"The circumstances are difficult for us with the new football rules that we have to face".
"It is not possible to have a penalty against Manchester United and it is not possible to have a penalty in favour of Chelsea".
Jose Mourinho is correct to highlight the standard of refereeing in the Premiership title race run-in although the manipulations are more opaquely structured than he believes. As we posted yesterday, the aim of the manipulation is not, in the immediate term, to favour Man Utd over Chelsea or vice versa but rather to ensure that the Premiership race lasts until the final weekend of the season. When league titles are decided early, betting turnover plummets as the layers have discovered in the last three Premierships and in this year's Serie A and Le Championnat competitions. Indeed, the Premiership outcome has not been determined on the final day of the season since 1998/99. Comparing the total global betting turnover on Chelsea and Man Utd's games from this last weekend with the equivalent weekend last season reveals $830million this year and $420million last year - almost twice the turnover. With replication over the final four games of the season, the bookies satchels will accommodate an extra $2billion in total. Additionally, a massive profit was achieved by the bookmakers this weekend through both the main protagonists being held to draws by their opponents (with help from the officials) - draws virtually always being a good result for the layers as leisure punters psychologically prefer to favour one team or the other rather than to sit on the fence.
The only key structure from the aspect of a market analyst is the hidden agenda of the people in charge of the corruption ie what points differential (if any) is preferable leading in to the last round of matches? Our Trading Team have developed numerous different scenarios by computer modelling this final phase of the season but we choose to keep our conclusions isolationist.
Our traders analyse the performance of officials throughout the season both from a perspective of bias with regard to individual clubs and corruption relating to the global betting markets. The complexity of this analysis provides a critical trading edge which we achieve through psychological profiling of referees and real-time assessment of their manipulations. Historically, the referees always favoured the top sides but, in recent years, different structural manipulations have been utilised. It is interesting to look at our proprietary club bias ratings for the last two seasons - the figures below represent an index whereby 100 is equivalent to total bias in favour of a team and 0 means total bias against a club's interests.
2005/06
1. Arsenal 82
2. Liverpool 79
3. West Ham Utd 78
4. Fulham/Charlton 63
6. Tottenham 60
7. Blackburn 58
8. Chelsea 52
9. Everton/Aston Villa/Boro 50
12. Man City/Man Utd/Portsmouth 43
15. Bolton 33
16. Wigan 31
17. Newcastle 30
18. West Brom 28
19. Sunderland 27
20. Birmingham 21
The most interesting features of these 2005/06 figures are i) there was a bias in favour of London teams with all six representatives of the capital appearing in the top eight places; ii) the three relegated teams occupy the bottom three places which is generally indicative of a private agenda; iii) the fact that Chelsea were favoured least out of the capital's teams relates to attempts by the relevant bodies to ensure a tight title race.
2006/07
1. Newcastle 74
2. Man Utd/Aston Villa 61
4. Man City/Everton 60
6. Tottenham 56
7. Charlton 55
8. Arsenal/Liverpool 53
10. Sheffield Utd 50
11. Chelsea 48
12. Blackburn/Boro/Watford 47
15. West Ham 46
16. Reading 45
17. Portsmouth/Fulham 43
19. Bolton 38
20. Wigan 18
Observing the 2006/07 data in a similar manner reveals i) Man Utd have been more favoured than Chelsea by referees; ii) Wigan are not wanted in the Premiership; iii) Arsenal's fall from top to eighth has been covered frequently on this blog and the impact is all the greater due to the particular games in which the PGMOB have targeted the Gunners; iv) West Ham's fall from 3rd to 14th and Newcastle's rise from 17th to top place have levels of intrigue; v) Wigan apart, the bias hierarchy has been flattened for the current season.
But before we leave Chelsea and Jose Mourinho, we believe that the special one should also focus on the manipulations of Frank Lampard (the fake Gerrard). Regular readers will be aware that we are not too keen on Mr Lampard's hidden agendas (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/03/to-be-quite-frank.html). Yesterday, Chelsea had to perform without Ballack, Carvalho and Robben on the pitch and with Lampard on the pitch but merely going through the motions (check out his Opta statistics). We believe that Lampard is far more concerned with Wednesday's head to head with Stevie G - progression in the Champions League and winning back his England position are all that matter to Mr Lampard (apart from lots of money and an even greater amount of pies, of course!).
