There have been calls for more transparency in football transfers and for managers to be banned from taking a cut of the profits - after details emerged during the Harry Redknapp trial.
It was revealed that Mr Redknapp had a clause in his contract at Portsmouth which entitled him to a percentage if he sold a player to another club.
When he was director of football it was 10% - after getting a pay rise when he became manager - the cut fell to 5%. The court was told that Mr Redknapp was entitled to a bonus when Peter Crouch was sold to Aston Villa for £5m in 2002.
But the disclosure has angered Portsmouth fans who feel it is wrong for a manager to personally benefit by selling an asset to a rival club. Bob Beech runs supporters' group Pompey SOS. He told Sky News: "It's a conflict of interest for any manager at the top level of the game to be able to cash in on players.
"If you're trying to build a big, successful side and win things, then an offer comes in for your star striker, you have the conflict of interest - if I keep this guy we could win a few games. If I sell this guy I could buy a new house."
Just over a year after Mr Redknapp left Portsmouth the club was so heavily in debt that it became the first Premier League club to go into administration. After being docked points as a punishment, the club was relegated.
This season it faces a winding up order because of an unpaid tax bill of £1.6m, and players have not been paid their wages on time.
Peter Storrie was chief executive at the time and at a separate trial last year he was acquitted of tax evasion. The court banned reporting of the verdict until after the conclusion of the trial involving Mr Redknapp and the former Portsmouth owner Milan Mandaric.
He told Sky News that the transfer percentage clause in Mr Redknapp's contract was removed once Portsmouth were promoted to the Premier League in 2003.
"I don't have a great problem with it. I know the concern is that a manager might deliberately try to sell a player but the ultimate decision is still with the board or the chairman. So if the board and the chairman doesn't want the player to go, or he doesn't want him to be sold at that price then he will say no.
"The manager doesn't have that influence. At smaller clubs they find it's a good incentive to generate income. And provided it's of a reasonable amount - 5 or 10% - no more than that, it's no different to a sell-on to another club."
Mr Redknapp once stormed out of a television interview when a reporter called him a "wheeler-dealer", because of his reputation for making big changes to his squad.
Mr Storrie said: "It's an unfair tag because the vast majority of the transfers - 99% of them at Portsmouth were done by myself with Milan Mandaric.
"Harry picked the players, of course he did, but he didn't actually deal with the transfers and the negotiations. They were done in the boardroom."
Other managers have demanded and been given contracts which entitle them to share in the profits of a successful transfer. Ian Holloway of Blackpool bought Charlie Adam for £500,000 and in 2010 sold him to Liverpool for £8.5m.
In his Sunday Mirror newspaper column he defended the deal because at the time he took the job, his basic salary was relatively low.
"At first, I was only paid a bonus if a player I had signed was sold. Now I get paid if any member of my squad is sold on. I would never sell a player if the transfer would weaken my team unless I had to - either because it was for the benefit of the club, the player or both," he said in the column.
"If I started selling players just to pick up bonuses then I wouldn't be in a job for very long because we would start losing games, tumble down the table, and pretty soon Blackpool would be searching for a new manager."
And Leyton Orient chairman Barry Hearn is happy to admit that his manager Russell Slade receives a share of the profits he generates in the transfer market. He told Sky News that it was necessary to keep the club in business because it operates at a loss.
"We incentivise our manager to go that yard further and to be that bit better, and we actually are quite happy to pay those type of bonuses.
"Realistically, if Russell Slade brings me in a million pounds from transfer fees and wipes out my loss do I regret giving him some of that? Not in the slightest because the alternative is struggling on with the loss and that's not acceptable."
Former FA chief executive Mark Palios says there would be less criticism if there was more transparency. But he admits it could be viewed as a conflict of interests for a manager to get a percentage of a transfer fee.
"I would rather he was rewarded with bonuses for how the club performed and there may be some element related to how the club performs off the pitch, financially. But I would rather see that than percentage of transfer fees."
If, as predicted, Mr Redknapp becomes the next England manager, his days of wheeling and dealing in the transfer market will come to an end.
A national manager must make do with the players he has got rather than trading with rivals. But there will be plenty of financial rewards if he steers England to long overdue success.
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