Qualif-liars!

British stars 'threw' games to avoid humiliation

"Oh no. I've scored"

"Yay! I've conceded a penalty."

Deep Shite: Mysterious informant

Scandalous allegations of match fixing involving stars from England and Scotland have emerged following defeats in their crunch European Championship qualification ties.

Chucked

Fans were left stunned as they watched England throw away a lead against Russia while Scotland had no answer to the mighty Georgia. But now, a whistle-blowing insider has revealed that key players in both camps DELIBERATELY conspired to make sure their teams failed to qualify.

"Getting to the finals of these tournaments isn't all it's cracked up to be," the informer - code named Deep Shite - told the Onion Bag's intrepid reporter, Larry Gak. "The weight of expectation means that when you eventually get knocked out, the backlash is far worse than if you failed to get there in the first place."

Big boned

"You only have to look at what happened to Frank [Lampard]. Two years ago he was the darling of the media and fan's England player of the year 2004 and 2005. Along comes the World Cup, he has a couple of poor matches and all of a sudden he's relegated to the social status of a paedophile or estate agent.

"We've elevated these players to megastars - capable of commanding huge sponsorship deals and even controling the referee's decisions. They won't want to do anything to jeopardise that - including playing."

Rubbish

The FA have launched a thorough internal investigation to discover if there is any truth in the allegations. "We will leave no stone unturned to quash these ridiculous rumours," FA chief Brian Barwick told us. "And we certainly will not be using them to disguise the fact that we hired an incompetent manager in the first place."

Sp3ktor