The FA has announced that it will investigate reports that a former Premier League player accepted £50,000 to fix a match.

The player who reportedly accepted the bribe got himself deliberately sent off and persuaded three team-mates to get booked in a match that occurred "in Britain", according to The Independent newspaper.

It is alleged that, in exchange, a bookmaker agreed to write off a £50,000 debt which the player had built up.

An FA spokesman said: "We will be making inquiries about this story.

"First we need to find out if the match was inside our jurisdiction - the story says it was in Britain, but we don't know if it was in England."

FA rules forbid players from betting on matches or competitions in which they will compete.

The case came to light at a seminar about gambling at the Sporting Chance Clinic in Hampshire this week.

The player at the centre of the allegations has been treated at Sporting Chance, which receives financial backing from both the FA and the Professional Footballers Association.

Bribery and corruption cases have been relatively rare in English football, although a number of players have admitted being addicted to gambling in the recent past including former Arsenal and England midfielder Paul Merson and current West Ham United player Matthew Etherington.

The last major bribery case in England was in the early 1960s and resulted in jail terms and life bans for 10 players including Sheffield Wednesday's Peter Swan, Tony Kay and David "Bronco" Layne.

In 1915 a first division match in which Manchester United beat Liverpool 2-0 was also found to be fixed and four members of each team were banned for life.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger thinks players should be banned for life if they are found guilty of taking a bribe to throw a game.

"It is surprising news and very bad news," Wenger said of the reports.

"I am convinced that if it is proven they should be banned for life.

"I believe that the most important thing is that our game is clean," he added. "I can't believe it has happened in the Premier League but, if it has, there is no excuse if that is the case for a player to do that."

Wenger said he did not believe there was a big gambling problem among footballers in the Premier League.

"If one player has done that you have 99.9 per cent of players who have never done it. But you have to convict the one player who has done that," he said.

"It's not down to human nature -- everyone has to stand up for their own acts and take responsibility for what he is doing."

Eurosport / Reuters