The  former Manchester United and England skipper Bryan Robson has come under fire from many in the media for being caught out in a Channel 4 sting operation.

Dispatches: ‘How to Buy a Football Club’ secretly filmed Robson telling undercover reporters posing as potential purchasers of a football club, how to make money out of owning a club.

Robbo was quoted as saying:

‘Football lost its sporting thing when the money started coming in and Sky TV and all that. Football’s a business.’

Wow! Whatever next? And here’s me thinking Malcolm Glazer, John W Henry, Randy Lerner and Daniel Levy were all in it for love.

Robbo then went even further advising the reporters: ‘If you want big money, Sheffield Wednesday is the one to do it with. It could be a really big club. Loan deals are the key. If you can get really good players from the Premier League to come down, then that’s your best route.’ also commenting that getting them promoted to the Premier League could be worth £300 million.'

Well stone me. Loaning players from the Premier League, is a good idea and getting promoted to the top tier can make your club worth much more. This is really quite a revelation no wonder there’s been a media outcry that Robson had the audacity to make such claims.

The reason the anti-United media have jumped on the kick Robson while he’s down campaign, is because the former Middlesbrough boss, advised the reporters how to own two football clubs. Robson stated: It is how you name it, because you’re only allowed to own one club.’

That seems to be the smoking gun to many in the media, but what does that really prove? Robson was probably a tad naive speaking to people he didn’t really know about how there are ways round football club ownership, but was he blatantly and actively involved in corruption?

I’d argue he wasn’t, he was merely stating loopholes that anyone who bothers to look into it could have discovered.

Some disgruntled United fans have even tweeted that Robson should be sacked as his role as ambassador to the club.

Yeah why not? Let’s sack a player who at one time was arguably the sole reason United weren’t sitting in the second tier of English football, for being a little naive.

Robson played for United for 13 years with the sort of dedication, commitment and drive that only Roy Keane has ever come close to.

Some Reds may be upset by his actions and feel he’s damaged both his and the club’s reputation, but I’d argue he’s the unfortunate puppet in another “scoop” merely aimed at digging dirt on the one club always guaranteed to give you viewers.

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The programme even tried to stick the knife into Sir Alex Ferguson, with one of the men being exposed -Thai FA advisor Joe Sim claiming to be mates with the United boss and even showing pictures of them together on his phone.

Sim claimed that Fergie took time off from managing United to give him betting tips and promised to loan him players.

Sir Alex’s lawyers subsequently released this statement:

‘It would be fair to say he (Sir Alex) does not see their relationship in the same close way that Mr Sim appears to have represented it.

‘He has never discussed the possibility of loaning any Manchester United players. He may have on occasions given an opinion on the likely outcome of matches but only in the course of normal social discussion.’

The fact that Channel 4 had gone to such lengths to try and involve Sir Alex in their programme when it was obvious from the start he had nothing to do with any of it, was nothing short of pathetic.

Read more of Justin's articles at Red Flag Flying High