Latest scandal may be tip of the iceberg

I always thought football in this country would be immune from the scandal of match-fixing.

Over the last week, it became clear I was wrong.

Multiple arrests of players and their subsequent court appearances have proved that and I fear there could be more to come.

What we’ve seen so far is probably just the tip of the iceberg, so there’s no telling how big it could get over the coming weeks and months. And I won’t be at all surprised if the story goes international.

If you follow the money, gambling is a far bigger business abroad than it is here.

“The Asian markets” is something we’ve all heard before in relation to betting irregularities.

That’s because the gambling industry over there is vast and, in parts, completely unregulated.

In this country, things are different.

From speaking to people who work for some of the best known British bookies, I know they all have systems in place to highlight suspicious betting patterns on things like red and yellow cards, which are the current areas of concern.

The very second even one person lays a bet of £100 or more on a booking in this country, eyebrows are raised.

If someone else lays another, the market might get shut down. That’s how quickly things move.

When you consider that one of the players allegedly involved in the current scandal claimed to be able to get a player sent off for £70,000, it becomes clear how hard it would be to make enough money to justify that outlay.

Abroad, where black market gambling is big business, it would be much easier.

That said, it might be easy and convenient to blame our game’s problems on foreigners, but that isn’t right.

There’s a level of responsibility that must fall on the shoulders of people at the top of the game in this country.

That responsibility is to act to make sure players found to have been involved are dealt with and harshly.

It has to be made very clear that manipulating games of football from within for personal financial gain is completely unacceptable.

Anybody doing so is cheating their club, their teammates, the fans even the lady who washes the strips. It’s unforgivable.

The PFA released a short statement condemning the “evil” of match fixing, and that’s a start.

From now, players found guilty of match-fixing offences should be banned from football for life, without exception.