Bungbusted! - Stevens report will name and shame agents

The report will name the middle men who have failed to co-operate with — or have been caught out by — the investigators.

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Also revealed will be the transfers the probe team cannot sign off for a variety of reasons, including serious breaches of the rules.

The Stevens-led Quest inquiry has cost around £1.3million, and the Premier League and FA have agreed that his investigative unit will now be given full authority to continue to conduct random audits on transfers at regular intervals.

Stevens had wanted to go further, with his operators effectively becoming a clearing house for transfers, but the FA have rejected that, preferring to use their own beleaguered compliance unit.

The inquiry seems to have made little progress since last December, when Stevens announced that exactly the same number of agents and transfers — out of the total of 362 from the Premiership between January 1 2004 and January 31 2006 — were under suspicion.

At least they are now being made public.

The former Metropolitan Police chief passed evidence from his findings at the end of 2006 to police, customs officers and the Inland Revenue, but the only sign of any further action from them has been the arrest by the City of London police of an unnamed 61-year-old from Manchester, who has minimal links with football.

Nearly all' the 17 transfers, according to Stevens last December, concern players who have been transferred abroad and involve moneytrails to the Continent.

The interim report cleared all managers, clubs and officials from any wrongdoing, but the list of transfers will at least reveal which clubs occupied the Stevens team the most.

The report has been with the Premiership since before the end of the season, but PL chief executive Richard Scudamore has been preoccupied over the last few weeks with the furore surrounding West Ham's survival in the Premiership at the expense of Sheffield United.

He may, however, decide to make Stevens' findings public today, the same day that the Premiership publish their fixtures for the new season.

That would be seen by some as attempting to bury some negative news.

The inquiry came about at Scudamore's initiative after ex-England coach Sven Goran Eriksson's claims of bungtaking in the Premiership when being duped by the News of the World in the fake sheik' sting.