Gordon claims that a staggering fortune involving tens of millions of pounds has gone missing in the shady deals which have turned our national obsession into a feeding ground for crooks.

But he admits that the money is gone for good – untraceable and lost to the English game reeling from the recent revelations of the bung culture breeding beneath football’s multi-million pound, celebrity-studded surface.

Gordon speaks from the experience of 25 years in the game which has seen him become one of the authentic “kingmakers” on the circuit.

From his Stourbridge home, his Key Sports agency has built up a blue chip list of clients headed by McClaren, the new England manager, and the most prodigious teenage talent in the Premiership, Theo Walcott.

He also acts for Ade Boothroyd, the former Albion Academy boss who took Watford to the Premiership last season to establish his reputation as one of the game’s top young managers, and Rob Kelly, the ex-Wolves coach who has risen to manage Leicester.

These thrusting juniors on the English management scene Gordon regards as the new breed preparing to sweep away the old guard – and the old thinking that goes with them – who have dominated the football landscape.

And he makes it clear in a forthright, candid interview today that he would love to see much the same effect delivered to a profession that has lost the confidence of many supporters.

Corruption in football is back under a fierce spotlight following last week’s BBC TV Panorama investigation which has triggered claims and counter-claims about the agents and managers pocketing huge sums of money “under the table.”

Gordon watched the programme without any great surprise but a weary resignation that culprits have got away with what he calls their “ill-gotten” gains.

“Are agents corrupt? Not all – but the majority,” he says before unleashing a withering attack on the industry which fuels and conceals their behaviour. “It’s accepted abroad. We pretend we are holier than thou but I’ve spoken to people over there and the English game is considered ‘the dirty man of Europe.’ We are the worst – and it shouldn’t be accepted.

“I can’t argue a case for what goes on in the building industry or the aerospace industry. I’ve spoken to people in those industries and greasing palms to make sure you get the contract is part of life.

“But that doesn’t make it acceptable to football. It is the supporters’ money now. I can’t accept it. I can’t accept the fact that a manager can slate his chairman for not buying a player when he’s probably got a couple of players in his own bank account.

“Don’t they earn enough money now? It’s not a case of a little something extra for the manager to buy a drink with any more. In the days of the maximum wage, football was like a slave trade and no-one would have begrudged that. But we have managers earning £1m, £2m, £3m a year now so why do they need to get involved in corruption?

“Sometimes, the chain of people involved is not just one person but three or four. You will never get the truth out of them.

And we’re not talking about the £50,000 bungs the Panorama programme was alleging. We’re not talking about Cloughie’s old brown paper envelope stuffed with a few notes. We are talking about millions upon millions. But it’s gone now.

“It’s a very, very sophisticated business. It’s very cleverly disguised. That programme couldn’t prove anything and I’m pretty sure Lord Stevens enquiry will struggle big time to come up with any proof.

“We all know it’s there, it’s industry gossip. I’ve encountered it once abroad when I was taking an international player to an Italian club and I was offered a suitcase full of money to make sure the deal went through. I didn’t want it; I had no interest in it.

“Over here, you will never catch a manager out talking directly about it. There will be a line that you detect in a conversation and you immediately know where it is heading. I’ve had that and pretended to be deaf and dumb for the next few minutes and talk about something else. It’s never referred to again. But you know it’s there.

“The Football League trumpets about how the agents fees are dropping but that is not where the corruption is. The corruption is in the transfer fees. That’s where the money goes missing.”

How does it work? Gordon is very clear about the systems – and the huge amounts of money – involved.

“Let’s say I buy a player from, let’s say, Eastern Europe. I find out he is valued at £2m by his club. I say to that club ‘I can sell him for £5m in England – there will be £500,000 in it for you but the other £2.5m makes its way back into this account.’ Since the Premiership began, I would estimate that tens of millions of pounds has gone out of the game this way.

“Rows about agents fees are a lovely little smokescreen to hammer agents over the head with – but that just hides the serious fraud. I mean serious. The tax implications alone are frightening. South America, Eastern Europe and clubs on mainland Europe.

“Players who had clauses in their contracts guaranteeing their clubs must accept offers at a particular price – and then have been sold for millions of pounds more.

“That money is gone now. Forget it. You are never going to find it. You are never going to trace it.

Even the buying clubs don’t want to know because it makes them look stupid – which of course they have been.”

It is Gordon’s frustration that through all the anguished breast-beating and tormenting the game is going through at the moment, the real experts are rarely consulted.

Instead, he is equally scathing about the ‘frauds’ who are eager to bask in football’s spotlight without, he says, having any real expertise as to how to deal with the problem.

He goes on: “We need a plan to go forward.

We have to say to the corrupt, to the bent managers and agents, to take their ill-gotten gains and be thankful they have got away with it. But it stops now. We need to draw a line under it and prevent it from happening any more.

“But spare me those silly regulations from people who don’t know what goes on. It’s time for a poacher to turn gamekeeper. Someone who knows how to regulate it because they know how and what goes on. Some of the people getting involved haven’t got a clue.

“The administrators suddenly jumping on the bandwagon are laughable. You get Richard Caborn (the Government’s Minister for Sport) coming on TV saying ranting on about corrupt agents and overpaid footballers.

“You know he’s been all over the world attending seminars for that insight and probably got the best seats at the World Cup. Then he’ll be off into the shadows again.

“A few years ago we even had a David Mellor task force. David bloody Mellor. The only relationship he’s ever had with football is when he wore a Chelsea shirt in bed. Suddenly, he’s on radio as the moral guardian of English football.

“Simon Jordan (Crystal Palace’s outspoken chairman) sells a mobile phone company and nobody bats an eyelid. But he buys a club and all of a sudden he’s an expert on football.

“He writes an entertaining column in the papers but is he the font of all knowledge on football? He attacks people and some of the things he says are quite good and entertaining. But he throws so many darts there are bound to be many which miss the target. There’s also a new breed in the game that want to gain celebrity by association.

“It’s laughable. The experts, the real experts, get ignored. I’ve been in this game all my life and I’m still waiting for someone to ask me a question. They might be scared by what they find out, mind.

“Money was never the motivating factor for me. I’m fortunate because my training for this job was my career and that has given me an advantage.

“I knew all the main people, I had played for them, with them, against them. I met them on coaching courses and whatever reputation I have built up in football I was not prepared to lose.

“But the Panorama programme left me thinking ‘So what?’ I watched it waiting for the big moment but it never came.

“I didn’t want anyone to get into serious trouble but I thought the public would at least get an insight of how some of these people built up to be heroes behaved.

“We’re a million miles away now from the working class roots of the game but it’s still the working class who relate to the stars and personalities of football.

“I thought they might see where their £15 at the turnstiles was really going. Actually it’s more like £50 these days, isn’t it

“The reaction between the people with the industry – the managers, the agents, the players, directors and even you guys in the media – was totally different to the public’s. We all know what’s gone on, we know all the stories.

“You guys can never prove it so you can’t really write about it. But the you sense the public have felt some outrage.

“It is something you can’t prove and it is a waste of time and energy trying to do it. The game does not want to embarrass itself by lifting up the carpet and showing what’s been swept underneath.”

Gordon talks in the garden of his recently-acquired turn-of-the-century house in the Stourbridge suburbs, an impressive symbol of his company’s flourishing success. But it is with clean money.

There are now seven employees and 60 clients, all lured to the guidance of Gordon and his partner, another ex-pro John Colqhoun by the edict of career first, rewards second.

Never was this more true than in the handling of Walcott’s £12m transfer from Southampton to Arsenal last season, a deal which would cut a path all the way to England’s World Cup squad.

“When we sat down with Theo and his family we laid out his career path,” he explained. “And we told them straight – if Theo doesn’t finish with 75 to 100 caps and a trophy cabinet full of medals then we will have failed.

The money is a by-product of all that. ‘If it embarrasses you, get used to it because it will come,’ we said.

“But I don’t know one player from the top of the game who is there because of the money. What they want is to be the best they can be. That’s what drives them and what separates them at times. I’ll guarantee you that. They want to play. And that’s the kind of kid we have in Theo.

“We had a photo shoot for Hello magazine last week and it was long and tedious as these things are.

“We had a break, we were sitting out on a lawn and Theo said: ‘Anyone got a ball?” He loves the game. He would run across the road to join in with a group of kids.

“That’s nothing to do with making money. And that’s how we treat all our players.

“It’s well known that Chelsea wanted Theo badly and the deal with them would have been more lucrative for everyone, including ourselves.

“But we knew that Theo’s career path would be best served by going to Arsene Wenger. We chose Arsenal because I have never met a more genuine and decent man than Arsene Wenger.

“We got well paid. We’re not a bloody charity. But there would have been even more money had we gone the Chelsea route.”

It all leads to a sad reflection on too many of the agents scurrying around in an ever-increasing frenzy to get rich quick on the back of other people’s talent.

Gordon adds: “I’m afraid the majority of agents only see an opportunity to make money. They don’t want to be involved for the good of the game. They are interested in the pounds and not plotting a career path.

“They don’t care about the championships, the medals, the achievements to play for.

“They only see the short-term gain. For them, it is the chance to mix with the rich and famous. It’s a route to celebrity.

“I’m not interested in that. When you’ve had 20,000 Brummies bawling at you, you’ve had all the recognition you want! But I see agents sitting at the top table at press conferences and I think to myself: “What are you doing there? What the hell is an agent doing there?

“You have to live with the stigma now but I do like to fight my corner and argue what’s right.

“You can only be comfortable with the way that you work, the way we see as the right way. But I can’t argue when you see the performances of that crew in the Panorama programme.

“I can’t argue with the public seeing us as the scum of the earth.”

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