Based on The Economist's Big Mac Index which utilises the economic fallacy of purchasing power parity to determine which global currencies are over/under-valued, Football is Fixed introduced the Bum Ref Index in November. This assesses the negative impact that Premiership referees have on the games in which they officiate together with our proprietary individual psychological profiling.
The worst seven referees to date are listed below:
17th and Worst - Wiley 3.42
16th and Relegation - Riley 3.30
15th and Relegation - Webb 3.17
14th - Foy 3.11
13th - Rennie 3.10
12th - Poll 3.03
11th - Dowd 2.93
There are some interesting associated angles that should be addressed here.
Firstly, three of England's four UEFA referees (Poll, Webb and Riley) are among the six officials that have had the most volatile effect on match (and betting market) outcomes. The English referees have already been demoted in status within UEFA due to their collective decision making in the Champions League and UEFA Cup this season (as previously posted on this site).
Secondly, Wiley, Dowd, Webb and Poll have been selected by the PGMOB to officiate in a large number of the live televised events. Over the season to date, Webb and Wiley have each had 13 live games; Styles 12; Poll and Dowd 11. Indeed, Keith Hackett and the PGMOB need to explain why there are such discrepancies in the choice of officials for the live (mainly Sky) events. As a comparison, look at the table below which shows both the total number of games and the number of live games that individual referees have been chosen to officiate in.
Gallagher 10 games in total/0 live games
Rennie 13 games/ 2 live
Webb 24 games/13 live
Wiley 25 games/13 live
Dowd 17 games/11 live
Poll 22 games/11 live
Styles 21 games/12 live
Bennett 23 games/10 live
Dean 21 games/10 live
These totals are revealing in a number of ways. Gallagher was punished earlier this season with a two month ban for not only failing to send Thatcher off for his assault on Pedro Mendes but for getting in the way of some very serious professional insider trading that existed on that particular Man City versus Portsmouth match. We believe that Gallagher's ban was related to the latter rather than the former. Mike Dean was banned a couple of years back for his involvement in an online betting site but has evidently been forgiven to the extent that Sky are pressurising for him to be the ref for the Chelsea/United Cup Final. The only Black official is Uriah Rennie and the PGMOB has rewarded him with a couple of minor live games and yet Howard Webb who has exhibited a disturbing racist bias in his officiating in the last 15 months (as we have posted previously) is one of the two officials most prized for achieving the required outcomes in live events. And how Dowd with his intriguing bias profile can be "live" in a remarkable 65% of his officiated games is simply laughable.
Thirdly, four new officials have been introduced to the Premiership roster during season 2006/07 - Mason, Tanner, Probert and Stroud. We believe that no new official will be introduced unless they have exhibited a suitable level of acquiescence in their lower league officiating and the performances of this gang of four have revealed nothing to lead us to alter our opinions. In fact, Lee Mason is evidently being fast-tracked to a significantly higher status within the game as he has already been selected for three live games.
In that it matters, Halsey is the current Bum Ref Index leader with an index total of 2.24.
It simply should not matter who the referee is but, in the corrupt world of Premiership football, no other factor is so important as the choice of official. But don't just take our word for it. Monitor the global betting markets in the hours after the PGMOB has released it's selection of referees for any future round of games. The markets accommodate information at speed and considerable trading is undertaken based solely on this information.
Wait for Hackett and then back it!!!
