The ongoing campaign to get David "Calamity" James back into the England side continues apace. If his supporters were merely myopic, this would not be of any consequence. Unfortunately, there is reason behind their agenda.
One of his advocates, unsurprisingly, is Pompey manager Redneck Redknapp who gushed after the Spurs game "He is the best I have worked with and if he is not good enough to play in the England team there is something wrong."
All things being equal, James is an adequate top flight keeper - roughly equivalent in stature to Howard, Sorensen or Schwarzer but not in the same league as Robinson, Cech, Van der Sar, Given or Friedel. But where Mr James is involved, things are anything but equal.
Wherever James has played in recent years, our Trading Team have refused to back his team in the betting markets unless we are party to key insider information on the events. But we have virtually always been able to predict the games where David James I (the keeper with great hands and reflexes) becomes David James II (Calamity). A recent example was the game at Bolton on Saturday - see post at: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2006/12/saint-tony-jumps-ship.html.
Cause and effect are often shrouded in noise in both football and financial markets but there are certain manipulative structures that stand out robustly. David James is one such structure. Of course, it could be pure chance that his performances are correlated with certain patterns in certain betting markets but, chance or not, we utilise this knowledge very successfully in our proprietary trading.
Even without access to privileged professional analytical databases, one should remember Denmark when he claimed that he forgot to do his warm-up exercises, the late double disaster against France at Euro 2004 and countless episodes at Anfield and Man City when hearing the endless waffle about James being the best keeper in the Premiership.
Betting turnover on England internationals is stratospheric in comparison with most other markets for the key British bookmakers. There is a patriotic kneejerk reaction that leads some individuals to blindly bet on all England games out of some misguided loyalty to queen and empire. The bookmakers allow two attitudes towards very liquid markets. If the market is truly competitive due to value of the prize on offer eg The Derby or the World Cup Final, play the overrounds and the margins and take your profit. For all other events, seek to control the market. When all squad members are fit, we believe that there are currently three players in or around the England squad that are dodgy. These sleeping moles are not active on every event and, sometimes, they may be active on only the first half of a match (a very common manipulation in England internationals is to undermine the Eng at H-T/ Eng at F-T positions taken when England are at short odds).
Being Irish, it is of no interest to me to offer help to the England team! But, if I were involved in the England set-up, I would do like Van Basten in the Netherlands and only pick the young and up-coming players who have had less time to be corrupted by the game (unlike Van Basten however, I would select Black players - see forthcoming series of posts on racism). It is our belief that football mirrors politics in that the longer a group of individuals have power, the more corrupting that power becomes. As top political and playing careers are finite, the pressure to make hay while the sun shines increases towards the end of an individuals ability to manipulate.
None of the above implies that David James himself bets on football matches or that he takes money to throw football matches. In a masonic game like modern Premiership football, there are many feedback loops between the different power strata within the game. Analysts can only detect certain patterns and continue to build the giant jigsaw which is the holistic overview of the market sector.
Just don't put him in goal!
