YESTERDAY'S publication of the Quest team's report into alleged transfer irregularities provides conclusive proof that someone has made an awful lot of money out of football.

Sadly, though, that person is the report's author, Lord Stevens, rather than one of the unscrupulous football agents who undoubtedly exist within the footballing world.

After 15 months of supposedly exhaustive investigation, 15 agents and hangers-on have received something akin to a rap on the knuckles for failing to provide a few print-outs and the Quest team have suggested that the Football Association continue to investigate 17 transfers. Hardly a satisfactory conclusion.

Meanwhile, Lord Stevens walks away with a hefty slice of the £1.3m that the Premier League has paid for an inquiry that has told us nothing that we did not know anyway.

It is hardly revelatory to learn that Pini Zahavi, one of the world's richest football agents, is reluctant to hand over his bank statements.

Similarly, anyone who watched last autumn's Panorama programme on the BBC will not have been surprised to learn that Sam Allardyce's former business relationship with his son, Craig, was open to criticism.

What is rather more of a shock, however, is to learn that a former Metropolitan policeman has been paid more than a million pounds to tell us as much.

An inquiry that was supposed to lift the lid on the seamier side of the football business has ended with the situation more confused than ever.

Have there been illegal payments from agents? Is the Premier League bung-free? I've read through the Quest report twice now and I have to admit that I still don't have a clue.

Back in December, Stevens was claiming that he needed further time to investigate the 17 outstanding transfers that he was reluctant to sign off.

Six months later, and nothing has changed apart from the size of the cheque that the Premier League has paid for his services.

Nobody has been directly accused of anything more serious that obstructing the inquiry, an offence which is not sufficiently grave enough to lead to a charge anyway.

The entire investigation has done little more than scratch the surface of a profession which continues to indulge a nudge-nudge, wink-wink mentality that would not be tolerated in any other business turning over hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

Just this week, Joey Barton's transfer to Newcastle involved a £300,000 loyalty bonus that was only disclosed thanks to a leak from the Manchester City end of the deal.

Such secretive arrangements are part and parcel of the footballing world, a world in which money originating from supporters' pockets swirls around a complex vortex of players, agents and assorted representatives.

In a sense, it is not Stevens' fault that he was unable to unravel the web. His inquiry was devoid of legal powers, therefore he was unable to subpoena agents to give evidence or seize overseas transaction records and bank accounts.

It was folly to expect all agents to cooperate with his investigation, and even more naïve to assume that those who did would not have made sure that they had covered their tracks before they did so.

There was no midnight knock on the door here. Stevens' mode of inquiry was choreographed months in advance, enabling anyone harbouring even a trace of guilt to make alternative arrangements.

But if this was the case then why weren't we told? Why were we assured that the Quest team would be boldly going where nobody had ever gone before, charged with the task of clearing up the current confusion once and for all?

Instead, yesterday's events merely added to a sense of football existing in some kind of lawless void.

Money comes in and money goes out, but what happens in between is anyone's guess. The 15-month Quest inquiry provides irrefutable evidence of that.