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 and the institutional and individual manipulations relating to bookmakers, clubs and other corrupt power loci. The final end of season positions are listed below:
16. Wiley 4.13
15. Webb 3.97
14. Styles 3.76
13. Dowd 3.75
12. Bennett 3.30
11. Poll 3.20
10. Rennie 3.11
8. Dean 3.04
8. Foy 3.04
7. Mason 2.76
6. Riley 2.74
5. Walton 2.64
4. Gallagher 2.61
3. Atkinson 2.64
2. Halsey 2.47
And the most meritocratic, least biased and least corrupt referee for 2006/07 is Mark Clattenburg at 2.30. Marriner, Tanner, Probert and Stroud officiated in too few games to develop a database.
Pulling a few revealing pieces of information from the data:
* Trading rooms have been aware of the momentum towards the Professional Game Match Officials Board's (PGMOB) target of achieving a select group of ten referees for Premiership matches. The ten officials that were selected most frequently for Premiership games this season refereed 273 of the 380 games (72% of the matches). Indeed, taking the leading fourteen officials into account shows that only 39 games in the entire season were not under the jurisdiction of this elite group. The absolute minimum structure for ultimate control of the Premiership is ten referees but, obviously, injuries, bans, vacations and European appointments demand that the actual pool be larger than this. Game Theoretic modelling suggests that fourteen is the actual minimum number of referees required for absolute corruption as one has to take account of the critical nature of the 4th official in all live Premiership Sky matches. No other major league globally relies on such a small grouping of officials and there must be a real concern that such a grouping can have such a major impact on the highly liquid global markets.
* One of the justifications presented by the PGMOB to support such a limited grouping of referees is that these officials are, in some manner, superior to your average referee. Some points on this smokescreen. The five referees utilised most frequently throughout the season in Premiership games were Wiley and Poll (31), Styles (29), Webb and Bennett (28). If the PGMOB's arguments stood the test of scrutiny, these officials, being allegedly better than the norm, would be expected to be challenging Mark Clattenburg as the least manipulative ref. Yet, these five individuals occupy 5 of the bottom 6 rankings in our index! Visually, one sees far more meritocratic officiating in the lower English leagues and there is extensive contrary evidence to the assertions of the powers that be.
* The referees do not all sing from the same hymn sheet. Fragmented cartelisation, in all of it's forms, is an incredibly complex area of analysis. With regard to Premiership football officials and with an appreciate nod in the direction of Anna Karenina, all honest referees resemble one another, each corrupt referee is corrupt in his own way.
* Televised games have markedly greater betting turnover and analysis of the live appearances of our little mafia enhances the overall model. Over 50% of the games refereed by Dowd, Styles or Wiley were Sky events and, further, over 40% of Webb, Dean and Poll's events were Murdoch games too. In comparison, Gallagher was selected on just one occasion (7%).
* And the power extends over to the FA Cup with only Bennett, Webb, Dean and Wiley officiating in three or more live televised games.
* Dietrological undertake extensive psychological profiling of all key market participants and, with regard to the refereeing, the above rankings are supported by a more thorough micro-analysis although, for isolationist reasons, we choose not to publicly discuss these areas.
My Trading Team approach all of our analysis and modelling in a blue sky manner. We never approach a particular project with prescribed attitudes to the market operators and power structures. One of the prime reasons that we are able to undertake high level Consultancy Projects in collaboration with leading Premiership clubs (as well as other leading European outfits) is our impartiality. The justifications for squeaky-cleanliness in one's analysis are overbearingly obvious. We analyse the markets to make our living trading on such markets. If we were to approach these markets with proprietary but fallacious blinkers, our trading activities would suffer. Furthermore, establishing ourselves as independent analysts results in our statistics, data and research achieving an extra level of status to all of our consultancies. In contrast, numerous amateurish market participants and insiders create false constructs based on limited knowledge of a market sector. The inability to create Bayesian visions results in these people developing absolutist positions that are simply absurd eg referees being biased towards, say, Manchester United or Chelsea as an actual power structure. Not so. Undoubtedly, the big clubs have clout but the statistics show such generalisations to be hollow and ludicrously simplistic - taking into account club hierarchical power is but merely a cornerstone for a high rise piece of model construction. A little knowledge is a non-profitable thing...
All of our team are in agreement that we would prefer a less corrupt version of the game and we will continue to publicise the manipulations against our game's interests wherever such corruption is rooted. Once we become certain of the negative input of a individual (or a group of individuals), we trade it but, once the information is in the price for the professionals, we will share our observations with Dietrological clients and Football Is Fixed readers.
