By John May

Merrington was always wary of illegal approaches

A former Premiership manager has called for Fifa to address the issue of tapping-up players as seriously as drug-taking in football.

As the row rumbles on over Manchester United's red-carpet treatment for PSV Eijndhoven striker Arjen Robben, former Southampton boss Dave Merrington has called for the game's governing body to mount a moral crusade to retain its credibility.

But he realises that he is up against the justification that when it comes to blagging players, in football might is right.

Man Utd accused over Robben

It must seem like Groundhog Day for PSV president Harry van Raaij as he witnesses a re-run of the way Jaap Stam and Ruud van Nistelrooy were prised away by the Old Trafford club.

Stam claimed in his controversial book he was tapped up by United, while their attentive enquiries into Van Nistelrooy's health after sending him back to the Netherlands with a knee injury was a classic example of gently shaking the tree to see what fruit falls out.

You can go to work one day as a manager and find you have a happy camp, and then go in the next day and find it's changed Former Southampton boss Dave Merrington

Merrington said: "It's always gone on, people have always come in the back door.

"The difference now is that some clubs are so big they feel they can ride roughshod over the rules.

"You can go to work one day as a manager and find you have a happy camp, and then go in the next day and find for some reason you don't understand, that the camp has changed.

"You may not know it until afterwards, but it's because one of the players has been tapped up, and it's got around the dressing-room."

Clubs use the back door route when they feel a knock on the front door will produce a rebuttal or an asking price they do not want to pay.

Man Utd have rolled out the red carpet for Robben

The Bosman Ruling and freedom of contract has strengthened the tapper's arm.

"If you've got a player who has been approached, or told by his agent, or reads in the press that a big club is interested in him it starts things working in his head.

"It's disruptive, and if an approach is not followed through, as a manager you have to then deal with a player who has been unsettled.

"The manager at PSV now knows whatever happens, he is not going to keep Robben.

"The only questions to be answered now is where he goes and how much they get for him.

I think there's got to be a moral code of conduct, and it comes down to a question of what sort of game people want Dave Merrington

"The rules state that you cannot approach a player who is under contract, you have to make your approach through the club.

"But what constitutes an approach?

"There's a difference between bending the rules and breaking them and some people bend them as far as they can.

"Fifa president Sepp Blatter came out strongly recently on the issue of Rio Ferdinand's drugs test, but I would like him to be equally strong on the question of illegal approaches.

"I think there's got to be a moral code of conduct, and it comes down to a question of what sort of game people want.

"At the moment, might is right, and people can express all the moral indignance they like.

"But if a club gets the player it wants, neither it or its fans will be bothered at how they've got him, the ends justify the means."