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Hot Football Allardyce Gossip: Nobody knows who will be England manager, 10 bosses ‘took bungs’

When the England manager gets sacked one game into the job because he was caught on camera saying stuff about Prince Harry’s bum and drinking white wine out of a pint glass, there’s really no need for the papers to fabricate any transfer rumours, because for once the real world is far more ridiculous than the contents of their imaginations.

Therefore, most of the tabloids have taken a break from pretending that Manchester United are going to buy Gareth Bale and are instead focused on the serious business of a) which manager will replace Sam Allardyce and b) which bosses have been taking bungs.

We’ll start with the most interesting one: bungs. Obviously, Hot Football Transfer Gossip is not suggesting that any specific managers have been involved in that kind of thing, but the latest revelations from the Telegraph indicate that eight of them have been.

The paper says this figure includes “current and former” Premier League bosses, along with two Championship gaffers and an “assistant manager at a leading club” who it will expose this week and who is presumably in Top Man right now buying five hoodies and 10 pairs of sunglasses. The other names have all been passed to the police.

Heavy stuff, and certainly far heavier than the next search for an England manager, which already has a whiff of farce about it.

Nobody seems to know who, if anyone, will succeed Gareth Southgate after his four-game interim role, but plenty of the newspapers have opinions about it.

The Sun thinks Southgate will be given the role permanently if he impresses in his four matches, the Times’ Henry Winter is adamant that Eddie Howe should get the job and the Mail’s Martin Samuel believes the FA should go all-out to secure Arsene Wenger - a point of view he shares with the Daily Star.

Most powerfully of all, legendary Three Lions midfield maestro Ray Parlour reckons it has to be Steve Bruce (Sun). Personally, Hot Football Transfer Gossip thinks it should be Ray Parlour.

Meanwhile the Telegraph, quite astoundingly, are currently running a Twitter poll asking “who should be the next England manager?” and their four options are Bruce, Southgate, Alan Pardew and Nigel Pearson.

That’s our choice, is it?? You’d think they’d be a bit less brazen about broadcasting the dismal mess they have caused for the national game. Stupid investigative journalism. Why can’t they just stick to fabricating transfer rumours…

@darlingkevin