Tuesday 27 September 2016 22:17, UK
The FA have parted company with England manager Sam Allardyce following a newspaper sting, but what did he say?
A report in The Daily Telegraph claims Allardyce told undercover reporters posing as businessmen it was possible to "get around" an FA rule, introduced in 2008, banning third parties from owning part of a player's economic rights.
The report also alleges Allardyce, who had only been in the job since July, mocked predecessor Roy Hodgson, while the 61-year-old also discussed England's Euro 2016 exit, Gary Neville, team selections and potential conflict in speaking engagements.
However, Allardyce also explained that principally the speaking role would only conflict with the England manager's role if he was advising on players and transfers and that he could not be described as a 'strategic adviser', while his agent, Mark Curtis, also present at the meeting, said Allardyce would have to run anything by "the powers that be".
Asked for a response to the report, an FA spokesman said: "We have asked The Daily Telegraph to provide us with the full facts in relation to this matter."
Allardyce failed to respond to requests for a comment. His dismissal was later confirmed by the FA on Tuesday evening.
Below, we look at the key quotes from the newspaper report, first published on Monday night.
"It's not a problem," Allardyce said. "You can still get around it. I mean obviously the big money's here."
"What they would be better doing is making sure they've got ownership and the agent. So they own the agent, the agent works for them as well. Because then if he gets sold on again, the agent will get more money if he gets sold on again.
"You get a percentage of a player's agent's fee, that the agent pays to you, the company, because he's done that new deal at that club again.
"Or they sell him on, and you're not getting a part of the transfer fee anymore, because you can't do that, but because of the size of the contracts now, the contract will be worth £30m, £40m, at 10 per cent. And you get, you've done a deal with the agent where you get five per cent of the agent's fee, which is massive for doing about two hours' work."
Allardyce also said: "It's not a problem… we got [Enner] Valencia in. He was third-party owned when we bought him from Mexico," though it must be noted that the third-party ownership arrangement ended on the transfer and West Ham did acquire the player as a "whole".
Asked if the former England manager had outside earnings in the form of public speaking, Allardyce said: "No, he wouldn't want to, he'd send them all to sleep, Roy. Woy. He hasn't got the personality for it."
Allardyce also went on to discuss Hodgson and England's showing at Euro 2016…
"Players let him down in the end. I think maybe he, he was too indecisive. Cast a bit of an anxiety over to the players maybe. I mean prior to the Iceland game, he won all 10 qualifiers. We'd drawn with Russia, we should have won. We beat Wales, and that was our worst performance. We drew with Slovakia, and we only had to draw with Iceland to get through… he just collapsed."
"Psychologically, we can't cope, there's a psychological barrier," Allardyce says, before telling the undercover reporters what he would have done at half-time in Nice in June.
"So I'd have come in at half-time and gone, right, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And then if that didn't work I'd have gone bang, substitute, substitute, you know what I mean, and changed the complete style in the team. But he umm-ed and ah-ed and had Gary Neville arguing about when to bring Rushford [sic] on.
"If somebody makes two mistakes, one after the other, you're going to get in big trouble. We all make mistakes, but the next man can't make the same ones. And Kyle Walker made a bigger mistake than Wayne Rooney.
"It was the youngest side in Europe. It was the youngest squad. The average age was under 25. There are some stats out there that says that any team that wins a tournament has to be, has to have an average age of 27 or above."
"When they finish the game on Sunday I'm in control of the players. Not them.
"So if I want to call them up, I'll call them up, whether they say I can or I can't. I'll call them up anyway. I don't give a s*** about what you say."
"They were arguing for 10 minutes about bringing [Marcus Rashford] on, him and Gary Neville. So Gary was the wrong influence for him. F****** tell Gary to sit down and shut up, so you can do what you want. You're the manager, you do what you want, not what anyone else wants."
Neville left his England role along with Hodgson after their Euro 2016 exit.
Asked if he would pick players if they are not playing regularly for their club teams, Allardyce said: "Can't play them then. Joe Hart. Jack Wilshere, on the bench for Arsenal. [Alex] Oxlade-Chamberlain on the bench. You can play them, but they're not playing for the club. When they're not playing for the club, they're just short of match practice."
"[The FA] stupidly spent £870 million on Wembley, so they're still paying that debt off. They completely rebuilt it. If they'd built it anywhere else, it would have cost about £400m.
"They completely floored it and then rebuilt the new stadium which is fabulous, but that sort of debt is not really what you want. Most of the money the FA makes will go to the interest on the debt."
"They're all about making money aren't they? You know the FA's the richest football association in the world? Well, I shouldn't say that. They're not the richest at all. What they do is they have the biggest turnover in the world with £325 million."
Among the allegations are that Allardyce agreed to travel to the Far East as a paid ambassador for the fictitious businessmen.
Allardyce explained that principally the speaking role would only conflict with the England manager's role if he was advising on players and transfers, while his agent Mark Curtis, also present at the meeting, said Allardyce would have to run anything by "the powers that be".
Allardyce said: "It's not only the England manager, it's the beauty of being a Premier League manager all them years like me. I have more pictures taken over there than I have here.
"In principle it's OK. The fact I'm going to be turning up on four occasions throughout the year, doing meet and greets and nothing else, so it's not, nobody's going to come back to me and say: 'I met Sam and I invested in this portfolio, he told me to go and buy these young players, and that young player.' So they can't blame me, do you know what I mean?
"That loose basis that we talked about will be OK. It'll be all right. I'm not putting myself in a position that the papers can investigate, cause me a problem, or the FA could."
The Code of Ethics, published by FIFA, says managers and others bound by the code: "Shall avoid any situation that could lead to conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest arise if persons bound by this Code have, or appear to have, private or personal interests that detract from their ability to perform their duties with integrity in an independent and purposeful manner."
The code adds: "Persons bound by this Code may not perform their duties in cases with an existing or potential conflict of interest."
Asked if the firm could bill Allardyce as its "strategic adviser," he said: "Not on the football side, no. If you were buying players, that would be no. Because I couldn't associate my name with any of that."
