Eni Aluko to learn whether Mark Sampson has been found guilty of racial abuse

Eni Aluko is on the brink of learning whether Mark Sampson has been found guilty of racially abusing her and her England team-mate, or whether he has been cleared for a third time.

Telegraph Sport can reveal that the Football Association is planning to submit the findings of a reopened investigation into the Sampson scandal to a parliamentary inquiry into sport governance ahead of a Digital, Culture, Media & Sport select committee hearing on Wednesday.

The FA last month reinstructed the barrister Katharine Newton, who carried out the second of two probes into the affair, after Drew Spence came forward to corroborate Aluko’s claims that Sampson had asked her mixed-race Chelsea team-mate how many time she had been arrested.

Aluko also alleges Sampson - sacked last month over “inappropriate” relationships with players in his previous job - told her personally to make sure her Nigerian relatives did not bring Ebola to an England match at Wembley.

Provided it is ready in time, Newton’s report into her reopened investigation will be issued tomorrow to the FA, which would provide the findings to the DCMS select committee for publication on Wednesday.

The committee will then hear testimony from both Aluko - who will also submit written evidence - and her former England team-mate, Lianne Sanderson, before grilling FA chairman Greg Clarke, chief executive Martin Glenn, technical director Dan Ashworth and human resources director Rachel Brace over their handling of the Sampson scandal.

Any guilty verdict against Sampson would pile the pressure on the FA amid one of the worst crises in its history, triggered when it emerged this summer it had paid Aluko tens of thousands of pounds following her complaints against him.

It transpired it had done so despite two inquiries clearing him of wrongdoing, the second of them conducted independently by Newton after the Professional Footballers’ Association branded the first “a sham which was not designed to establish the truth but intended to protect Mark Sampson”.

Neither investigation interviewed key witnesses, including Spence, in order to corroborate or otherwise the claims of Aluko, who herself refused to cooperate with the Newton inquiry until it was reopened last month.

It remains unclear whether Newton has also interviewed England players Jill Scott, Izzy Christiansen and Jo Potter, all of whom were potential witnesses to the alleged 2015 ‘arrest’ comment.

But she is expected to have examined contemporaneous text messages between squad members discussing Sampson’s alleged comments around the time they are said to have been made.

Sampson has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and being cleared for a third time could embolden him to pursue legal action against the FA over his sacking.

He turns 35 on Wednesday and, until becoming engulfed by the current scandal, looked to have a long career in the game ahead of him after leading England to successive semi-finals at the 2015 World Cup and this summer’s European Championship.

He was dismissed on the basis of a safeguarding report into him by the FA back in 2015, triggered by an investigation into his conduct in his previous job at Bristol Academy.

The findings of that report, which Clarke and Glenn said they had not seen in full until last month, had not been considered serious enough at the time to warrant anything more than Sampson being placed on an education course.

The FA would find any unfair or wrongful dismissal claim by him much easier to defend were Newton to find him guilty of abusing Spence, Aluko or both - as well as failing to admit to it.