"Its the biggest load of nonsense and its doing my head in" was one of Harry Redknapp's statements regarding his current legal situation. The "it" in question is the law and 'Arry evidently feels he exists above the confines of such restrictions.
And, its a family affair. In The Sun, ex-model son Mark squealed: "Someone is out to get dad". Meanwhile, Sky pundit Jamie and pop star wife Louise travelled to 'Arry's £10 million Poole house to be with mum Sandra while awaiting dad's release according to The Mirror.
Such heartwarming family background and mainstream media exposure for headlining defensive statements are not the norm in criminal investigations in this country. But, then again, 'Arry isn't yer average operator.
Brinkmanship is 'Arry's middle name. By constantly focusing on grey areas of dubious legality, he has built up a business empire way beyond that which ought to be the product of 25 years of salary as a football manager. Part of a property development company that, at the last count, possessed around 1000 houses (mainly in east and south-east London), 'Arry was also rumoured to be the manager that had placed £12 million of bets on Premiership games in one season with Gibraltar-based bookmaker Victor Chandler (that averages as over £30K on every single match in the season!). The whistleblower who made the allegation was immediately silenced by the High Court writ gained by Redknapp's protector, Max Clifford. Within the game, the media perception of 'Arry as a wheeler-dealer is one that is portrayed and spun as a lovable-rogue-who-knows-a-good-player-when-he-sees-one sort of reality. But the man has simply developed a very creative business model. Redknapp utilises his locus within the game to maximise his returns from the game. And, due to a prominent lack of prohibitory regulation, he has been able to get away with it. Until now?
Looking at some of 'Arry's earning options beyond his managerial salary, property concerns and betting activities based on inside information is a further indication of the complex matrix of characters whose names repeatedly crop up when one explores the murkier areas of the football sector. 'Arry prepares a weekly column for Rupert Murdoch's The Sun newspaper which will have absolutely no impact on that particular organ's reporting of the current fiasco. Obviously... Totally honest son Jamie is Sky Television's (and Murdoch's) disinformational talking head prior to Sky live matches. This man needs to attend finishing school as his body language and inability to control his pressure of speech reveals more than his paymasters would like - indeed, we have a private competition in the office on the first trader to spot where Jamie has placed his hard-earned dollar! 'Arry is also accommodated as a guest Sky expert whenever anything happens in the world of football whether he possesses the necessary knowledge or not. "So, 'Arry, Brazil have got the 2014 World Cup, what d'you think?". "The jobs a good'un at the end of the day, like. To be totally honest, you'd have to say they deserve it".
The other little earner for our multiple-money-maximising man is the transfer market. Investigative economists spot patterns and then attempt to jigsaw these nuggets of reality into a more complete holistic whole. Redknapp is involved in more transfer activity than any other manager and his signings are very often astute. Being an excellent reader of the game, the new players generally produce the desired effect on the field of play allowing 'Arry to achieve his limited footballing goals. Through the selective use of agents, it is widely accepted within the sport that Mr Redknapp is able to gain a slice of the transfer action and his performance on BBC's Panorama programme have hardly helped his legal counsel to be able to suggest otherwise. The evident side benefit of having a conveyor-belt transfer strategy is that the unscrupulous are able to repeatedly take their percentage on the majority of interactions.
What happens next? Well, firstly 'Arry is required to regain his poise. Yesterday, his home was searched in a dawn raid by the City of London police while, in total, 60 officers searched eight properties nationwide. The Pompey Five have been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting and they have been bailed until February. According to a Whitehall source, a number of soccer stars and agents have been identified as having offshore bank accounts which have not been properly declared. The source said: "We are likely to be talking about undisclosed millions".
Another source, close to the City of London inquiry, said: "It is much bigger than we thought". This reality does not quite correlate positively with 'Arry's over-confident assertion that: ""We all helped the police with their inquiries. But it doesn't directly concern me - it's other people involved... They have to arrest you to talk to you, for you to be in the police station. I think that's the end of it". In a neat spin on reality in The Sun, Redknapp distorts: "I have not been charged with anything and I have absolutely nothing to be concerned about". Apart from the arrest, that would be... Oh, and having the police trawl through all your business documentation, perhaps...?
That anything has happened at all is no thanks to the Premier League or the Football Association (FA). These arrests are separate to the Quest bungs whitewash and date back to a private tip-off last year rather than any proper policing by English football's regulatory bodies. Scudamore and Barwick couldn't detect fraud if it walked in and shook their hands - indeed, their business practices are seemingly based on such handshakes...
Of the others arrested, Mandaric and Storrie have been long term collaborators with 'Arry and the arms dealing Gaydamak's who back Pompey. Willie McKay is a bookmaker/ football agent/ horserace trainer who also goes back a fair few years with Redknapp. McKay spent several years trading out of Monaco, where he also assisted police inquiries into allegations of corruption in the game. The fifth member is Amdy Faye, a player who is currently on loan at Glasgow Rangers. Beyond these five, there are other people who should be sweating. Graeme Souness for one...
So, why have the Pompey Five been fingered? There is massive corruption within the game particularly in England. The links between betting markets and football outcomes are on a different strata of seriousness to the minor misdemeanours of our Five Heroes. In the same manner that the Premier League showed incredible blinkering to the wider reality when it kicked up its self-harming fuss relating to Carlos Tevez, the City of London police must be equally myopic if they believe that the Pompey Five are all that is wrong with the game.
Bitterly upset Mark Redknapp screached: "Why is this happening now when the England job is vacant? There was no need for them to come around like this". Yes folks, this story represents the latest in the media disinformational market known as 'The Next Permanent England Manager'. The bookmakers and their associative colleagues in the mainstream media love these markets as it allows the layers to pump money out of the masses by pressing the right neural spots. This mechanism whereby outright lies and rumours of lies are substituted for reality is a win-win situation for the perpetrators of the mass media scam. Short-selling the headline-grabbing names who have allegedly declared an interest in the England job while quietly trading the silent long-odds 'real' favourite is the template of choice. An example - Mourinho is as likely to be interested in the England job as Ian Paisley is in being pope. The same nonsense happened with Souness over the Wigan post and Paul Ince at Derby.
I digress.
"Oh No" said the female voice who answered the intercom at Rednapp's waterside mansion ('Arry was away with Rangers in Germany doing business). This crisis has the potential to be the biggest footballing own goal since George Graham. Yesterday's arrests relate to the earlier police raids at Pompey, Newcastle and Glasgow Rangers. The latter claim: "Rangers understand that a player was arrested at his home this morning on a matter totally unrelated to the business of Rangers Football Club". Really?
If a decision has been taken high up in the English establishment that this charade is to be something more than a final warning then the powers-that-be have chosen the tragicomedy comic book option. In the same manner that Iraqi enemies became Chemical Ali in an act of demonisation, the non-Sky media will have a field day with all those images of Redknapp and Mandaric, covering their mouths, mobiles in hand, match in progress, looking for all the world like an Eastend gangster and a Serbian mafiosi doing a bit of illicit business when, of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
There are fall guys and then there are fall guys. Unless football wishes for a crisis that will make calciopoli seem tame by comparison, this whole affair will need to be carefully and strategically spun out to a future irrelevance that will allow all parties to continue as before without any interruption to their business practices. If the authorities truly wish to bring down some aspect of the Redknapp empire then there are to be unintended consequences galore. We do not believe that it is in the interests of any of the key decision makers in this spectacular reality to proceed too determinedly.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 29 November 2007
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
Learn To Burn
All management structures have their strengths and weaknesses. Any rating of an organisation must be founded on both the infrastructural robustness of the body and the interactions of the key individuals with their unique professional profiles. As it is in the wider world of business, so it is with football.
Certain entities yield greater creativity and innovation. When these beacons of professionalism underachieve, their normal overperformance demands that the error be noted. Goldman Sachs have recently struggled in the sub-prime quagmire and No 1's are not supposed to trade so poorly. And, last night, Arsène Wenger displayed a very rare lack of strategic thinking in playing half-a-team in what was actually a rather critical match in Arsenal's season.
Some of this might appear a bit trainspottery but Arsenal face a far more daunting new year because of last night's defeat and the very top managers and footballing associations generally plan strategically to avoid creating their own obstacles to success. Briefly in explanation of why Wenger got it so badly wrong. The 2nd Phase of the Champions League pitches the top-placed outfits against the runners-up with no team being able to play a side from the same country. By finishing in second place, Arsenal's opponents are likely to be chosen from the Porto, Real Madrid, Milan, Barcelona or Inter rather than the distinctly more preferable Rosenborg/Valencia/Schalke, Lazio/Olympiacos, Celtic/Shakhtar Donetsk, Lyon/Rangers, Roma and PSV/Fenerbache. Wenger's justification was the blooding of youngsters but any such gains are minimal in comparison with the holistic mistake. This strategic mismanagement is unusual from the generally watertight Mr Wenger. But it will matter. Arsenal would have had the luxury of a five week break from major events following a very difficult start to the year when tough games combine with the Of Cup Nations African. Instead a probably very difficult Champions League encounter awaits. If the Gunners survive this major test, their quarter final ties will land slap bang in the middle of a domestic run yielding Chelsea (away), Bolton (away), Liverpool (home), Man Utd (away). It would seem distinctly unlikely that the Arsenal squad will be able to challenge on both fronts throughout the constancy of a high profile window that the second half of the season now represents. And this is before the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) have any say in the matter.
Of course, this is merely a black mark against an impeccable record of the ultimate strategic planner among Premiership managers. Compare with Sir Ferguson who has repeatedly failed to analyse tournament strategies to maximise the chances for Man Utd in the Champions League. Indeed, last night's Ronaldo injury time winner saved the Reds an awkward trip to Rome where a defeat would very likely have produced a similar dilemma to that now faced by Arsenal.
A big picture overview of a tournament and its rules should form a fundamental analytical base from which to create a team's strategy for a season both with respect to the competition in question and the impact on other tournaments. While England were drowning in quicksand of their own creation, Germany were deliberately underperforming (having qualified with three games to spare) so that they might achieve a suitable position in the seedings to optimise their chances of success next summer. Similarly, the Czech Republic landed the contrarian trade of the season to date when hammering the global gamble on Cyprus in the final round of Euro 2008 Qualifiers. Professional traders failed to read the rulebook and made the assumption that the Czechs had nothing to play for. In fact, they had everything to play for in order to place themselves in the seemingly preferable mighty second tier of seeds for the summer extravaganza. While celebrating their strategic foresight, the Czechs had a rude awakening. By kicking off three hours later than the Czechs, the Germans were able to perform a preference reversal and chose the third tier of seeds as the preferable strategic option for the Finals. The fact that the Germans maintained their options between Seeding Levels 2 and 3 to maximise their tilting of the summer playing field while the English sloshed around with suitcases of money forlornly looking for salvation via bribery is typical of the holistic strategic differences in planning between the two nations. Germany is run by clear-sighted professionals; England is run by the bookmakers, sychophants and the incompetent.
In that it relates to this post, the Euro 2008 Seedings Chart is below with FIFA rankings in brackets:
Seeding Level 1: Austria (91) Switzerland (44) Greece (11) Netherlands (9)
Seeding Level 2: Italy (3) Czech Republic (6) Croatia (10) Sweden (24)
Seeding Level 3: Germany (5) Spain (4) Portugal (8) Romania (13)
Seeding Level 4: Russia (22) Poland (23) Turkey (16) France (7)
The science behind achieving the correct management structure in football is highly developed with MBA-style strategic thinking allowing innovative teams like Sevilla to succeed by establishing a hierarchy and a culture that dovetails with the football club itself. The flattened hierarchy works as an interlinked entity and every cog in the machine is replaceable - do not expect any downturn in form following Juande Ramos chasing the money. The transfer strategy is shared between manager and sporting director as part of a complex interlocked business structure. Arsenal have a similarly enlightened approach although the model is skewed to take account of Wenger's exquisite transfer policies. Less sustainable structures are the ones at Milan or Chelsea where oligarchical ownership sees the proprietor decide transfer policy with imposition of his selections being placed on the hapless manager. Surely part of Ancelotti's glumness has to be related to spending so much of his life in close proximity to Berlusconi and Galliani. In the absence of a suitable death, these hyper-owners pursue a strategy as long as it suits their life strategy. Clubs like Milan are safe as the club are branded alongside Berlusconi's political machine while one would make the assessment that Thaksin Shinawatra's devotion to the blue half of Manchester is a short-medium term publicity tactic.
We have chosen to exemplify Sevilla and Arsenal and admonish Milan, Chelsea and Man City both because it feels like a good thing to be doing and because fans should celebrate the teams who are utilising highly creative business strategies to succeed in a psychopathic sectoral environment. Neither Arsenal nor Sevilla abuse the betting markets as part of some kind of off-ledger grey market slush fund. Their infrastructure is sustainable. Milan too will survive until Berlusconi's (hopefully imminent) demise but what happens then? As for Man City, no comment...
We should also celebrate Arsenal and Sevilla because they limit the games exposure to all sorts of dirty money and financial shenanigans that form the core financial strategies of the operators behind the other teams. A remarkable feature of footballing corruption is how frequently it directly or indirectly mirrors the corruption endemic in wider society. While the mainstream media debates the legality or otherwise of some secluded political donation, the real criminality isn't even addressed. No true bottom-up democracy should allow political donations from businesspeople (nor indeed anyone else). This distortion of our democratic right should be made illegal and there should be state funding of the political parties in Britain. The media does not wish for us to focus on such matters. But why should the rich be able to buy political influence? In Victorian times, the slaveowner globalisers simply ran their business empires from the luxury of one of parliament's rooms for ex-public schoolboy MP's. The same individuals today prefer for MP's to perform their deeds by proxy. And the political funding issue is only one of many that demonstrate the inappropriate linkages that exist between capital and government. Take the Carlyle Group. This private equity company is renowned for sailing as close to the winds of legality as possible in the imposition of its innovative business model. By co-opting serving and recently serving government heads and ministers onto their visible and not-so-visible "boards", the Carlyle Group is able to benefit from insider trading. By basing one's trading strategy on known near-future infrastructural readjustments, rule changes, governmental reviews etc etc, the private equity firm is buying into a sector or a company at a very cheap price as the wider financial public is not yet aware of the soon-to-be-launched financial or regulatory breakpoint. Of course, this is a standard masonic template that has been employed across time but the rewards for successful implementation of a corrupt strategy of this type are far greater today. Lets have a swift glance at QinetiQ, once the ministry of defence's research wing. After being forewarned of the impending sale, the Carlyle Group bought in and they and the civil service managers of QinetiQ achieved handsome returns - Carlyle's £42 million investment yielding £374 million in three years while the establishment suits saw a two hundredfold increase in the value of their investment. This example of insider trading is illegal but par for the course. Abramovich behaves to much the same hidden agenda in football - the parallels are obvious.
Markets warp systems. Improperly policed and regulated, the platforms allow the psychopathic abuser of markets to develop skewed incentives and cornered markets, corrupt competitive advantages and criminalised core competencies, high stakes and short-termist trading strategies masquerading as a sustainable system based on capital. Wherever the free market allows money to distort the social incentives within a political system, a psychopathic template will become the infrastructure of choice for the individuals who utilise the libertarian nature of such a system to exploit their way to the top of the tree. Whether we are focusing on betting markets, bungs and oligarchs with their suitcases of money in the football sector or insider trading, cartelisation or monopolisation in the financial markets, we are faced with the same scenario.
Money destroys aesthetic and financial value which are its prime reason for existence in the first place.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Certain entities yield greater creativity and innovation. When these beacons of professionalism underachieve, their normal overperformance demands that the error be noted. Goldman Sachs have recently struggled in the sub-prime quagmire and No 1's are not supposed to trade so poorly. And, last night, Arsène Wenger displayed a very rare lack of strategic thinking in playing half-a-team in what was actually a rather critical match in Arsenal's season.
Some of this might appear a bit trainspottery but Arsenal face a far more daunting new year because of last night's defeat and the very top managers and footballing associations generally plan strategically to avoid creating their own obstacles to success. Briefly in explanation of why Wenger got it so badly wrong. The 2nd Phase of the Champions League pitches the top-placed outfits against the runners-up with no team being able to play a side from the same country. By finishing in second place, Arsenal's opponents are likely to be chosen from the Porto, Real Madrid, Milan, Barcelona or Inter rather than the distinctly more preferable Rosenborg/Valencia/Schalke, Lazio/Olympiacos, Celtic/Shakhtar Donetsk, Lyon/Rangers, Roma and PSV/Fenerbache. Wenger's justification was the blooding of youngsters but any such gains are minimal in comparison with the holistic mistake. This strategic mismanagement is unusual from the generally watertight Mr Wenger. But it will matter. Arsenal would have had the luxury of a five week break from major events following a very difficult start to the year when tough games combine with the Of Cup Nations African. Instead a probably very difficult Champions League encounter awaits. If the Gunners survive this major test, their quarter final ties will land slap bang in the middle of a domestic run yielding Chelsea (away), Bolton (away), Liverpool (home), Man Utd (away). It would seem distinctly unlikely that the Arsenal squad will be able to challenge on both fronts throughout the constancy of a high profile window that the second half of the season now represents. And this is before the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) have any say in the matter.
Of course, this is merely a black mark against an impeccable record of the ultimate strategic planner among Premiership managers. Compare with Sir Ferguson who has repeatedly failed to analyse tournament strategies to maximise the chances for Man Utd in the Champions League. Indeed, last night's Ronaldo injury time winner saved the Reds an awkward trip to Rome where a defeat would very likely have produced a similar dilemma to that now faced by Arsenal.
A big picture overview of a tournament and its rules should form a fundamental analytical base from which to create a team's strategy for a season both with respect to the competition in question and the impact on other tournaments. While England were drowning in quicksand of their own creation, Germany were deliberately underperforming (having qualified with three games to spare) so that they might achieve a suitable position in the seedings to optimise their chances of success next summer. Similarly, the Czech Republic landed the contrarian trade of the season to date when hammering the global gamble on Cyprus in the final round of Euro 2008 Qualifiers. Professional traders failed to read the rulebook and made the assumption that the Czechs had nothing to play for. In fact, they had everything to play for in order to place themselves in the seemingly preferable mighty second tier of seeds for the summer extravaganza. While celebrating their strategic foresight, the Czechs had a rude awakening. By kicking off three hours later than the Czechs, the Germans were able to perform a preference reversal and chose the third tier of seeds as the preferable strategic option for the Finals. The fact that the Germans maintained their options between Seeding Levels 2 and 3 to maximise their tilting of the summer playing field while the English sloshed around with suitcases of money forlornly looking for salvation via bribery is typical of the holistic strategic differences in planning between the two nations. Germany is run by clear-sighted professionals; England is run by the bookmakers, sychophants and the incompetent.
In that it relates to this post, the Euro 2008 Seedings Chart is below with FIFA rankings in brackets:
Seeding Level 1: Austria (91) Switzerland (44) Greece (11) Netherlands (9)
Seeding Level 2: Italy (3) Czech Republic (6) Croatia (10) Sweden (24)
Seeding Level 3: Germany (5) Spain (4) Portugal (8) Romania (13)
Seeding Level 4: Russia (22) Poland (23) Turkey (16) France (7)
The science behind achieving the correct management structure in football is highly developed with MBA-style strategic thinking allowing innovative teams like Sevilla to succeed by establishing a hierarchy and a culture that dovetails with the football club itself. The flattened hierarchy works as an interlinked entity and every cog in the machine is replaceable - do not expect any downturn in form following Juande Ramos chasing the money. The transfer strategy is shared between manager and sporting director as part of a complex interlocked business structure. Arsenal have a similarly enlightened approach although the model is skewed to take account of Wenger's exquisite transfer policies. Less sustainable structures are the ones at Milan or Chelsea where oligarchical ownership sees the proprietor decide transfer policy with imposition of his selections being placed on the hapless manager. Surely part of Ancelotti's glumness has to be related to spending so much of his life in close proximity to Berlusconi and Galliani. In the absence of a suitable death, these hyper-owners pursue a strategy as long as it suits their life strategy. Clubs like Milan are safe as the club are branded alongside Berlusconi's political machine while one would make the assessment that Thaksin Shinawatra's devotion to the blue half of Manchester is a short-medium term publicity tactic.
We have chosen to exemplify Sevilla and Arsenal and admonish Milan, Chelsea and Man City both because it feels like a good thing to be doing and because fans should celebrate the teams who are utilising highly creative business strategies to succeed in a psychopathic sectoral environment. Neither Arsenal nor Sevilla abuse the betting markets as part of some kind of off-ledger grey market slush fund. Their infrastructure is sustainable. Milan too will survive until Berlusconi's (hopefully imminent) demise but what happens then? As for Man City, no comment...
We should also celebrate Arsenal and Sevilla because they limit the games exposure to all sorts of dirty money and financial shenanigans that form the core financial strategies of the operators behind the other teams. A remarkable feature of footballing corruption is how frequently it directly or indirectly mirrors the corruption endemic in wider society. While the mainstream media debates the legality or otherwise of some secluded political donation, the real criminality isn't even addressed. No true bottom-up democracy should allow political donations from businesspeople (nor indeed anyone else). This distortion of our democratic right should be made illegal and there should be state funding of the political parties in Britain. The media does not wish for us to focus on such matters. But why should the rich be able to buy political influence? In Victorian times, the slaveowner globalisers simply ran their business empires from the luxury of one of parliament's rooms for ex-public schoolboy MP's. The same individuals today prefer for MP's to perform their deeds by proxy. And the political funding issue is only one of many that demonstrate the inappropriate linkages that exist between capital and government. Take the Carlyle Group. This private equity company is renowned for sailing as close to the winds of legality as possible in the imposition of its innovative business model. By co-opting serving and recently serving government heads and ministers onto their visible and not-so-visible "boards", the Carlyle Group is able to benefit from insider trading. By basing one's trading strategy on known near-future infrastructural readjustments, rule changes, governmental reviews etc etc, the private equity firm is buying into a sector or a company at a very cheap price as the wider financial public is not yet aware of the soon-to-be-launched financial or regulatory breakpoint. Of course, this is a standard masonic template that has been employed across time but the rewards for successful implementation of a corrupt strategy of this type are far greater today. Lets have a swift glance at QinetiQ, once the ministry of defence's research wing. After being forewarned of the impending sale, the Carlyle Group bought in and they and the civil service managers of QinetiQ achieved handsome returns - Carlyle's £42 million investment yielding £374 million in three years while the establishment suits saw a two hundredfold increase in the value of their investment. This example of insider trading is illegal but par for the course. Abramovich behaves to much the same hidden agenda in football - the parallels are obvious.
Markets warp systems. Improperly policed and regulated, the platforms allow the psychopathic abuser of markets to develop skewed incentives and cornered markets, corrupt competitive advantages and criminalised core competencies, high stakes and short-termist trading strategies masquerading as a sustainable system based on capital. Wherever the free market allows money to distort the social incentives within a political system, a psychopathic template will become the infrastructure of choice for the individuals who utilise the libertarian nature of such a system to exploit their way to the top of the tree. Whether we are focusing on betting markets, bungs and oligarchs with their suitcases of money in the football sector or insider trading, cartelisation or monopolisation in the financial markets, we are faced with the same scenario.
Money destroys aesthetic and financial value which are its prime reason for existence in the first place.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
FA Claims Mike Newell Is An Al-Qaeda Operative!
Events over the last seven days encapsulate in microcosm the rampant corruption and associated loss of any vestige of integrity in the professional football world. Throughout this week, virtually all of the major areas of concern within the game have enjoyed their window in the public spotlight. From oligarchs to the Thai elections, from Quest and the bungs inquiry to heavily corrupted global spectacular matches, the state of the game has been laid bare for all to see.
Very few matches in the highly corrupted Euro 2008 Group E have been legitimate events. We brought this to the attention of readers last season and the situation has deteriorated in the intervening period to the extent that the global audience was treated to two matches (Russia/England and Israel/Russia) that were heavily externalised matches. The outcomes of both these matches were determined by illicit money and, as in the norm on such occasions, the visuals patently demonstrated the underworld dynamics.
But, hidden behind the media glare of the problematic nature of English qualification, there have been other machinations indicative of the state of the game.
We have posted on numerous previous occasions that the Quest Inquiry into bungs in football was a whitewash. From the perspective of the regulatory power bodies overseeing English football, the whole charade has been a nightmare. Conflicting rules and regulations have been revealed; the selective imposition of punishment has been exposed as a standard practice; the iceberg of footballing corruption has been lifted out of the water to a degree. It was evident months ago that there was no feasible and logical route for the FA and the Premier League to take that might validate their status as suitable guardians of the English game and so they resorted to spin, half-truths, rumour and intrigue. The final piece of this spectacular spun reality occurred at the end of last week when it was quietly announced that a few agents associated with Mike Newell and Luton Town FC had forgotten to sign a piece of paper and that, apart from this, everything was fine and dandy in Scudamore's and Barwick's worlds.
New Labour have perfected the art of burying away bad news and the FA's Blairite contortions were chosen for public release on the day prior to the critical Euro 2008Qualifiers and on the morning of England's game in Vienna. Only xmas day would have been more opaque...
And what is the result of PC Plod's sortie through the grey underground world of football? The corruption still exists in suspended animation which undermines any suspension in our disbelief at the attempts to clean up the game.
Since Mike Newell first went public and the BBC Panorama programme exposed certain operators within the game, there has been a momentum to peripheralise any real impact of the inquiry. The outcomes to date are:
i) Mike Newell was sacked as Luton Town manager as we predicted.
ii) Luton Town were relegated (as we also predicted).
iii) The Quest inquiry is now targeting six agents involved with transfers to and from Luton.
Allardyce, Bond, Arneson, Redknapp, Souness, Zahavi, McKay, Silkman etc do not appear to have had their strategies markedly disrupted by the inquiry. The excitement created by the City of London police raids at Newcastle, Portsmouth and Glasgow Rangers together with the arrest of a still-unnamed 61 year old (he may even be 62 by now) for money laundering have been carefully secreted in the unsolved cases file. None of the threats of legal action from any of those individuals originally fingered by BBC have come to fruition. But, apparently, we are expected to believe that all is well with the game because anybody related to Luton is getting hammered. Without going in to fulsome details - see David Conn's excellent post in today's Guardian for that (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/11/21/the_book_thrown_at_luton_stops.html) - the agents did absolutely nothing wrong. It was the rules of the English game that were swiss-cheesed with loopholes and inconsistencies. In effect, the Luton Six are being punished for failing to sign a document which, had they signed, would have been in breach of FA rules. Catch 22 or what...?
Then again, these are from the same rulebook which determines that the transfer of Carlos Tevez to West Ham United was a third party arrangement whereas the identical transfer to Manchester United was fair dinkum. Just how blind?
The degree of illegality with regard to Luton and the agents, if indeed anything outrightly illegal has occurred, is totally insignificant compared with the massive corruptions in the game by the Premier League, the FA, bookmakers and individual players and managers. By spinning their reality that punishing some small-town southern non-entity club proves that the game is being properly policed, the authorities make the error of mistaking fans for fools.
Over half the teams in the English Premiership are now under the full or partial yoke of the hyper-owners and the international break has presented us with some revealing insights into the worlds of the oligarchs and the offshore-financial-heads. Previously we have attempted to puncture the bubble of short-term optimism of the fans at the clubs targeted by exposing the lack of robustness of the longer term strategy of the hyper-owners from a financial perspective. Put simply, things will improve for a while but then the words "shit" and "fan" will come into close configuration. Lets check a few of the destabilisation scenarios.
* The billionaire barber buying Birmingham has blown it with Bruce who has finally tired of the distrustful business practices of the Macau casino owner. Bruce has gone to Wigan and Birmingham are rudderless. If the sale isn't completed by December 23rd then Sullivan is throwing his toys out of the pram and Birmingham will be left with half a season to rebuild a club culture.
* Newcastle are imploding. There are internalised cliques within the hierarchy and the owner's finances remain stretched making Mike Ashley a not-so-hyper-owner after all. In fact, the only thing going right at Newcastle is that the club are being paid oodles of cash by the FA, FIFA and any other regulatory authority that might be culpable for Michael Owen's hypochondriachal pseudo-injuries.
* Shinawatra continues to utilise Manchester City as an electionioneering vehicle for the forthcoming Thai elections. The signing of three Thai players at a glitzy Bangkok launch, by pure fluke, was coincident with the final day of candidate registration for the December election in Thailand. During his video address, the Crooked One stated without any hint of irony: "The new government must govern for the many, not just for the few". For the man that looted his country's treasury while he was in charge, this is a bit rich in the doublespeak department. Indeed, the Thai authorities have responded by seizing the assets of Shinawatra's children (who are also Man City board members). The $355 million in fines and taxes should affect Eriksson's January transfer window budget! The authorities are targeting Shinawatra's children after they acquired shares in Shin Corp at just 1 baht apiece through an offshore company established by their father. These self same shares were later sold to Singapore's Temasek at 49 baht in an outrageous piece of corruption. The tax-free Shin sale enraged Thailand's urban middle-class voters who staged Bangkok street demonstrations leading to the overthrow of Shinawatra. Only the most myopic of Man City fan will be unable to see where all this is leading for their currently overperforming team. Shinawatra also chose the international break to announce himself as the saviour of the young who are addicted to drugs. Having directly been responsible for 2500 deaths of supposed drug dealers in a shoot-to-kill policy while Thai Premier, the Gooch gang in Moss Side should be on their guard.
* Also in the international window, Usmanov attempted a PR exercise of his own through a revealing series of emails between his good self and The Guardian. The interaction was revealing because of Usmanov's responses to the libel and slander potentially contained in various blog and media allegations. People falling from windows to their death, a heroin dealing business acquaintance, mafia links, a rape conviction, baby boiling accomplices would normally be sufficient for one to use the justice system to clear one's name. But not for Mr Usmanov. Typical of all individuals who would prefer to keep their dodgy business and life practices private, Usmanov hides behind the excuse that he would willingly have his day in court if only he could find the time. Considering the financial rewards of a successful prosecution, we can only assume that the big boy is guilty as charged. The utilisation of the law (or not) is often an indicator of truths (think Allardyce and his threats over the BBC Panorama programme, for instance).
Which brings us back to tonight's national celebration of all things English at the food mall that is the New Wembley stadium.
There are a multitude of things worthy of celebration. A corrupt and tainted semi-triumph for the English football team is not one of them.
Always assuming that Roman doesn't have any say in the matter and the English don't self-destruct trying to achieve the draw the bookmakers are craving, that is...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Very few matches in the highly corrupted Euro 2008 Group E have been legitimate events. We brought this to the attention of readers last season and the situation has deteriorated in the intervening period to the extent that the global audience was treated to two matches (Russia/England and Israel/Russia) that were heavily externalised matches. The outcomes of both these matches were determined by illicit money and, as in the norm on such occasions, the visuals patently demonstrated the underworld dynamics.
But, hidden behind the media glare of the problematic nature of English qualification, there have been other machinations indicative of the state of the game.
We have posted on numerous previous occasions that the Quest Inquiry into bungs in football was a whitewash. From the perspective of the regulatory power bodies overseeing English football, the whole charade has been a nightmare. Conflicting rules and regulations have been revealed; the selective imposition of punishment has been exposed as a standard practice; the iceberg of footballing corruption has been lifted out of the water to a degree. It was evident months ago that there was no feasible and logical route for the FA and the Premier League to take that might validate their status as suitable guardians of the English game and so they resorted to spin, half-truths, rumour and intrigue. The final piece of this spectacular spun reality occurred at the end of last week when it was quietly announced that a few agents associated with Mike Newell and Luton Town FC had forgotten to sign a piece of paper and that, apart from this, everything was fine and dandy in Scudamore's and Barwick's worlds.
New Labour have perfected the art of burying away bad news and the FA's Blairite contortions were chosen for public release on the day prior to the critical Euro 2008Qualifiers and on the morning of England's game in Vienna. Only xmas day would have been more opaque...
And what is the result of PC Plod's sortie through the grey underground world of football? The corruption still exists in suspended animation which undermines any suspension in our disbelief at the attempts to clean up the game.
Since Mike Newell first went public and the BBC Panorama programme exposed certain operators within the game, there has been a momentum to peripheralise any real impact of the inquiry. The outcomes to date are:
i) Mike Newell was sacked as Luton Town manager as we predicted.
ii) Luton Town were relegated (as we also predicted).
iii) The Quest inquiry is now targeting six agents involved with transfers to and from Luton.
Allardyce, Bond, Arneson, Redknapp, Souness, Zahavi, McKay, Silkman etc do not appear to have had their strategies markedly disrupted by the inquiry. The excitement created by the City of London police raids at Newcastle, Portsmouth and Glasgow Rangers together with the arrest of a still-unnamed 61 year old (he may even be 62 by now) for money laundering have been carefully secreted in the unsolved cases file. None of the threats of legal action from any of those individuals originally fingered by BBC have come to fruition. But, apparently, we are expected to believe that all is well with the game because anybody related to Luton is getting hammered. Without going in to fulsome details - see David Conn's excellent post in today's Guardian for that (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/11/21/the_book_thrown_at_luton_stops.html) - the agents did absolutely nothing wrong. It was the rules of the English game that were swiss-cheesed with loopholes and inconsistencies. In effect, the Luton Six are being punished for failing to sign a document which, had they signed, would have been in breach of FA rules. Catch 22 or what...?
Then again, these are from the same rulebook which determines that the transfer of Carlos Tevez to West Ham United was a third party arrangement whereas the identical transfer to Manchester United was fair dinkum. Just how blind?
The degree of illegality with regard to Luton and the agents, if indeed anything outrightly illegal has occurred, is totally insignificant compared with the massive corruptions in the game by the Premier League, the FA, bookmakers and individual players and managers. By spinning their reality that punishing some small-town southern non-entity club proves that the game is being properly policed, the authorities make the error of mistaking fans for fools.
Over half the teams in the English Premiership are now under the full or partial yoke of the hyper-owners and the international break has presented us with some revealing insights into the worlds of the oligarchs and the offshore-financial-heads. Previously we have attempted to puncture the bubble of short-term optimism of the fans at the clubs targeted by exposing the lack of robustness of the longer term strategy of the hyper-owners from a financial perspective. Put simply, things will improve for a while but then the words "shit" and "fan" will come into close configuration. Lets check a few of the destabilisation scenarios.
* The billionaire barber buying Birmingham has blown it with Bruce who has finally tired of the distrustful business practices of the Macau casino owner. Bruce has gone to Wigan and Birmingham are rudderless. If the sale isn't completed by December 23rd then Sullivan is throwing his toys out of the pram and Birmingham will be left with half a season to rebuild a club culture.
* Newcastle are imploding. There are internalised cliques within the hierarchy and the owner's finances remain stretched making Mike Ashley a not-so-hyper-owner after all. In fact, the only thing going right at Newcastle is that the club are being paid oodles of cash by the FA, FIFA and any other regulatory authority that might be culpable for Michael Owen's hypochondriachal pseudo-injuries.
* Shinawatra continues to utilise Manchester City as an electionioneering vehicle for the forthcoming Thai elections. The signing of three Thai players at a glitzy Bangkok launch, by pure fluke, was coincident with the final day of candidate registration for the December election in Thailand. During his video address, the Crooked One stated without any hint of irony: "The new government must govern for the many, not just for the few". For the man that looted his country's treasury while he was in charge, this is a bit rich in the doublespeak department. Indeed, the Thai authorities have responded by seizing the assets of Shinawatra's children (who are also Man City board members). The $355 million in fines and taxes should affect Eriksson's January transfer window budget! The authorities are targeting Shinawatra's children after they acquired shares in Shin Corp at just 1 baht apiece through an offshore company established by their father. These self same shares were later sold to Singapore's Temasek at 49 baht in an outrageous piece of corruption. The tax-free Shin sale enraged Thailand's urban middle-class voters who staged Bangkok street demonstrations leading to the overthrow of Shinawatra. Only the most myopic of Man City fan will be unable to see where all this is leading for their currently overperforming team. Shinawatra also chose the international break to announce himself as the saviour of the young who are addicted to drugs. Having directly been responsible for 2500 deaths of supposed drug dealers in a shoot-to-kill policy while Thai Premier, the Gooch gang in Moss Side should be on their guard.
* Also in the international window, Usmanov attempted a PR exercise of his own through a revealing series of emails between his good self and The Guardian. The interaction was revealing because of Usmanov's responses to the libel and slander potentially contained in various blog and media allegations. People falling from windows to their death, a heroin dealing business acquaintance, mafia links, a rape conviction, baby boiling accomplices would normally be sufficient for one to use the justice system to clear one's name. But not for Mr Usmanov. Typical of all individuals who would prefer to keep their dodgy business and life practices private, Usmanov hides behind the excuse that he would willingly have his day in court if only he could find the time. Considering the financial rewards of a successful prosecution, we can only assume that the big boy is guilty as charged. The utilisation of the law (or not) is often an indicator of truths (think Allardyce and his threats over the BBC Panorama programme, for instance).
Which brings us back to tonight's national celebration of all things English at the food mall that is the New Wembley stadium.
There are a multitude of things worthy of celebration. A corrupt and tainted semi-triumph for the English football team is not one of them.
Always assuming that Roman doesn't have any say in the matter and the English don't self-destruct trying to achieve the draw the bookmakers are craving, that is...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
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