For the second time in a couple of weeks, there was a late change of referee for a televised Arsenal game. High profile Rob Styles came in for lower tier Foy and harshly sent off Gilberto Silva after 13 minutes and acted leniently towards a series of robust challenges from the likes of Savage, Tugay and Neill. There was a complex global betting market on this game and Styles' performance was revealing. Wenger and Arsenal rose above such manipulations in style - I'm reluctantly developing a sympathetic support for the Gunners this season.
See previous post on the machinations against Arsenal at: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/01/six-three-to-arsenal.html.
In another multi-layered market, some British bookies were also breathing a sigh of relief after Christanval's late equaliser for Fulham at West Ham. Graham Poll's sending off of Zamora and 5 minutes of added time certainly helped. Incidentally, while we are on the subject of the Hammers, they have developed an entirely different market template since the arrival of Curbishley - not surprisingly, the same template existed at Charlton when Curbishley and Day were in control. Yesterday, the decision to replace Green with the ineffective Carroll contributed to two lost points.
A big trading day for us yesterday with 6 winners from 6 trading positions as subscribers to Dietrological will testify.
PS Post Sunday Update - 2 minutes into injury time at Messina and we were about to achieve a 9 out of 9 trading weekend. Then Parisi levelled and, even though Rocchi gave Roma a one man advantage for the final minutes, we were undone. 8/9...
