THE football agent at the centre of the Daily Telegraph's "Football For Sale" sting that implicated Saints assistant manager Eric Black insists that all of those caught up in the investigation are "innocent".

Black, who remains in his job at St Mary's, was filmed at a New Forest Hotel by the newspaper during a meeting as part of an undercover sting.

In the subsequent story printed by the Telegraph it stated that Claude Puel's number two had given undercover reporters advice on how to bribe officials at other clubs.

Black's representatives released a statement at the time to say that "any suggestion that he was complicit in such discussions is false" while Saints also said that they are fully committed to investigating the situation.

Football agent Scott McGarvey is also implicated in similar stings on QPR manager Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Sam Allardyce, who lost his job as England manager as a result of the stories after just 67 days in charge.

But McGarvey, who say the FA overreacted by getting rid of Allardyce, insists that they were all entrapped with a "capital E" by the national newspaper.

"Capital E. Absolutely. One hundred per cent," he said. "This is not Monday to Friday. This is 13 weeks of dozens of emails, hundreds of texts, hundreds of calls and bringing more than seven or eight innocent people into this story."