his book, Allardyce says: “For the record, I’ve never taken a bung in my life. I might have enjoyed a meal or a bottle of wine on an agent or two but that is it. I was earning £1.5m a year, so I didn’t need a little bit extra from an agent. It would have been madness.”

Ironically, it now appears it was exactly the fact he was “looking for a little bit extra” on top of his England salary of double that – while enjoying a bottle or wine or two – that cost him his “dream job” after two months.

Another of those documents on the FA’s shelves, a more recent pamphlet on England’s DNA, states: “We strive for the highest standards on and off the field. Nothing less is acceptable.”