The findings from the Paqueta investigation are simply disgusting.

West Ham losing out on £80 million, Paqueta missing out on his big move, and his footballing form taking a dive were all due to the long investigation into alleged betting charges.

Now that we have the full information of the report, there’s one question that still remains: why in the world did the investigation take so long?

From day one, the FA knew they had nothing to convict with. Just £47,000 in total bets was placed, under a third of Paqueta’s weekly wage.

There was never any indication that he had agreed to get a yellow card. Mark Clattenburg, a Premier League referee, even described some of the yellows as potentially harsh.

We were all disgusted with how the FA had handled the investigation anyway, but no one could have imagined just how poor it was. They interviewed Paqueta once despite him being willing to attend another.

There’s so many other issues, too many to list, but for me the worst might be the fact that they used an in-house investigator rather than a neutral betting expert (and they still found nothing).

Paqueta will most likely be fined for failing to hand over his phone at one point, but it is only expected to be around one week’s wage. If they cover his legal fees, they’ll be paying him much more than that anyway.

While it’s highly unlikely, I would love to see the FA face repercussions for how they’ve destroyed this man. They deserve it, but it would be extremely difficult for any legal team to pull off in practice.