Following the meeting between Keith Hackett of the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) and BBC reporters and journalists late in January regarding criticism of match referees on BBC sports channels and productions, our traders have been monitoring the Beeb's output closely to determine which individuals (if any) have taken the bait.
Step forward Mark Lawrenson...
Now, I actually quite like Lawro's droll humour and his ability to morph into the required entertainment mode depending on the IQ of his co-commentator. The man is sharp (apart from his dress sense) and intelligent. But, unless he is taking Cynical Realism to new levels, he is going to have to develop a slightly more nuanced approach to his referee love-ins. His mild flirting with Mike Riley in the Man Utd/Portsmouth FA Cup tie was totally eclipsed by last night's ménage à trois with Guy Mowbray (commentator) and Chris Foy (referee) for the Bolton/Arsenal event.
Within the insider circles of the game - the institutions, the larger bookmakers, the authorities, the media, management, senior players, agents and in the boardrooms - there are effectively four strata of knowledge relating to the corruption that is endemic in English football. Some individuals are blindly unaware - these peripherals are akin to the nice local bobby. Then there are the people who are aware that something is going on but accommodate the structure as it pays for the mortgage and the kid's education - not great but fair enough...
The two top strata are the key problem areas and these are the strata upon which my Trading Team focus all of our attention.
Back to Lawro. There were eight contentious decisions in last night's Bolton versus Arsenal match. Bolton claimed 5 penalties - they were given none. Arsenal claimed 2 penalties and Brazilianed both of them over the bar. To kill the tie off near the end, Foy dismissed Bolton's Tal Ben-Haim. Without getting too far into the intricacies and probabilities relating to these eight decisions, the imbalance that all eight favoured Arsenal is surely some slight cause for concern. Not with Lawro. "Great refereeing!" he eulogised several times among other grovelling platitudes. It wasn't great refereeing at all. Foy evidently, subconsciously or not, was making key decisions favouring the Gooners - 8/0 differentials just don't happen. Slo-mo images showed several of the decisions to be patently incorrect but Lawro and Mowbray remained oblivious to how patently obvious their reporting shenanigans were to many of their viewers.
And this is a real problem area for the corrupt corporates who are taking over the game (and represent the top strata as mentioned above). The effective media output of the second and third strata in the power hierarchy is dependent on people like Shearer, Gray, Lineker, Keys, Lawrenson, Richardson, Childs etc. But, unlike other areas of society, football is in the blood of a massive grouping of people. From day one we were out there kicking balls - it defined the childhoods of 95% of my generation in Manchester and, undoubtedly, across most other cities and towns in Britain. When spectacular society bullshits the population on politics, finance, economics or business, they can convince. When they try it with football, forget it pal. The top strata are taking the piss out of a numerically large, sector-educated and, somewhat, disenfranchised (ie many of these individuals have been priced out of live games as football has moved "upmarket") grouping of people. Not content with destroying the spectacle of our really beautiful game, they also mistakenly believe that they can turn these disenfranchised supporters into armchair gambling addicts placing their Skybets on whoever Richard Keys and Andy Gray tell them to. Once again, forget it pal...
It simply is not possible to get beyond fooling some of the people for some of the time.
PS Some of our people are in Kerkyra getting the new offices sorted for launch of Dietrological Gold (we'll be putting out a relevant post in next couple of days). Next door is one of Corfu Town's finest restaurants so the morning shift were invited to watch all 8 decisions in the Bolton/Arsenal game in real-time without knowing the decisions of Foy. The consensus of six Corfiot waiters is 2 of Bolton's penalties should have been given; the sending off was valid; only the second Arsenal penalty was valid.
Obviously, this doesn't prove anything other than the key fact that these decisions were not finitely correct. There are probabilities and different shades of "correctness". Massive imbalance is statistically significant.
Finally, last night's match was great theatre but an appropriate final act would have fairly been a penalty shoot-out after a 3-3 draw. The creative rewriting of classics seldom works.
