After fifty minutes of Manchester United's game at Everton, even money (2.00) was available on backing the Reds outright to win the Premiership title. By the end of last week's concurrent games, the price was 1/25 (1.04) and, following yesterday's derby victory against Michael Ball, 1/100 (1.01) is the best price available. What a difference a week can make at this stage of the season. Indeed, what a difference forty minutes can make!
The season is creating the constructs that we predicted across the board - Chelsea/Man Utd FA Cup Final; Liverpool/Milan Champions League Final following three English teams in the semi finals; Man Utd for the Premiership; Wigan to be relegated; West Ham United to stay up. We are not surprised that our assertions have born fruit but monitoring the last week from a spectacular society angle reveals the prime issues underpinning a period in this most manipulated of footballing leagues.
After weeks of providing Chelsea with an advantage of playing later than United, the television companies allowed concurrency last weekend. Yet, even this attempt at meritocracy was undermined by the Chelsea game kicking off four minutes earlier than the Everton versus Man Utd game in another piece of sloppy organisation. The key volatile market that was being traded in running was the Premiership outright market. As events unfolded at Goodison and Stamford Bridge, the relative outright prices of the two protagonists oscillated wildly. It is imperative when trading these volatile real-time markets to have real-time visual access to the events. Absolutely do not depend on the broadcasters. For example, the Chelsea game had reached one goal apiece PRIOR to Sky viewers of the United game being informed of the opening goal at Chelsea - the proprietary trading of Sky people and the book balancing of SkyBet being markedly more important than provision of a service. First mover advantage is critical in these linked dynamic markets as price and value are frequently illusory. By the time Phil Neville had done the business to deflate an Everton strangely exclusive of Tim Howard (who was illegally omitted from the Toffees team despite his transfer becoming permanent), those of us who were always on United were left with well valued profit. The other market that we heavily traded in running was Liverpool to qualify for the Champions League final which became more and more certain as Chelsea's frustrations and injuries blossomed. As for the individual games, nobody in possession of their marbles would have traded on Everton against their controlling superiors while Chelsea was only a valid position until Carvalho was replaced by Lampard. It is a pity that the authorities do not allow more concurrent externalised linked markets as they confer significant value for the discerning analyst.
Last Saturday also provided us with latest match in the Premiership involving a late change of referee. To date, sixteen matches have been similarly blighted this season and it is revealing to examine the type of matches targeted by the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB). On closer inspection, several patterns appear. Firstly, Portsmouth are involved in five of these matches which is statistically relevant. Secondly, the targeting of Wigan has, as part of it's structure, the utilisation of late refereeing changes against the Lancastrian's interests (on four occasions). Key decisions in these events have cost Wigan Athletic four points which would be a rather key adjustment to the corruption of the relegation race. When Paul Jewell steps up to his disciplinary hearing, he will have some strong arguments on his side relating to the targeting of his team by PGMOB officials on a range of levels. For instance, Jewell's charge relates to the mugging of Wigan undertaken by Phil Dowd at Arsenal where the performance of the referee was the sole determinant of the result. Dowd should have given Wigan a penalty that would have extended their lead to 2-0 with minimal time left and Arsenal down to 10 men. With his intriguing bias profile, Dowd was never going to let this happen and, yet, the man has not refereed a Premiership game in the three months since his hilarious manipulations which is revealing in itself.
And, to round last weekend off in style, the long awaited return of Michael Owen was almost tempting enough to watch... Almost! One anecdote to sum up our views on Mr Owen. When the little imp collapsed to the ground in last year's World Cup, the long-term markets moved against England's interests to take account of the injury. Top professionals moved to support England, however, although Lampard was still a major issue. Think about it...
The layers were always looking forward to the Manchester derby as an earner with United being tired following the Champions League exertions and City up for it. Then Joey Barton goes loco and motivational mistargeting consumes City's planning and the game loses it's potential both as an event and as an excuse to print money for the bookmakers. Michael Ball apart, this was not an overly competitive game - there were less fouls in the Manchester derby than ANY other Premiership game on Saturday (and that includes the end of season nonsense games where nobody has anything to play for). Additionally, our psychological profiling of the key individuals within the game often reveals little gems and Ferguson, in our estimation, was aware of the outcome prior to the match. Referee Styles was virtually powerless to impose his controller's strategy although his remarkably generous penalty for City was a Styles special that, unfortunately for the PGMOB, was dependent on Vassell's professionalism.
And so, the final piece of the jigsaw remains... Sky and the bookmakers would appreciate the Premiership title still being an ongoing market when United visit Chelsea on Wednesday and, hopefully, when the final round of games takes place next Sunday. Chelsea need to be victorious in both the Arsenal and Man Utd games to achieve this latter aim for the layers. Very close monitoring of today's markets will reveal whether the game is still on or whether the game is up.
Finally, we are selling an inside solution to the FA Cup Final between Man Utd and Chelsea. To take account of the value of our information together with the marketability of the event, we are charging $20,000 for exclusive access. Contact in the usual manner...
