Crystal Palace’s sporting director Iain Moody, a former Cardiff employee, is being fingered as the culprit, but unless he offered financial inducement or broke the law of the land by, for instance, tapping telephones, this drama goes nowhere.

There is no Premier League law to specifically govern phoning a friend and calling in a favour; not even one to cover hiding in the bushes at a training session. It happens.

Every club would like to discover in advance what team they will be facing. That is why they send scouts to provide a detailed report on the opposition, their strengths and weaknesses and what occurs at set-plays.
Beyond that is the world of contacts. Who you know, what they know. Agents, old friends, mates of the manager, give them a call, find out what they’ve heard.

This won’t be news to Cardiff’s management team and, if it is, they might as well change the kit from red shirts to short trousers, neckscarf and woggle.
In a sorry attempt to reclaim points they do not deserve, Cardiff are now relying on the Premier League’s catch-all good faith rules, which are vague enough to apply in extreme cases. Rule B15 states: ‘In all matters and transactions relating to the league each club shall behave towards each other club and the league with the utmost good faith.’

In addition, there is a chairman’s charter insisting: ‘We will ensure that our clubs behave with the utmost good faith and honesty to each other, and do not unjustly criticise or disparage one another and maintain confidences.’

Calling an old pal to find out Cardiff’s starting XI is not considered a contravention of those articles. Paying an old pal, or tapping an old pal might be. Yet all the evidence suggests that Moody collected his information freely and without skulduggery, inducement or coercion. Indeed, Cardiff’s bigger problem is that there seems to have been at least one employee, and perhaps as many as three, who felt greater loyalty to Moody than they did to the new regime.

That is what owner Vincent Tan finds so humiliating, having sacked and disparaged Moody earlier in the season. How mortifying it must have been to then see him return, with Palace, and so comprehensively dismantle this brave new world.

‘Where Tan Sri goes we will follow,’ sing the Malaysian employees of the Cardiff owner in a cringeworthy 60th birthday video.

That love is clearly not being felt at his football club, though. To Cardiff fans, the complaint to the Premier League is embarrassing, smacks of naivety — and is, bottom line, doomed.

Tan changed Cardiff’s shirts from blue to red because he believed it was lucky and ended up bottom of the league.

He sacked a manager doing a good job, Malky Mackay, and replaced him with the novice Solskjaer. Now this. Without a financial paper trail or a bug in the manager’s office traceable to Moody, there really is no case to answer.

The Premier League are humouring Tan even by promising to investigate.