Spectacular society even managed to mess up the rare good thing that is an English football match that is competitive, skillful, entertaining, meaningful and dramatic. Betting market influence on Saturday's 1 billion audience extravaganza was minimal in a meritocratic event yet Ferguson and Wenger decided that the beauty of what had gone before should be tarnished by a nonsensical war of words regarding the alleged bias of referee Howard Webb. If you accidentally produce a proper match reasonably well officiated, celebrate it - these things are increasingly unusual.
Over in Italy, an "independent" report has shown that Juventus and Milan are the least favoured teams this year in Serie A. Now, I'm not personally trading the Scudetto this season and I don't have the fundamentals database to hand but I would think that the likelihood of this conclusion even approaching the actual reality is minimal.
The utilisation of selected truths and economies of authenticity in data will continue to become ever increasingly the norm when the major footballing organisations, entities and clubs distort reality to spin out their proprietary agendas for the windows ahead. As a consequence, the press conferences and interviews are largely background noise although body language is often revealing.
So who is being favoured in the Premiership? The table below lists the refereeing biases for or against the teams over last season and the start of the current campaign (the promoted clubs are excluded). The index is based on the ratings of our Trading Team and our proprietary match databases for the period up to the end of October.
1. Newcastle 72 - Most favoured and still shit. Would be playing Scunthorpe in a meritocracy.
2. Manchester City and Liverpool 63
4. Arsenal 62 - Despite the endurances in officialdom that blighted the start of last season, Wenger's men have no room for complaint. Currently, that would be...
5. Manchester United 58 - Ferguson shouldn't be moaning about a top five rating although he is understood to prefer "most-favoured-team" status.
6. Tottenham 56
7. Middlesboro 52
8. Blackburn and Portsmouth 50
10. West Ham United 48
11. Chelsea and Everton 45 - The only one of the Big 4 with any real grievances in totalisation over the last season and a quarter. Time for Roman to brandish the cheque book, we reckon...
13. Aston Villa 44
14. Reading 41
15. Bolton 38
16. Fulham 33
17. Wigan 25 - This should be attached to the CV's of Jewell and Hutchings.
Obviously, these are highly generalised ratings for the purposes of fun and debate but, unlike the utterances of the likes of Wenger, Ferguson and the Italian giants, they are an honest attempt to address the biases currently in existence in the Premiership.
High level analyses and consultancies are the projects to be sought when the blandness of the media and the background noise are so deafening.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
