There are only five Premiership teams that Dietrological or, for that matter, the individual members of our Trading Team would consider working alongside on a consultative level. We refuse to get involved with teams linked to gangsters, bookmakers, arms dealers, online casinos, private equity-heads, human rights abusers and professional gamblers (whether at management or player level). Three of these five outfits are on borrowed time which is hardly surprising in a Premiership that actively seeks out the corrupt for its membership. Consequently, our approaches are limited to just two teams.
As the top English league evolves to ever more inappropriate levels of gambling-based sophistication, we decided last November to approach Arsène Wenger with an offer to provide a Consultancy Project which would enable Arsenal to cease being abused on a decision making level by the referees owned by the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) which, at the time, was becoming a repetitive occurrence (particularly in televised matches - think the games at Man City, West Ham, Sheff Utd and Bolton, for example). After a flow of communication, Mr Wenger decided that we would not be able to help his team face down the corruption but advised us instead to contact his Board of Directors so that we might develop a strategy whereby the Gunners could offset the negative impacts of betting market liabilities on the outcome of Arsenal's matches without selling out to the likes of Stan Kroenke. This, of course, we did and we are now working alongside aspects of the Arsenal hierarchy on related matters.
But, despite our respect for Wenger, he really missed a trick here. The man utilised our initial holistic input and made the decision to extrapolate our bases of a strategy to produce his own proprietary template to address the corruption being laid at Arsenal's door. Through approaches to the PGMOB hierarchy, Wenger was able to entirely reverse the machinations against his team's interests in the latter part of last season and the referee bias has continued in his favour for the start of the current season. At the completion of this post, we list the major decisions in all of Arsenal's matches since Wenger confronted the PGMOB. As can be seen, the turnaround has been marked.
So, why are we confident that Wenger's reactive strategy is short-termist in its positive impact? By the time that the PGMOB decided to be less blinkered in their approach to Arsenal's matches, there was, in effect, nothing worth playing for aside from a Champions League place. The corruptions of earlier in the 2006/07 season had terminated any hope of a shot at the title despite Arsenal's competitive over-performance against the other top teams (Arsenal won four, drew three and lost only one of their matches against the teams in the top five places but were repeatedly kicked off the park with a lack of protection by the officials against all those grim northern football outposts). The result is that Wenger thinks that the officiating bias has turned the corner and everything will be hunky dory in the new season. He needs to think again.
One of the prime reasons that Arsenal were targeted by the PGMOB to such an extent is that they are the only big English team that have, to date, refused to sell out to the corrupt dollar (or baht or shekel or rouble or króna or whatever). The hierarchy that is imposing the criminalised template on the Premiership are particularly irked by any of the major clubs standing, to a degree, on their principles as opposed to jumping into bed with the bookies. The attitude of Arsenal is costing the betting industry serious money and, in the eyes of the powers-that-be, the sooner the Arsenal Board sell out to Kroenke the better. Dietrological are actively working to prevent this occurrence.
Anyway, back to Wenger's myopia. The Arsenal manager has become carried away with the window of support from officialdom that has existed for much of 2007. After defeating the vastly overrated Man City team, he is insisting that Arsenal have what it takes to mount a serious title challenge this year. On a level playing field, we would have to agree with him but the level playing field has become undulated beyond recognition and the Gunner's run of good fortune is simply not sustainable.
The global football betting markets are in a state of fragmented cartelisation which is great for slick market analysts but a real bummer for everyone else. A whole spectrum of different power operators are fighting for control of the liquidity in the markets as the global turnover spirals ever upwards towards the half billion pound market which, by our estimation, should arrive in the first half of this season. By linking his strategy to merely one of these power bases, Wenger refuses to address the holistic nature of the marketplace and, furthermore, his strategy will be sold short by the operators that he believes he has some degree of control over. We do not envisage the flow of decisions in Arsenal's favour to continue for these two prime reasons - the English aristocracy do not wish for it to be the case and the major global operators are imposing ever greater market control.
It does not matter at what level or from which angle one approaches corrupt edifices, the only solution is a big picture solution. Wenger has instead chosen a highly blinkered approach and he is fortunate that there are other people within his club's hierarchy who are more open-minded to the new global realities. Despite this, Wenger remains, by some distance, the manager that we most respect in the Premiership and he is in our top half dozen managers across Europe. His activities in the transfer market make the likes of Ferguson and Mourinho look dyscalculic. But he is out of his depth in the betting marketplace and we repeat our retort offered to him in our last communication - "if you are not aware that you have a problem, there is little point in us offering you a solution".
How the PGMOB has aided Arsenal in 2007:
Manchester City (h) - a penalty in their favour and the denial of a penalty to the visitors.
Blackburn Rovers (a) - a very harsh sending off of Nelson after the Lancastrians had equalised.
Fulham (h) - Arsenal were given a generous penalty after an earlier one had been denied.
Portsmouth (a) - Portsmouth had a valid goal chalked off and Arsenal were given a spotkick.
Chelsea (h) - Another penalty in their favour plus a first half sending off to amplify the bias.
Fulham (h) - Clattenburg gives the Gunners a penalty.
Tottenham (a) and Man City (h) - No bias detected.
Bolton (h) - The visitors had a very harsh sending off at the hands of Styles who also denied the northerners a nailed-on penalty.
Newcastle (a) - Newcastle denied a penalty.
West Ham (h) and Liverpool (a) - No bias detected.
Everton (a) - Everton should have had a penalty.
Aston Villa (a) - No bias.
Reading (h) - Foy gives Wenger's boys a hugely generous penalty.
Wigan (h) - A Dowd special denied Wigan a penalty and the decision also should have resulted in Arsenal being a man light.
In total, that is 16 decisions in favour of Arsenal with only one against and even that was offset by a later equalising penalty. It is little wonder that we have been hearing rather less of Wenger's moaning about the match officials.
We look forward to the return of the despairing gallic shrug in the weeks and months ahead.
If the man can overcome his predisposition to stubbornness, he has our number...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
