Don't blame the player, blame the game.
Don't blame the game, blame the authorities.
Although many of our posts focus on the visible manipulation - on the pitch and in the betting markets - it is the invisible corruption that is the most insidious.
If the people towards the top of the pyramid are blind or acquiescent then it is little wonder that there are individuals lower down the hierarchy who are willing to take the dollar on offer.
None of the footballing bodies that we should be able to rely upon are interested in custodianship of the beautiful game. Their interests stretch only to maintaining and enhancing their own power and lining their own pockets.
The Premier League and the FA, UEFA and FIFA, the G14(18) and the European Professional Football Strategy Forum all merely compete over controlling the game at their respective strata.
And don't expect any policing of the corruption by government. By focusing on peripherally relevant issues like protection of the young and vulnerable, Tessa Jowell MP and her chums on the Gambling Commission ignore the key problem - criminality. The Gambling Commission was established both to ensure that gambling is conducted fairly and openly and to keep crime out of gambling. It has failed. Sport in England is rotten to the core. We are dealing with a systemic culture here...
Yesterday, three people appeared at Southwark Crown Court and were sentenced for illegally using technology to beat the casinos. We would have thought that the police time could have been better utilised to confront the institutional corruption endemic in our national sports of football and horseracing. Don't you just love spectacular society?
Who guards the guardians?
