The concerns raised in 2014 that have led to the England coach’s dismissal do not draw a line under the separate allegations raised by Eni Aluko. Instead they give the FA two crises running concurrently

According to Martin Glenn, the Football Association chief executive who broke the news, Mark Sampson was “calm but angry” as he found out from a fourth‑floor office at Wembley that his luck had finally run out.

The summons had come the night before. Sampson arrived around midday and the formalities did not last too long once he realised that a scandal had caught up with him – just not the scandal, perhaps, that most people might have envisaged.

Eni Aluko: ‘The minute you are brave enough to talk about race you are in a difficult situation’ Read more

That does not make the other allegations swirling around the now-deposed England Women’s manager any less serious or change the fact that a second crisis is running concurrently – a story featuring racism allegations, hush money and yet more evidence of systematic failure – that needs a proper ending rather than any more of the FA’s attempted spin, deflection and pulling down of shutters.

The Eni Aluko affair, a story this newspaper has been driving for several weeks, is already threatening to go to the top of the FA now that a third investigation is under way and the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee is summoning the relevant people to explain the gaping holes in the previous two inquiries.

If, that is, it can still be called the Eni Aluko affair when a second player, Drew Spence, will meet the barrister Katharine Newton on Friday for an interview that should have taken place the best part of a year ago. As if Sampson does not have enough on his plate, Spence intends to corroborate Aluko’s version of events by saying she, too, was the recipient of an allegedly racial remark.

Ultimately, though, Sampson has gone for something entirely different, involving a safeguarding investigation that went on for the best part of a year, a breakdown in communications within the FA structure and, it appears, some particularly dubious behaviour from his time at Bristol Academy where there are first-hand reports that some of the club’s trips were more like a coming together of stag- and hen-dos.

No doubt more will come out in time but it is not going to be pretty when it involves a football manager, a number of backroom staff, a women’s team and a culture where, according to reliable evidence, some of the more sensible players became increasingly alarmed about what was deemed acceptable.

Stories about Bristol Academy have been floating around for some time and a lot of them now appear to be true. For the moment, we will probably have to join the dots. “No law was broken but we felt that, during his time at Bristol, Mark had overstepped the professional boundaries between player and coach,” Glenn said.

There will be some, undoubtedly, who find this all a bit convenient. Here we have the FA, in the midst of what could be an appalling race controversy, suddenly finding an entirely separate reason to get rid of the alleged offender for something that happened in his previous employment.

Whatever Sampson has done to warrant the sack, the men in power decided it could wait a few days

Glenn was at pains to absolve himself of any responsibility and also said the same about Greg Clarke, the chairman. Dan Ashworth, the technical director, was the person who appointed Sampson, championed him and brought him through the system. Surely he could have stopped this? “No,” Glenn again insisted. And it was staggering how it panned out – all of the FA’s top three executives were, apparently, not to blame one bit.

The fault, according to Glenn, lay further down the organisation and with a number of other people who just happen not to work for the FA any more. “Mark joined the FA at the end of 2013. A couple of months into his employment, the FA received anonymous allegations about his conduct at Bristol Academy. The FA safeguarding system clicked into gear and those safeguarding officers spent quite a bit of time, almost a year, investigating a range of issues that had been raised. They presented that to a safeguarding review panel in early 2015 and in March 2015 the panel reached a decision that, if he had some training and mentoring, he wasn’t a safeguarding risk.

“The incidents being investigated were – I’m not going to give any more detail than this – inappropriate behaviour and a crossing of the boundary between coach and players. There is no evidence that has come to our eyes about anything illegal and we don’t want idiots going round his house with torches. But he had clearly stepped over the line and admitted as much.

“The reason we have parted company with him was that, while the safeguarding team did their job on their specific narrow front, nobody else within the FA was alerted that what he had done was not something you would be comfortable with for an FA employee. In his [Sampson’s] eyes, he felt he had been cleared of the issue. And he had been from a safeguarding perspective. Our problem was the grown-ups in the organisation hadn’t seen the report and the full detail to make the point about employability.”

Play Video 1:19 FA chief executive explains Mark Sampson sacking – video

In other statements Glenn appeared to hold a previous regime responsible, a time when Greg Dyke, Adrian Bevington, Sir Trevor Brooking and Alex Horne were running the organisation. Yet the bottom line here is that the FA has been employing an England manager since 2013 and in the past two and half years the organisation had been sitting on a report that has now persuaded the people at the top of the organisation the relevant person has to go. Whatever checks and references Ashworth pulled together, they were not enough. And the worst thing is that the report has been gathering dust within the FA’s offices since March 2015 – and probably still would be had it not been for Aluko’s interview with the Guardian leading to an anonymous tip-off.

Why, also, did the FA decide to wait until Sampson had taken charge of the team’s 6-0 win against Russia on Tuesday before letting him know his position was “untenable”? Glenn and all the other “grown-ups within the organisation” – the kind of phrase, unfortunately, that tells you a lot about the FA – had been given the relevant information last Wednesday. Yet they were not so shocked that they decided to do anything about it straight away. Whatever Sampson has done to warrant the sack, the men in power decided it could wait a few days.

The sports minister, Tracey Crouch, was being kind when she described it as a “mess” but, if nothing else, perhaps it might be easier for the relevant players from the China Cup in 2015 to give evidence about the race allegations now Sampson has gone.

Spence’s allegation, to recap, is that Sampson asked her, a mixed-race player on her first England call-up, how many times she had been arrested. Three other players – Jill Scott, Izzy Christiansen and Jo Potter – were in the room at the same time and at least two of them, according to the Guardian’s information, can supply crucial evidence. Rightly or wrongly, it should be an easier process now the players in question don’t have to go against their England manager.

First, though, they have to be asked and that really is one of the more bewildering and depressing parts of this story. Even now, the FA is steadfastly refusing to answer a simple question of whether the new investigation will involve Scott, Christiansen and Potter.

FA aware of Mark Sampson allegations in 2013, claims Women in Football Read more

Indeed, the FA is not even admitting it is a new investigation, as if it means losing even more face when the Professional Footballers’ Association has already described inquiry No1 as “not a genuine search for the truth” and “a sham which was not designed to establish the truth but intended to protect Mark Sampson”. Inquiry No2 – Newton’s first attempt – was called a “farce” by Aluko and has led to calls from Kick it Out and the PFA for the process to start again, with a new barrister in place.

Newton began her inquiry on 15 December last year and when she interviewed Sampson he denied all the allegations, and continues to do so. The inquiry finished on 2 March and Sampson was completely exonerated, in keeping with the FA’s internal review, even though Newton said she did not dispute “the player in question [Spence] was upset about something she thought had been said”.

When this newspaper started asking questions about why Spence had never been interviewed, the most staggering part, perhaps, is that the FA tried to make a genuine case that it did not know her identity and that Aluko should take the blame for that one, having “refused” to pass on who she meant. Except, of course, that was another half-truth, at best.

Aluko’s evidence had told them it was a mixed-raced player, raised in south London, who played for Chelsea and was on her first camp. More than that, Newton had watched a video of the meeting where the comment allegedly took place. Spence, for the thousandth time, was the only mixed-race player in the room.

Aluko and Spence both deserve the opportunity for a proper investigation but, in the meantime, how do those players feel who ran to Sampson in a choreographed goal celebration for the first goal against Russia on Tuesday and did not appear to spare a second thought about how their former team-mates – not to mention Lianne Sanderson and Anita Asante – might feel in those moments?

Aluko alleges Sampson told her to be careful her Nigerian relatives did not bring the Ebola virus to Wembley and her 11-year 102-cap England career was effectively ended – a coincidence, the FA says – within two weeks of voicing her initial concerns. Yet it turns out that Sampson was the one prone to “unlioness behaviour”.