The only news items that have received any coverage in the mainstream press and media this week have been the ongoing campaign to get Calamity James back in the goalkeeping position for England and the creation of major focus on Martin Jol's managerial position and Gabriel Heinze's protracted transfer as a backcloth to the Sky televised game between Man Utd and Spurs on Sunday. An alien visiting our planet would have assumed that absolutely nothing else has happened of any consequence in the English football world over the week.
This is neither the time nor the place to list the pertinent arguments against James being given the No 1 position but selective memory should not be allowed to eradicate Calamity's comedy keeping against France in Euro 2004 nor the games against Austria and Denmark nor, indeed, his peculiarly and inappropriately correlated performances for Harry Redknapp's betting medium.
The previous post addressed the fake story that is Martin Jol and the pseudo-linkages of Tottenham to any football manager who is seen in north west Europe. In this blog posting, we wish to focus on the furore surrounding Heinze's move to Madrid.
The media has plotted the continuation of this Manchester versus Liverpool posturing to a boring degree and, yet, the one aspect of the charade that was actually interesting was conspicuous by its absence from the vast majority of the media - Rafa Benitez and his outburst against the Premier League.
Some of what Benitez had to say was just silly eg the comparison between the difficulties Liverpool had in signing Javier Mascherano in relation to the alleged ease of Man Utd's Carlos Tevez deal - this simply isn't true. However, most of the remainder of the Spaniard's rant hit home truthfully. Smarting from the impact of the Rob Styles freebie patio and driveway construction project courtesy of loveable Roman Abramovich, Benitez has developed a bit of a persecution complex of late. Unfortunately, he doesn't quite take aim as accurately as he might if he really wished to illuminate his point.
The scandal and corruption at West Ham United that has been okayed repeatedly by the Premier League only came to light when Liverpool brought the evident illegalities to Scudamore's attention during the transfer of Mascherano in January. Without Liverpool's ethical input, none of us would ever have been any the wiser about the Third Party agreements and, obviously, the Premier League would have vastly preferred this scenario. So, somewhere underneath the shouting, there is a serious point - the Premier League are not too happy with Liverpool for not allowing the whole sorry mess to remain out of the public eye.
Undoubtedly, the twisted logic behind the Premier League's decision to block the transfer of Heinze to Merseyside was related to this episode and merely formed a reciprocal slap on the wrist for Liverpool - don't rock the boat otherwise we'll set Styles and Scudamore on you!
Following Benitez having his say, the Premier League put out a press release containing the usual twaddle including "We are disappointed to read Rafael Benitez's comments in the press, especially when channels exist for every member club to raise any issues directly with the league." The refusal of the Premier League to arbitrate fairly, the highly selective choices regarding who the Premier League are willing to talk and listen to and the warped and corrupt hidden agendas that nowadays underpin all aspects of the Premier League's strategies would suggest otherwise and Benitez was correct to go public.
Benitez is also right in drawing attention to the complex game theory behind the setting of the Premiership fixtures. The English and Scottish leagues are the only ones in Europe that require payment prior to publication in the media. The Football DataCo Limited who control this licensing scam are not only manipulative regarding the enhancement of their cashflow. The fixtures are very manipulated in a whole range of ways. The windows around the Champions League matches are always indicative of this strategy. The four Champions League contestants are obviously compromised on a fitness level following their exertions in the planet's premier club competition. The advantage to the other teams in facing, say, Liverpool after a Barcelona game is massive compared to facing the reds in a quieter match window. Prior to the commencement of each season, our Traders always evaluate the fixture list in relation to the Champions League. The full analysis is proprietary and will not be revealed here but there is one aspect that we wish to highlight. The lists below detail the teams with the most and the least games against the Big 4 adjacent to the Champions League matches (up to the semi finals):
The Most Games:
Bolton and Middlesbrough 7 games
Derby, Everton and Wigan 6 games
The Least Games:
Portsmouth 1 game
Sunderland 2 games
Reading and Tottenham 3 games
Making a rather simplistic assumption that a team will, on average, gain one extra point per game through taking advantage of the tiredness of the Champions League participants, it may be seen that Portsmouth are being handicapped 6 points when compared with Bolton and Boro. Now, we are not renowned for having any sympathy with Portsmouth on any matter as they are a nine bob note outfit but a level playing field would share out this advantage more equitably and should always be the aim.
There are numerous other tilts built in to the Premiership fixture listing. For example, we posted earlier in the week that West Ham United were the only Premiership team to have the advantage of a free midweek off in comparison with their opponents, Birmingham City, last weekend - this was simply a gift of three points for the crooked east Londoners.
Scudamore's gang came up with the following: "The Premier League tried to make sure that our dealings with all our member clubs, including the scheduling of fixtures, are as fair as possible." Rubbish! We utilise this rampant lack of fairness in all our ante-post positions along with many other corrupt machinations perpetrated from on high. It is simply not a valid strategy to spin out these pithy utterances when any half decent market analyst knows that there are agendas at play in all the control structures that are in the Premier League's possession.
Finally, one point that Benitez failed to make was the massive advantage bestowed on Manchester United in the early years of the Premiership. Although biases between the Big 4 have levelled out to an extent in recent seasons, the Red Devils were given a marked handicap advantage after the takeover of the English game by Sky Television.
This obviously had absolutely nothing to do with the 9.9% stake that Sky had in Manchester United.
Obviously...
Ferguson should take care in his accusations of skullduggery.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
