We delayed the release of the latest Bum Ref Index due to the astonishingly inept lack of professionalism demonstrated by the match officials of the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) at the weekend. It would have been inappropriate to post an incomplete picture.
Before we assess the Dirty Dozen, the twelve referees who are particularly culpable in the undermining of the integrity of the English top flight game, lets check out some holistics.
* In Britain, there have been 100 "live" matches covered by Sky Television or Setanta so far this season. 90 of these matches have been officiated by the Dirty Dozen. In direct comparison, Howard Webb has refereed 15 live games while Dowd, Mason, Rennie, Stroud and Probert have cumulatively amassed 6 games. As Webb's position in the hierarchy of unprofessionalism demonstrates, the man does not warrant this status.
* The most complete turnaround has been the pirouette performed by Thailand's Mark Clattenburg - last season, Clattenburg was the least bad official while this year he is the baddest. Lets trawl back through Clattenburg's ramblings in February:
24/02 Blackburn v Bolton - Two penalty decisions, one incorrect, and a disallowed goal.
09/02 West Ham v Birmingham - Incorrect penalty and a sending off that was so ludicrous that it was later reversed on appeal.
02/02 Spurs v Man Utd - 10 bookings in a moderately physical game including seven United players as Clattenburg targeted the banning of Rooney from the Manchester derby.
Clattenburg was stood down for a fortnight following his crooked officiating of the Merseyside derby in October and was not given another live match by the PGMOB for over three months. Three months is not enough. Clattenburg has officiated three Man Utd matches this season resulting in 1 point for the Reds plus a Rooney ban; Clattenburg has refereed two Man City matches, both of which have ended in "interesting victories". Corrupt infrastructures frequently produce quantum leaps in the integrity of insiders and Clattenburg's reversal from right-on to rogue is par for this particular course
* As we have mentioned before, control of the live Sky and Setanta matches is so key as the global betting turnovers on these events are orders of magnitude greater than your bog-standard Boro v Reading sort of misery. The fact that the Dirty Dozen referee 90% of these live events is a template seemingly designed with corruption in mind.
* None of the other major territories in Europe do corruption quite like the English. Although the media spin is always on those dastardly Italians and dodgy Germans, it is the Premiership that is, by some distance, the most corrupted league. Other nations face up to the "realities" better than the English too. "If you are telling me that English football is corrupt, you are destroying everything that I've ever believed in" is a common refrain from the myopic fan. Welcome to nihilism, pal... As an example of the media focus on the corruption, check out La Gazzetta dello Sport last Tuesday online. Halfway through the morning, a new headline screamed that Bo Larsen was to referee the Arsenal/Milan Champions League match. There followed a detailed discussion on Larsen which bordered, quite correctly, on forensic psychology in places. Compare and contrast with the difficulty in finding any reliable information regarding the PGMOB and its selection processes. This template seems to allow for an early pencilling in of a team of officials which might require flexibility nearer kick off if betting liabilities demand so. Over the last two seasons, the Premiership additionally saw 4% of games suffer a very late referee change - that is 25 games in 1.75 seasons; in Serie A and the Bundesliga combined there has been one such instance in the same window.
* The underperformance of the match officials is having very serious impacts on the integrity of the league table as well as running a train and carriages through what little integrity the betting markets are able to muster. Some teams are not clear at the top of the Premiership when they should be; some teams are not in the Top 4 when they should be; some teams are in the relegation positions when they shouldn't be. Lets just take a glance at four of last weekend's results and compare with what our software states would have been the outcomes without the impact of the PGMOB manipulators (actual outcome in brackets):
Birmingham v Arsenal - Arsenal (Draw).
Liverpool v Boro - Draw (Liverpool).
Fulham v West Ham - Fulham (West Ham).
Portsmouth v Sunderland - Draw (Portsmouth).
It is not difficult to envisage the impact of incorrect outcomes particularly for teams that have been on the receiving end on a serial basis.
* Season 2007/08 has seen a greater penetration of the assistant referees by some of the key power lobbies within the game. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th officials are becoming increasingly a part of the problem. The two prime assistants may either be legit, working with the match referee, working with the 4th official or be part of a watertight corruption whereas the very key 4th Official has considerable holistic sway over the match frequently alerting the referee to spectacular realities of which he should be made aware.
So, here are the Dirty Dozen counting from the bottom with last year's position in brackets.
19. Clattenburg 5.49 (1)
18. Dean 5.06 (8)
17. Riley 4.85 (6)
16. Styles 4.76 (14)
15. Foy 4.51 (8)
14. Webb 4.48 (15)
13. Dowd 4.28 (13)
12. Marriner 4.25 (-)
11. Wiley 4.21 (16)
10. Bennett 4.16 (12)
9. Halsey 4.10 (2)
8. Tanner 3.70 (-)
In the good old bad old days, referees were known for their bias in club or favouritism by region, race or nationality. The modern format still sees examples of such biases but there are a whole spectrum of other inappropriate inputs which determine the decision making processes on the field of play. It is critical for the corrupt entities to maintain control over match outcome being vested in as small a number of PGMOB referees as possible - twelve is the absolute minimum taking into account injuries, illness and the 4th Official necessities.
All other mainstream sports are utilising technology to attempt to create integrity in outcomes whereas all of the footballing authorities refuse to countenance such evidently sensible technology as video replays of controversial incidents, goalline cameras and open source microphones so that the whistleblowers can explain the "logic" behind their machinations. It is not a coincidence that the most liquid global betting markets are accompanied by the least intrusive technology. Indeed, further randomisers are the order of the day. For example, the moving advertisements whirling around the pitch undoubtedly make the jobs of the linespeople more problematic - when the human eyes are dealing with coincident occurrences and parallax, a plain and still background is definitely preferable.
At the start of this season, the Premier League under the dictatorship of Rich Scudamore announced that the Premiership (the actual league) would, in future, be known as the Premier League. This neat repositioning by Our Great Antisocial Leader allowed the Premier League (the corrupt organisation of the English game's demise) to become equivalent to the Premier League (the branded "best league on the planet Earth"). By hiding away behind the product, Scudamore has been able to do his deals to the detriment of the game without the same degree of scrutiny. Only the 39th Game nonsense has stirred the masses and the media; corruption is evidently okay, not an issue.
We stick to Premier League and Premiership to avoid confusion...
Which brings us to the bit of the post which is not of any interest to football-heads...
The Football Is Fixed Bum Ref Index is very loosely based on The Economists Big Mac Index - the former assesses corruption in English football while the latter assesses the geopolitical corruption inherent in the financial system; the former exposes the corruption machinations while the latter creates nonsensical mathematics to justify the indefensible.
The Big Mac Index is based on purchasing power parity (PPP). PPP is the only mathematical machination which is able to demonstrate, if distorted from reality to a great enough extent, that there is a way of looking at the global economic system which shows that the poorest are seeing an improvement to their dreadful existences. Of course, PPP is not robust and it might better be perceived as a sleight of hand rather than a statistical analysis. PPP "works" by comparing the prices of identical products across different territories. By comparing these prices, it is possible to "determine" which currencies are under- and over-valued. This is bobbins. The comparison is simply not feasible as income inequality across the planet has resulted in a complete differentiation in the products that consumerism makes available to us dependent on our global economic tier and culture. Mobiles, Big Mac's, cars etc are not interchangeable. Furthermore, the PPP figure is further distorted from its tenuous link to reality by the utilisation of loss leaders in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs). To develop addicts and/or to establish market share, first world globalised companies "buy" market presence in the HIPCs by undercutting the opposition (obviously prior to a price rise once the locals have been sublimated). This warping of the "free trade" system has the treble impact of increasing profits for the globalisers in the medium term, removing competition and making the PPP figures suggest that first world products are affordable in the HIPCs.
But this is only a part of the argument. The IMF and the shareholder capitalist think tanks always choose to compare "average" earnings in the HIPCs with the northern hemisphere elites and this is a further fallacious construct. Income inequality is growing across the planet as a psychopathic system does its darnedest to reward the psychopaths. Undoubtedly, there has been growth in India and China but such growth is heavily skewed and the rural poor are even more disenfranchised than prior to the latest imperialist wave of capital - check out the number of rural suicides in both these countries. Additionally, PPP rather undermined its own claims to robustness when "adjustments" marking down growth by 40% in both India and China were released towards the end of 2007. Finally, PPP also warps the upper end of the HIPCs societies. The very skilled eg doctors, lawyers etc can leap some distance up the global hierarchy while everybody else is left with largely futile incremental ladder climbing as they attempt to live the reality that it is better in Chad than in Darfur. Exactly what sort of statistic is this?
At the moment, there is a huge dynamic behind creating the $100 laptop so that the HIPCs may jump several technological layers and, of course, buy in to the products of the first world at the same time. Surely it would be preferable to build classrooms, train teachers, buy schoolbooks etc.
Lyotard describes the fascistic template of globalisation quite clearly as follows: "The needs of the most under-privileged should not be used as a system regulator as a matter of principle: since the means of satisfying them is already known, their actual satisfaction will not improve the system's performance, but only increase its expenditure".
This basic tenet of shareholder capitalism should be remembered the next occasion some econo-conjurer tries to spread their tissue of lies to disguise the endemic cruelty of their system.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
Monday, 25 February 2008
The (Mis)management Of Change
What a difference a day makes! A week is a long time in politics!! When the going gets tough, the tough get going!!!
New news is good news if you are able to conceptualise the new structures at speed but, for those being swayed involuntarily and blindly by the winds of change, the lack of a logical reactive adjustment to historical realities can produce devastatingly negative effects.
As with politics, so with football. This last week or so has been massive in the evolving realities that will determine which teams are going to be given the prizes this year. A week is indeed a long time in European football.
Take Chelsea, for example. The corrupt machine has trundled along adequately since Mourinho walked out, the league results were keeping the Russian/Israeli Blues within range of the Premiership leaders while the Champions League break had been utilised to consolidate an FA Cup run. The last week was a defining period for the Abramovich and Kenyon Show. With this year's Champions League concluding in Moscow, a certain Russian autocrat was excitedly considering his commercial options should Chelski manage to reach the final, by hook or by crook (or, indeed, by any other method required). There are dichotomous dynamics relating to this spectacular reality and, although Abramovich will buy the success if that is the only option on the table, it is our view, following recent meetings with our UEFA contacts, that the strongest dynamic is against Chelski and that Abramovich's table of selections is limited in scope. Still, this is not a solid conclusion, everybody has their price and Abramovich will happily engage in a bidding war for control of the tournament. Obstacles may be overcome, business is business...
In the background to the machinations in Europe, Chelski announced their latest annual financial figures which showed a loss of £75 million on a turnover of £190 million. The current projected season for breakeven is 2010 by which time Abramovich will have shed £750 million from his fat wallet together with unknown amounts of under-the-table, kickback, coercive suitcases-of-money sort of expenditure. The actual figure will probably be not far short of £1 billion in order to reach a sustainable business entity.
There are many reasons that Chelski will continue to fail to reap the rewards of Abramovich's bullion but a very key input to this assertion is the financial inadequacy of chief executive Peter Kenyon. Following the release of the accounts last week, Kenyon, in bipolar business mode, stated: "The 2010 breakeven is ambitious. I don't think it is something we are postponing but it has always been ambitious. We are determined to meet it, or get as close as we can". Is that clear? To us, this translates as: "There is no chance of breaking even in 2010 or any other time soon but I am far too weak to face up to my owner with regard to the financial realities created by my incompetence".
Chelski's week of horrors was finally completed with the inevitable defeat to Tottenham in yesterday's League Cup Final. There was only one key factor in this match - Juande Ramos was able to select the squad and adjust formations and style in real time to a different strata of professionalism than Avram and Abramovich (with the latter's pre-match team selection interference). Ramos is one of the best six coaches in Europe, the AA team just don't get it.
Abramovich could, however, gain some respite from his bad week by improving next year's cash flow to the tune of £15 million or so - sack Kenyon and sell Lampard - while also improving his football entity.
It was a redistributive week all round in London with Arsenal managing the treble whammy of securing failure in the FA Cup, the Champions League and the Premiership within 7 days. The seeds of this self destruction lay in three key sources. Firstly, the club refuses to become as corrupt as the opposition. Secondly, the club failed to take the requisite defensive measures to steer clear of malicious forces. And, thirdly, Arsène Wenger made a rare strategic error in failing to finish top of his Champions League Qualifying Group - someone easier than Milan could have created a far different reality over the last seven days.
The start of the Champions League 2nd Phase often solves the season analytically and this season is particularly fat tailed with teams taking on extremely diverse perspectives as we approach the business end of the season.
Take the situation in Spain as an example. With elections looming, the thin veil of pretence that hides the reality that Spanish football clubs are political organs disappears. Football and politics become entwined and some pretty wild analysis may be undertaken on the political prediction markets utilising creative input from the world of football market analysis.
At the beginning of February, Real Madrid were assured of the title. Then it all went pear-shaped with losses at Almería, Real Betis, Roma and at home to Getafe, a sequence only interrupted by a 7-0 victory over one of their supplementary teams, Real Valladolid. Around the same time, Barcelona were poor, Rijkaard was on his way out in the summer (probably still is), Ronaldinho was in party mode, the Madrileños were seven points clear with a home "El clásico" to come... After stumbling to a draw against Sevilla, the Catalans were gifted a victory at Real Racist Zaragoza and then turned in a totally sublime performance last Wednesday at Parkhead. The beautiful football continued yesterday with the dismantling of Levante. Yaya Toure is an awesome player and the movement around the penalty area is Harlem Globetrotter's-like in its speed and intricacy. Proper football...
The rewards offered by modern football act as incentives to the widest possible net of participants. The result is a quality of football that, if it were allowed to grow without the accompanying deadweights of corruption and the gambling sector, would truly be THE global game. We must celebrate the increasingly rare occasions where proper football breaks through the stranglehold of endemic corruption. One such instance was the football being played by Arsenal in parts of 2007; Barcelona are a current example. In a meritocratic game, these teams, playing a modern variant of total football, would be able to succeed and be rewarded with titles and cups. The stifling atmosphere surrounding corruption squeezes the life out of these occasional beacons of what football could be like and the relentless machines of corruption steamroller their way to a sharing of the spoils.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
New news is good news if you are able to conceptualise the new structures at speed but, for those being swayed involuntarily and blindly by the winds of change, the lack of a logical reactive adjustment to historical realities can produce devastatingly negative effects.
As with politics, so with football. This last week or so has been massive in the evolving realities that will determine which teams are going to be given the prizes this year. A week is indeed a long time in European football.
Take Chelsea, for example. The corrupt machine has trundled along adequately since Mourinho walked out, the league results were keeping the Russian/Israeli Blues within range of the Premiership leaders while the Champions League break had been utilised to consolidate an FA Cup run. The last week was a defining period for the Abramovich and Kenyon Show. With this year's Champions League concluding in Moscow, a certain Russian autocrat was excitedly considering his commercial options should Chelski manage to reach the final, by hook or by crook (or, indeed, by any other method required). There are dichotomous dynamics relating to this spectacular reality and, although Abramovich will buy the success if that is the only option on the table, it is our view, following recent meetings with our UEFA contacts, that the strongest dynamic is against Chelski and that Abramovich's table of selections is limited in scope. Still, this is not a solid conclusion, everybody has their price and Abramovich will happily engage in a bidding war for control of the tournament. Obstacles may be overcome, business is business...
In the background to the machinations in Europe, Chelski announced their latest annual financial figures which showed a loss of £75 million on a turnover of £190 million. The current projected season for breakeven is 2010 by which time Abramovich will have shed £750 million from his fat wallet together with unknown amounts of under-the-table, kickback, coercive suitcases-of-money sort of expenditure. The actual figure will probably be not far short of £1 billion in order to reach a sustainable business entity.
There are many reasons that Chelski will continue to fail to reap the rewards of Abramovich's bullion but a very key input to this assertion is the financial inadequacy of chief executive Peter Kenyon. Following the release of the accounts last week, Kenyon, in bipolar business mode, stated: "The 2010 breakeven is ambitious. I don't think it is something we are postponing but it has always been ambitious. We are determined to meet it, or get as close as we can". Is that clear? To us, this translates as: "There is no chance of breaking even in 2010 or any other time soon but I am far too weak to face up to my owner with regard to the financial realities created by my incompetence".
Chelski's week of horrors was finally completed with the inevitable defeat to Tottenham in yesterday's League Cup Final. There was only one key factor in this match - Juande Ramos was able to select the squad and adjust formations and style in real time to a different strata of professionalism than Avram and Abramovich (with the latter's pre-match team selection interference). Ramos is one of the best six coaches in Europe, the AA team just don't get it.
Abramovich could, however, gain some respite from his bad week by improving next year's cash flow to the tune of £15 million or so - sack Kenyon and sell Lampard - while also improving his football entity.
It was a redistributive week all round in London with Arsenal managing the treble whammy of securing failure in the FA Cup, the Champions League and the Premiership within 7 days. The seeds of this self destruction lay in three key sources. Firstly, the club refuses to become as corrupt as the opposition. Secondly, the club failed to take the requisite defensive measures to steer clear of malicious forces. And, thirdly, Arsène Wenger made a rare strategic error in failing to finish top of his Champions League Qualifying Group - someone easier than Milan could have created a far different reality over the last seven days.
The start of the Champions League 2nd Phase often solves the season analytically and this season is particularly fat tailed with teams taking on extremely diverse perspectives as we approach the business end of the season.
Take the situation in Spain as an example. With elections looming, the thin veil of pretence that hides the reality that Spanish football clubs are political organs disappears. Football and politics become entwined and some pretty wild analysis may be undertaken on the political prediction markets utilising creative input from the world of football market analysis.
At the beginning of February, Real Madrid were assured of the title. Then it all went pear-shaped with losses at Almería, Real Betis, Roma and at home to Getafe, a sequence only interrupted by a 7-0 victory over one of their supplementary teams, Real Valladolid. Around the same time, Barcelona were poor, Rijkaard was on his way out in the summer (probably still is), Ronaldinho was in party mode, the Madrileños were seven points clear with a home "El clásico" to come... After stumbling to a draw against Sevilla, the Catalans were gifted a victory at Real Racist Zaragoza and then turned in a totally sublime performance last Wednesday at Parkhead. The beautiful football continued yesterday with the dismantling of Levante. Yaya Toure is an awesome player and the movement around the penalty area is Harlem Globetrotter's-like in its speed and intricacy. Proper football...
The rewards offered by modern football act as incentives to the widest possible net of participants. The result is a quality of football that, if it were allowed to grow without the accompanying deadweights of corruption and the gambling sector, would truly be THE global game. We must celebrate the increasingly rare occasions where proper football breaks through the stranglehold of endemic corruption. One such instance was the football being played by Arsenal in parts of 2007; Barcelona are a current example. In a meritocratic game, these teams, playing a modern variant of total football, would be able to succeed and be rewarded with titles and cups. The stifling atmosphere surrounding corruption squeezes the life out of these occasional beacons of what football could be like and the relentless machines of corruption steamroller their way to a sharing of the spoils.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Sunday, 24 February 2008
More Melons Being Twisted
The match between Birmingham and Arsenal should have been cancelled after three minutes following Eduardo's injury - it was immediately evident when the match restarted that Arsenal's players were struggling to cope with the horrific nature of the breakage and they should not have been expected to continue. Check out the faces of all associated with the club during the 8 minute delay while the striker was prepared to be carried from the field - Sagna, Adebayor, Gallas, Fabregas, Lewin, Wenger.
Obviously, Sky's tv coverage and a major global gambling ambush meant that the game HAD to continue - the supremacy of money would probably ensure that a match would be played out following a death if the right money had been accommodated in the right markets.
Arsenal are a closely knit team, their pre- and post-match huddles bear an authenticity rarely seen in the marketed pseudo-huddles that are now a compulsory feature of the theatre offered by the gambling companies. Arsenal's players were ashen faced and, unwittingly, they were on the wrong end of a major betting event. Notwithstanding Mike Dean's third minute sending off of Taylor for injuring Eduardo, the match official proceeded to get every other major decision incorrect, as is his wont - remember the Man Utd v Chelsea fiasco. The free kick for McFadden's first goal and the penalty for his second were simply laughable whereas Adebayor's penalty claims one minute prior to the penalty gift to Brum looked pretty much like a penalty to me. The second gift grabbed a particular firm of bookmakers the draw they so desperately required.
Our pre-match email to Dietrological clients included the line: "The betting industry are out to get Arsenal in this game but their fitness advantage makes any position perilous. It would need a Dean intervention...". Or three...
Five points clear pre-match and about to exit their only other distraction, the Champions League, Arsenal were looking a potential threat to the power's-that-be. While Chelsea are worrying about 4 competitions and Man Utd three, Wenger could focus on solely on a title run-in with a 5 point handicap start. By making Arsenal play two-and-a-half days after the Milan match, the fixture list manipulators at Sky and Football DataCo Limited ensured that much of the Londoner's fitness advantage could be negated. There were some very serious gambles from very interesting sources on this match and the Asian markets were welcomed back from their Chinese New Year family time with the gift of a cornered market from their European competitors. Revenge will be sweet...
The return of the anti-Arsenal betting scam, the broken leg, a forward line that refuses to speak to each other, Toure's injury, the machinations of the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB), the requirements of the people fronted by Richard Scudamore, a possible lack of resilience as the battle heats up, all these things surely point against an Arsenal Premiership triumph in May. Before yesterday's matches, you could find 3.00 (2/1) on a Man Utd victory and shrewdies were out there stocking up. The end of Arsenal's title hopes has seen United return to odds-on, a strata within which they will remain for the remainder of the season.
We were originally going to produce our latest Bum Ref Index today but a combination of Saturday's comedy refereeing and Eduardo's injury and the new realities in the Premiership title race persuaded us otherwise - mocking the PGMOB officials will now have to wait until Tuesday.
Okay so, one of your colleagues has a career-ending injury in front of your eyes, indeed he might not even be able to walk unaided again. You are forced to continue playing after the injury. The match official is on a mission to get a job done and you are mugged by a last minute refereeing travesty. In that moment, in the despair of missing out on the victory that they were so desperately trying to achieve on Eduardo's behalf, captain supreme, William Gallas, shouts and swears, goes walkabout, kicks an advertising hoarding, gets booked (the booking presumably being for the serious new addition to the rulebook - thou shall not disrespect the advertisers name). Okay so, perhaps he might have shown a "better" example. But to whom? To the watching masses? To his teammates who look up to him? To the sanitised world of football that the media and bookmakers are desperate to sell us? Gallas was quite correct to show outrage. Arsenal were robbed and they will continue to be robbed while they refuse to deal creatively with the spectacular reality with their name on it.
In response to Gallas and his display of anger at a corrupted system, Richard Keys, Andy Gray and Ian Darke used all the words they could to belittle the man's right to be livid. Gray's inane assertion that Clichy "hadn't got enough on the ball" - how much are you actually supposed to need on it? - must have been influenced by the improvement to Gray's bank balance caused by Dean's decision. On Match Of The Day, Hansen launched a bitter outburst against Gallas and Lawrensen piped in with "plain odd" directed at the Arsenal captain. Just as Roy Hodgson correctly asserted that Howard Webb's refereeing Fulham's game yesterday led to a "gross injustice", Wenger was correct to describe Dean's final little earner as "a very dodgy penalty".
The fact that professionals are angered when corruption impacts upon the potential for a competitive meritocracy is painted as an outrage, a bringing of the game into disrepute. But exactly who is doing the disreputable thing? Mike Dean and Howard Webb or William Gallas and Roy Hodgson? And, in that Dean and Webb are only the armed messengers of a hierarchical elite, the real stain on the English game emanates from the boardrooms of the bookmakers, the Premier League, the hyper-owners, the PGMOB, Sky and the sychophantic media with their quisling journalism. Remember that the next time the talking heads try and get you to shout "bad guy" when one of the actors refuses to act out, in a pre-destined manner, the corrupt script on offer.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Obviously, Sky's tv coverage and a major global gambling ambush meant that the game HAD to continue - the supremacy of money would probably ensure that a match would be played out following a death if the right money had been accommodated in the right markets.
Arsenal are a closely knit team, their pre- and post-match huddles bear an authenticity rarely seen in the marketed pseudo-huddles that are now a compulsory feature of the theatre offered by the gambling companies. Arsenal's players were ashen faced and, unwittingly, they were on the wrong end of a major betting event. Notwithstanding Mike Dean's third minute sending off of Taylor for injuring Eduardo, the match official proceeded to get every other major decision incorrect, as is his wont - remember the Man Utd v Chelsea fiasco. The free kick for McFadden's first goal and the penalty for his second were simply laughable whereas Adebayor's penalty claims one minute prior to the penalty gift to Brum looked pretty much like a penalty to me. The second gift grabbed a particular firm of bookmakers the draw they so desperately required.
Our pre-match email to Dietrological clients included the line: "The betting industry are out to get Arsenal in this game but their fitness advantage makes any position perilous. It would need a Dean intervention...". Or three...
Five points clear pre-match and about to exit their only other distraction, the Champions League, Arsenal were looking a potential threat to the power's-that-be. While Chelsea are worrying about 4 competitions and Man Utd three, Wenger could focus on solely on a title run-in with a 5 point handicap start. By making Arsenal play two-and-a-half days after the Milan match, the fixture list manipulators at Sky and Football DataCo Limited ensured that much of the Londoner's fitness advantage could be negated. There were some very serious gambles from very interesting sources on this match and the Asian markets were welcomed back from their Chinese New Year family time with the gift of a cornered market from their European competitors. Revenge will be sweet...
The return of the anti-Arsenal betting scam, the broken leg, a forward line that refuses to speak to each other, Toure's injury, the machinations of the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB), the requirements of the people fronted by Richard Scudamore, a possible lack of resilience as the battle heats up, all these things surely point against an Arsenal Premiership triumph in May. Before yesterday's matches, you could find 3.00 (2/1) on a Man Utd victory and shrewdies were out there stocking up. The end of Arsenal's title hopes has seen United return to odds-on, a strata within which they will remain for the remainder of the season.
We were originally going to produce our latest Bum Ref Index today but a combination of Saturday's comedy refereeing and Eduardo's injury and the new realities in the Premiership title race persuaded us otherwise - mocking the PGMOB officials will now have to wait until Tuesday.
Okay so, one of your colleagues has a career-ending injury in front of your eyes, indeed he might not even be able to walk unaided again. You are forced to continue playing after the injury. The match official is on a mission to get a job done and you are mugged by a last minute refereeing travesty. In that moment, in the despair of missing out on the victory that they were so desperately trying to achieve on Eduardo's behalf, captain supreme, William Gallas, shouts and swears, goes walkabout, kicks an advertising hoarding, gets booked (the booking presumably being for the serious new addition to the rulebook - thou shall not disrespect the advertisers name). Okay so, perhaps he might have shown a "better" example. But to whom? To the watching masses? To his teammates who look up to him? To the sanitised world of football that the media and bookmakers are desperate to sell us? Gallas was quite correct to show outrage. Arsenal were robbed and they will continue to be robbed while they refuse to deal creatively with the spectacular reality with their name on it.
In response to Gallas and his display of anger at a corrupted system, Richard Keys, Andy Gray and Ian Darke used all the words they could to belittle the man's right to be livid. Gray's inane assertion that Clichy "hadn't got enough on the ball" - how much are you actually supposed to need on it? - must have been influenced by the improvement to Gray's bank balance caused by Dean's decision. On Match Of The Day, Hansen launched a bitter outburst against Gallas and Lawrensen piped in with "plain odd" directed at the Arsenal captain. Just as Roy Hodgson correctly asserted that Howard Webb's refereeing Fulham's game yesterday led to a "gross injustice", Wenger was correct to describe Dean's final little earner as "a very dodgy penalty".
The fact that professionals are angered when corruption impacts upon the potential for a competitive meritocracy is painted as an outrage, a bringing of the game into disrepute. But exactly who is doing the disreputable thing? Mike Dean and Howard Webb or William Gallas and Roy Hodgson? And, in that Dean and Webb are only the armed messengers of a hierarchical elite, the real stain on the English game emanates from the boardrooms of the bookmakers, the Premier League, the hyper-owners, the PGMOB, Sky and the sychophantic media with their quisling journalism. Remember that the next time the talking heads try and get you to shout "bad guy" when one of the actors refuses to act out, in a pre-destined manner, the corrupt script on offer.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 22 February 2008
The Charge Should Be Treason, Not A Treasury
Sunday sees the release of the latest Bum Ref Index which is inspired by The Economists Big Mac Index (this uses the economic fabrication of purchasing power parity [PPP] to compare currencies across the planet). Not only does the Bum Ref Index allow us to expose the worst culprits in the whistleblowing department in the English Premiership, it also allows us to indulge in one of our favourite, if a little repetitive, pastimes of dissing the pseudo-mathematic that is PPP.
The Premiership wears two crowns. The first relates to the liquidity of the global betting markets and the second is the level of corruption in the league. In our experience of modelling financial markets, liquidity and corruption dance a two-step as markets mature to their supreme utopian state of cartelisation and the endemic abuse of information in all public spheres. This journey to a corrupt nirvana is the inevitable conclusion - shareholder capitalism progresses along a path every bit as robust as the stellar evolution demonstrated by the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram.
So where do we find the Premiership on this journey? The English Premiership is approaching full maturity and the fragmented cartel infrastructure currently defining the marketplace is merely a precursor to a fully mature state. Can't wait...
This freeflow to ultimate corruption within a sector is frequently impacted upon by supernovae in geographically similar sectors. For example, the dynamics towards a European Super League will have a massive impact on the Premiership as the product will be devalued at an even greater rate than Scudie is able to achieve of his own volition when the superstars disappear to new levels of spectacular reality. The Premier League will achieve full maturity for their product before (dis)gracefully retiring to a mature and crooked old age as matches between Boro and Bolton take on the sporting equivalence of the 2:45 on the all-weather at Lingfield.
Incentives lead to corruption which is the prime dynamic underpinning the inevitabilty of the continuance of shareholder capitalism's two-step. They must go on until the feet become blistered, the shoes worn through and the soundtrack hackneyed. Just as a £10 million betting market trumps the £4000 prize money at Lingfield so the £1 billion betting market trumps the loyalty to club, colleagues, the game, your profession. Some individuals take the bait singularly, others act in concert but the process is always the same in a maturing market sector.
The English Premiership is leading in the race to become the first fully mature football league in the world. From a strictly monetarist perspective, Scudamore is performing a fine job. His actions and inactions have created the template whereby the Premiership is primed for the ultimate corruption that typifies a mature market. From a capitalist perspective, the man warrants his twenty five grand per week. In fact he is cheap at price. Just do some back-of-the-envelope maths and it can be seen that a one million annual pay-off for orchestrating the template to allow for the final corruption of the beautiful game in England is hardly significant when one individual game grosses a billion. There's probably a suitably located offshore treasury being put aside by those on whose behalf the man slimes his existence.
The referees also occupy a pivotal role in the maximisation of the corruption of any football league anywhere in the world. We focus primarily on the Premiership as it is the most corrupt of the leading European leagues and yet it markets itself as some bastion of culture and integrity that warrants our respect and admiration.
On Sunday, we'll list the worst performing Premiership referees and, on Tuesday, we will prepare a post looking at club bias with regard to certain match officials in the Premiership, Serie A, La Primera Liga and the Bundesliga. We'll also bang on about PPP from a Libertarian Socialist perspective for two paragraphs.
We bet that you can't wait...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The Premiership wears two crowns. The first relates to the liquidity of the global betting markets and the second is the level of corruption in the league. In our experience of modelling financial markets, liquidity and corruption dance a two-step as markets mature to their supreme utopian state of cartelisation and the endemic abuse of information in all public spheres. This journey to a corrupt nirvana is the inevitable conclusion - shareholder capitalism progresses along a path every bit as robust as the stellar evolution demonstrated by the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram.
So where do we find the Premiership on this journey? The English Premiership is approaching full maturity and the fragmented cartel infrastructure currently defining the marketplace is merely a precursor to a fully mature state. Can't wait...
This freeflow to ultimate corruption within a sector is frequently impacted upon by supernovae in geographically similar sectors. For example, the dynamics towards a European Super League will have a massive impact on the Premiership as the product will be devalued at an even greater rate than Scudie is able to achieve of his own volition when the superstars disappear to new levels of spectacular reality. The Premier League will achieve full maturity for their product before (dis)gracefully retiring to a mature and crooked old age as matches between Boro and Bolton take on the sporting equivalence of the 2:45 on the all-weather at Lingfield.
Incentives lead to corruption which is the prime dynamic underpinning the inevitabilty of the continuance of shareholder capitalism's two-step. They must go on until the feet become blistered, the shoes worn through and the soundtrack hackneyed. Just as a £10 million betting market trumps the £4000 prize money at Lingfield so the £1 billion betting market trumps the loyalty to club, colleagues, the game, your profession. Some individuals take the bait singularly, others act in concert but the process is always the same in a maturing market sector.
The English Premiership is leading in the race to become the first fully mature football league in the world. From a strictly monetarist perspective, Scudamore is performing a fine job. His actions and inactions have created the template whereby the Premiership is primed for the ultimate corruption that typifies a mature market. From a capitalist perspective, the man warrants his twenty five grand per week. In fact he is cheap at price. Just do some back-of-the-envelope maths and it can be seen that a one million annual pay-off for orchestrating the template to allow for the final corruption of the beautiful game in England is hardly significant when one individual game grosses a billion. There's probably a suitably located offshore treasury being put aside by those on whose behalf the man slimes his existence.
The referees also occupy a pivotal role in the maximisation of the corruption of any football league anywhere in the world. We focus primarily on the Premiership as it is the most corrupt of the leading European leagues and yet it markets itself as some bastion of culture and integrity that warrants our respect and admiration.
On Sunday, we'll list the worst performing Premiership referees and, on Tuesday, we will prepare a post looking at club bias with regard to certain match officials in the Premiership, Serie A, La Primera Liga and the Bundesliga. We'll also bang on about PPP from a Libertarian Socialist perspective for two paragraphs.
We bet that you can't wait...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Monday, 18 February 2008
Nationalisation And Pumping A Flagging Brand
Good governance is the one core competency required by the administrators and officials, for that is all they are, who oversee all market sectors. When, as at Northern Rock or the Premier League, the infrastructure is shown to be invalid, as measured against the yardstick of benchmarking, change must be enforced.
So, Darling/Brown, seemingly not content with simply throwing £55 billion of taxpayer's money at Northern Rock, have now nationalised the blighted bank as a last gasp option after all the bids either withdrew over a lack of governmental guarantees (the free economy at work again) or resumed their original market status following an engendered pseudo-bid in an attempt to beef up the market (no corruption in government tendering processes). When Brown gave the Bank of England the right to set interest rates, a key lever of democratic control passed to the financial sector. The infrastructure obviously allowed for Britain plc to punch above its weight as the government backed off from imposing any restrictions on the degree of psychopathy within the system. But, the bankers couldn't look after themselves as their desire for bubbles and busts, with associated bonus profits, always took precedence over regulatory oversight. Our Trading Team knew Northern Rock was in peril long before the market reacted and the Bank of England was provided with a stage upon which to display its incompetence. Mervyn King should get out more... Free markets!!
Professor Eric de Keuleneer stated in a recent letter to the Economist: "Adam Smith proposed that if profit is attained in a competitive market, working with clear rules and transparent information, it becomes 'socially legitimate' because it has created value... some businesses try to convince us that they have become 'socially responsible' through their deceiving propaganda in order to make us forget that they do not fulfil the basic conditions (competition and honesty of information) for the social legitimacy of their profits. They also lobby against regulations that try to remedy this. It would be good if some companies were reminded that... a respect for markets and consumers would provide social legitimacy". Leaving aside the rather obvious question regarding whether profit can ever be socially legitimate and de Keuleneer's overview of shareholder capitalism is surely accurate.
The lack of regulatory guardianship of the banking sector in Britain created the first bank run since Victorian times and the architect of the infrastructure that enabled this bank run to occur is now the prime minister who has taken the "decision" to nationalise the bank. Symmetry? Perhaps but free markets?
It seems strangely valid that dysfunctionality is the core competence at Newcastle United as well as Northern Rock as the two entities continue to provide entertainment by demonstrating that poorly executed capitalism is a highly efficient destroyer of value. When Newcastle United run out on to the Messiah's turf with the Northern Rock sponsorship logo blazened across their shirts, they might as well have the slogan "We Are Really Shit" written instead. You are linked to the worst bank in the country, 150 years since anybody has been as stupid as "your" bank... Northern Rock have impeccably poor timing too, a corporate style that developed before the quality of their loanbook became a matter of public interest, when the bank was forced to withdraw an extensive 2006 World Cup advertising campaign featuring Michael Owen after Newcastle's hot striker collapsed as soon as the tournament started. We look forward to the pitchside advertising at Newcastle on Saturday - Northern Rock... The Strength To Be Nationalised.
Perhaps Newcastle's results might be helped by removing the sponsor's name from the shirts. Choose something more optimistic. As they are frequently so helpful to your cause, how about the PGMOB? Or go the whole hog with AirAsia? A further tactic that might enhance Newcastle's results is to keep Kevin Keegan out of the dressing room at half time in away games - the four Premiership away games since the Messiah returned have seen 15 second half goals conceded and none scored!
So, bring the setting of interest rates back into the Treasury and then sack Brown, Darling, King, the Northern Rock board, Owen, Keegan, Mort and Ashley before moving on to public nuisance, Richard Scudamore. The two key pieces of information regarding Scudie's 39th Match ruse are: i) he never consulted with anybody beforehand and ii) he seems to think that he doesn't have to. The Premier League (PL), effectively, IS Richard Scudamore, which is presumably why he deserves his £1.25 million per year. His personal rottweiler, Richards, is the only other input to the levers of power within the PL and such a structure is primed for corruption. Scudamore, or any other PL chief executive, must be constrained by a balanced board otherwise he may simply choose to operate outside of the law (as the PL reading of the regulations always allows a suitable loophole or over-riding principle to be found). There is no systemic value in having so much power vested in one individual. The only power bases to gain from such a weak regulatory structure are those which might choose to by-pass the law on their route to profits.
Not only is Scudamore too powerful and selling the game to the betting markets but he is also incompetent (in a Milton Friedman sort-of-way). Why can't people just appreciate that he is maximising the game's value?!
* He claims all twenty Premiership clubs are in favour of the 39th Game which must be news to Liverpool, Manchester United and Reading who have already voiced concerns.
* Only Wenger has publicly supported the plans but he also sees the inevitability of a European Super League (see below) so he is obviously hedging his positions.
* Blatter said last Thursday that plans to take Premiership games abroad "will never happen". He continued: "Those that are richer than the others, they have more responsibility and what the PL is trying to do is contrary to this responsibility". He called Scudamore's plan "an abuse of association football" before confirming that: "We have not been contacted before by the league to ask us what we think of this idea. You speak about rude but I think it is irresponsible".
* Blatter's hint that the 2018 World Cup bid might be compromised if the PL continue with their Murdochracy media strategy has forced the FA hand and now Triesman and Barwick are opponents of Scudamore's policy statement. Triesman squealed: "I am determined that our international and domestic relations must be sustained at the highest level, and I will not countenance any damage to those relations". Are we still talking about football here, pal? The government is also cool to Scudie as fans can vote and Brown wants for a World Cup to wave in the face of Blair's Olympics.
* The Japanese FA are against it as are their Australian equivalents; Mohamed bin Hamman (Mr Big at the Asian FA) doesn't like the plans; Michel Platini quite reasonably spat out words like "absurd" and "arrogance"; Bernie Eckleston is against it (unless someone offers him a suitable slice of the action); fans are threatening to boycott the Premiership sponsors.
* Scudamore has a history of creatively reading the rulebook as Sheffield United found out last season in the "When is a Third Party Transfer Not A Third Party Transfer?" saga. Sheffield's supremo claims the PL is "poorly governed".
Scudamore is so arrogant that he consulted nobody prior to the launch apart from the 39th Game private sponsors (including Roy Eddington and Rupert Murdoch). Blatter came over all Cantona-like with his thinly veiled threat: "If only Fox and Sky and a Murdoch organisation [is showing the games] then Mr Murdoch should feel he is stripping the shirt a little bit too much". Mr Murdoch doesn't do "feel" and I can only assume that "stripping the shirt" is simply a teutonic version of "taking the piss"... Scudamore didn't mention his plan to his member clubs, the FA were informed 2 hours ahead of the press release and have still not seen detailed proposals, FIFA and UEFA were kept out of the loop, so were the FA's of the target territories. So long as Murdoch and Shinawatra knew, Scudie is doing his job. The lack of strategy is further demonstrated by the fans main concern, what will the 39th game be? Scudamore reassured us all with: "none of the solutions are entirely self-evident". Strange how the fans always veer to the meritocracy issues while the PL swerve to the profits...
All these shenanigans form a part of the continuing power struggles as a whole array of inappropriate operators try to increase their share of the action. The last week has seen numerous breakpoints within the footballing sector eg the alleged breaking up of the G14(18) at its "final" meeting last Friday or Quest getting the contract to audit how Soho Square regulates the transfer market. Prediction... several years of inaction will be followed by a couple of publicity stunts indicating that some consultancy work might have been undertaken prior to the whole edifice falling down on a technicality, or some such narrative.
Although he sits on the fence, Wenger is surely correct that the European Super League (ESL) is the reality that the PL fears. When the Big 4/5 depart, the PL product is instantly cheapened - the 39th Game might not prove so sellable in Bangkok if it is Derby v Boro. The ESL could more feasibly tap into global venues by building such a structure into the initial template for the ESL tournament. Scudamore's race for a competitive advantage has surely done nothing more than to accelerate his own departure from his depreciating post.
Belatedly, Scudamore is realising the poor call of no consultation. In response to Blatter's drawing of the battle lines (I can't remember the last time we backed Blatter on anything! Just how bad is Scudamore?), Scudie gushed: "I want to explain the reasons for this proposal to Mr Blatter because I do not think, on the information he will have received so far, he has been given the chance to understand it". Which is public school for: "We kept him in the dark. We are now willing to meet him on our terms".
What are the odds on a Kerry Packer-style split in the game with the frontlines drawn between UEFA, the disbanded G14(18), the PL, the ESL, with a whole array of inappropriates squabbling over ownership of the product of football?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
So, Darling/Brown, seemingly not content with simply throwing £55 billion of taxpayer's money at Northern Rock, have now nationalised the blighted bank as a last gasp option after all the bids either withdrew over a lack of governmental guarantees (the free economy at work again) or resumed their original market status following an engendered pseudo-bid in an attempt to beef up the market (no corruption in government tendering processes). When Brown gave the Bank of England the right to set interest rates, a key lever of democratic control passed to the financial sector. The infrastructure obviously allowed for Britain plc to punch above its weight as the government backed off from imposing any restrictions on the degree of psychopathy within the system. But, the bankers couldn't look after themselves as their desire for bubbles and busts, with associated bonus profits, always took precedence over regulatory oversight. Our Trading Team knew Northern Rock was in peril long before the market reacted and the Bank of England was provided with a stage upon which to display its incompetence. Mervyn King should get out more... Free markets!!
Professor Eric de Keuleneer stated in a recent letter to the Economist: "Adam Smith proposed that if profit is attained in a competitive market, working with clear rules and transparent information, it becomes 'socially legitimate' because it has created value... some businesses try to convince us that they have become 'socially responsible' through their deceiving propaganda in order to make us forget that they do not fulfil the basic conditions (competition and honesty of information) for the social legitimacy of their profits. They also lobby against regulations that try to remedy this. It would be good if some companies were reminded that... a respect for markets and consumers would provide social legitimacy". Leaving aside the rather obvious question regarding whether profit can ever be socially legitimate and de Keuleneer's overview of shareholder capitalism is surely accurate.
The lack of regulatory guardianship of the banking sector in Britain created the first bank run since Victorian times and the architect of the infrastructure that enabled this bank run to occur is now the prime minister who has taken the "decision" to nationalise the bank. Symmetry? Perhaps but free markets?
It seems strangely valid that dysfunctionality is the core competence at Newcastle United as well as Northern Rock as the two entities continue to provide entertainment by demonstrating that poorly executed capitalism is a highly efficient destroyer of value. When Newcastle United run out on to the Messiah's turf with the Northern Rock sponsorship logo blazened across their shirts, they might as well have the slogan "We Are Really Shit" written instead. You are linked to the worst bank in the country, 150 years since anybody has been as stupid as "your" bank... Northern Rock have impeccably poor timing too, a corporate style that developed before the quality of their loanbook became a matter of public interest, when the bank was forced to withdraw an extensive 2006 World Cup advertising campaign featuring Michael Owen after Newcastle's hot striker collapsed as soon as the tournament started. We look forward to the pitchside advertising at Newcastle on Saturday - Northern Rock... The Strength To Be Nationalised.
Perhaps Newcastle's results might be helped by removing the sponsor's name from the shirts. Choose something more optimistic. As they are frequently so helpful to your cause, how about the PGMOB? Or go the whole hog with AirAsia? A further tactic that might enhance Newcastle's results is to keep Kevin Keegan out of the dressing room at half time in away games - the four Premiership away games since the Messiah returned have seen 15 second half goals conceded and none scored!
So, bring the setting of interest rates back into the Treasury and then sack Brown, Darling, King, the Northern Rock board, Owen, Keegan, Mort and Ashley before moving on to public nuisance, Richard Scudamore. The two key pieces of information regarding Scudie's 39th Match ruse are: i) he never consulted with anybody beforehand and ii) he seems to think that he doesn't have to. The Premier League (PL), effectively, IS Richard Scudamore, which is presumably why he deserves his £1.25 million per year. His personal rottweiler, Richards, is the only other input to the levers of power within the PL and such a structure is primed for corruption. Scudamore, or any other PL chief executive, must be constrained by a balanced board otherwise he may simply choose to operate outside of the law (as the PL reading of the regulations always allows a suitable loophole or over-riding principle to be found). There is no systemic value in having so much power vested in one individual. The only power bases to gain from such a weak regulatory structure are those which might choose to by-pass the law on their route to profits.
Not only is Scudamore too powerful and selling the game to the betting markets but he is also incompetent (in a Milton Friedman sort-of-way). Why can't people just appreciate that he is maximising the game's value?!
* He claims all twenty Premiership clubs are in favour of the 39th Game which must be news to Liverpool, Manchester United and Reading who have already voiced concerns.
* Only Wenger has publicly supported the plans but he also sees the inevitability of a European Super League (see below) so he is obviously hedging his positions.
* Blatter said last Thursday that plans to take Premiership games abroad "will never happen". He continued: "Those that are richer than the others, they have more responsibility and what the PL is trying to do is contrary to this responsibility". He called Scudamore's plan "an abuse of association football" before confirming that: "We have not been contacted before by the league to ask us what we think of this idea. You speak about rude but I think it is irresponsible".
* Blatter's hint that the 2018 World Cup bid might be compromised if the PL continue with their Murdochracy media strategy has forced the FA hand and now Triesman and Barwick are opponents of Scudamore's policy statement. Triesman squealed: "I am determined that our international and domestic relations must be sustained at the highest level, and I will not countenance any damage to those relations". Are we still talking about football here, pal? The government is also cool to Scudie as fans can vote and Brown wants for a World Cup to wave in the face of Blair's Olympics.
* The Japanese FA are against it as are their Australian equivalents; Mohamed bin Hamman (Mr Big at the Asian FA) doesn't like the plans; Michel Platini quite reasonably spat out words like "absurd" and "arrogance"; Bernie Eckleston is against it (unless someone offers him a suitable slice of the action); fans are threatening to boycott the Premiership sponsors.
* Scudamore has a history of creatively reading the rulebook as Sheffield United found out last season in the "When is a Third Party Transfer Not A Third Party Transfer?" saga. Sheffield's supremo claims the PL is "poorly governed".
Scudamore is so arrogant that he consulted nobody prior to the launch apart from the 39th Game private sponsors (including Roy Eddington and Rupert Murdoch). Blatter came over all Cantona-like with his thinly veiled threat: "If only Fox and Sky and a Murdoch organisation [is showing the games] then Mr Murdoch should feel he is stripping the shirt a little bit too much". Mr Murdoch doesn't do "feel" and I can only assume that "stripping the shirt" is simply a teutonic version of "taking the piss"... Scudamore didn't mention his plan to his member clubs, the FA were informed 2 hours ahead of the press release and have still not seen detailed proposals, FIFA and UEFA were kept out of the loop, so were the FA's of the target territories. So long as Murdoch and Shinawatra knew, Scudie is doing his job. The lack of strategy is further demonstrated by the fans main concern, what will the 39th game be? Scudamore reassured us all with: "none of the solutions are entirely self-evident". Strange how the fans always veer to the meritocracy issues while the PL swerve to the profits...
All these shenanigans form a part of the continuing power struggles as a whole array of inappropriate operators try to increase their share of the action. The last week has seen numerous breakpoints within the footballing sector eg the alleged breaking up of the G14(18) at its "final" meeting last Friday or Quest getting the contract to audit how Soho Square regulates the transfer market. Prediction... several years of inaction will be followed by a couple of publicity stunts indicating that some consultancy work might have been undertaken prior to the whole edifice falling down on a technicality, or some such narrative.
Although he sits on the fence, Wenger is surely correct that the European Super League (ESL) is the reality that the PL fears. When the Big 4/5 depart, the PL product is instantly cheapened - the 39th Game might not prove so sellable in Bangkok if it is Derby v Boro. The ESL could more feasibly tap into global venues by building such a structure into the initial template for the ESL tournament. Scudamore's race for a competitive advantage has surely done nothing more than to accelerate his own departure from his depreciating post.
Belatedly, Scudamore is realising the poor call of no consultation. In response to Blatter's drawing of the battle lines (I can't remember the last time we backed Blatter on anything! Just how bad is Scudamore?), Scudie gushed: "I want to explain the reasons for this proposal to Mr Blatter because I do not think, on the information he will have received so far, he has been given the chance to understand it". Which is public school for: "We kept him in the dark. We are now willing to meet him on our terms".
What are the odds on a Kerry Packer-style split in the game with the frontlines drawn between UEFA, the disbanded G14(18), the PL, the ESL, with a whole array of inappropriates squabbling over ownership of the product of football?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 14 February 2008
You're Twisting My Melon Man
Anybody who placed their gambles based on the "knowledge" of Statto will be feeling both revenge and a disturbing sense of historical gullibility this morning. News broke yesterday that Statto, "real" name Angus Loughran, has been declared bankrupt and, although he claimed that the debts were related to council tax non-payments, it is believed that the man's finances are, shall we say, a touch "delicate".
Spectacular society creation Statto is a highly successful talking head for the betting industry and he was the ideal placement from the perspective of the bookmaking industry as he did as he was told AND his proprietary trading was a random walk to financial oblivion. Perfect.
Statto, educated at Ampleforth College, first came to "fame" when the carefully PR-manicured pseudo-eccentric ran on to the Oval to place a chair for Chris Tavaré, the hilarious "joke" being that the batsman was scoring too slowly for England. Really funny that... The lack of humour could only lead to a link up with Frank Skinner and David Baddiel as they performed a regressed adolescent nonsense of a media presentation - the Henry Normal strata of unfunniness. The "mad" Statto, in his pyjamas, being bullied and ridiculed both at school and by Skinner and Baddiel, presented a clearly obvious target for the bookmaking industry. His victim-based nerdiness and his defensive alter ego would capitulate immediately under a little bit of pressure. Suddenly, Statto is a resident expert of the gambling sector. Channel 4 in England had John McCririck as a disinformational talking head providing the bookmaker's lines while mixing in the odd punters-pal input - "...outrageous, another 8 runner field having a non-runner meaning the each-way only pays out on the first two home. What are the bookmakers up to?". Well, they are paying your wages, John, that's what they are up to. The BBC racing coverage was altogether cleaner and the bookmakers worked long and hard to get their man on the inside. Statto was ideal. How can one not trust that Harry Potter of a buffoon? Well, easily, we sussed the man very early in his "career" and he has provided several very useful nuggets of information over the years via an analysis of his output and his personal psychology - a future post will focus on an outline of the analysis of talking heads. Statto suddenly morphed from clown to "serious" analyst as his public school background came to the fore. The problem for the betting industry with regard to controlled talking heads is that they swiftly become a source of information rather than a source of disinformation. Statto says England will beat New Zealand 5-0 in the current cricket series which, after a 6 wicket defeat and only the fourth ever 10 wicket defeat for England in the first two games, is as good as he gets really.
Statto was always disposable. He based the majority of his "analysis" on a myopic over-focus on the entirely irrelevant statistics. His inability to develop a realistic overview of the markets that he was talking heading led to his proprietary trading being highly dependent on inside information - effectively, the "information" that he was providing on behalf of our friends, the bookies. Taking the piss out of bookmakers is not a valid trading strategy in Europe, as Tony Bloom found out to his personal cost, and there was obviously one glaring weakness in Loughran's trading "strategy". Inside information is only a valid tool if you are one step away from the source of the "information" - everything else is bobbins. The "knowledge" was plugged into our realities by Loughran and his lack of proximity to the source of his verbal "output" was the fundamental flaw in his betting plan, strategy being too generous term to describe Statto's rise and fall. Disinformational talking heads must mix it up in their tilted analysis - Lawrenson's PR job on the PGMOB would become even more ludicrous if he didn't occasionally "admit" that, perhaps for example, Clattenburg "did" get the Bowyer sending off wrong (how far has football sunk when an incident involving Bowyer and Clattenburg - last year's best referee and this year's worst in the Premiership - results in Bowyer acting with dignity and Clattenburg doing the lack of integrity thing?).
Ampleforth to Bowdon was the rise of Loughran. The Manchester courtroom on February 4th was the downfall. The man does not have the funds to service his creditors - apparently Eurosport, Easyodds bookmakers, the Daily Telegraph, ESPN and the BBC (together with his real paymasters) do not pay enough to cover an appalling trading project. Over the years, Loughran has been responsible for the financial losses of huge numbers of gullible market participants, schadenfreude demands that we celebrate the mashing up of this "sports consultant".
In ancient Greece if a man owed money and could not pay, his family were forced into slavery for his creditor. We look forward to seeing Loughran brushing the Old Trafford streets in servitude to the local council :)
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Spectacular society creation Statto is a highly successful talking head for the betting industry and he was the ideal placement from the perspective of the bookmaking industry as he did as he was told AND his proprietary trading was a random walk to financial oblivion. Perfect.
Statto, educated at Ampleforth College, first came to "fame" when the carefully PR-manicured pseudo-eccentric ran on to the Oval to place a chair for Chris Tavaré, the hilarious "joke" being that the batsman was scoring too slowly for England. Really funny that... The lack of humour could only lead to a link up with Frank Skinner and David Baddiel as they performed a regressed adolescent nonsense of a media presentation - the Henry Normal strata of unfunniness. The "mad" Statto, in his pyjamas, being bullied and ridiculed both at school and by Skinner and Baddiel, presented a clearly obvious target for the bookmaking industry. His victim-based nerdiness and his defensive alter ego would capitulate immediately under a little bit of pressure. Suddenly, Statto is a resident expert of the gambling sector. Channel 4 in England had John McCririck as a disinformational talking head providing the bookmaker's lines while mixing in the odd punters-pal input - "...outrageous, another 8 runner field having a non-runner meaning the each-way only pays out on the first two home. What are the bookmakers up to?". Well, they are paying your wages, John, that's what they are up to. The BBC racing coverage was altogether cleaner and the bookmakers worked long and hard to get their man on the inside. Statto was ideal. How can one not trust that Harry Potter of a buffoon? Well, easily, we sussed the man very early in his "career" and he has provided several very useful nuggets of information over the years via an analysis of his output and his personal psychology - a future post will focus on an outline of the analysis of talking heads. Statto suddenly morphed from clown to "serious" analyst as his public school background came to the fore. The problem for the betting industry with regard to controlled talking heads is that they swiftly become a source of information rather than a source of disinformation. Statto says England will beat New Zealand 5-0 in the current cricket series which, after a 6 wicket defeat and only the fourth ever 10 wicket defeat for England in the first two games, is as good as he gets really.
Statto was always disposable. He based the majority of his "analysis" on a myopic over-focus on the entirely irrelevant statistics. His inability to develop a realistic overview of the markets that he was talking heading led to his proprietary trading being highly dependent on inside information - effectively, the "information" that he was providing on behalf of our friends, the bookies. Taking the piss out of bookmakers is not a valid trading strategy in Europe, as Tony Bloom found out to his personal cost, and there was obviously one glaring weakness in Loughran's trading "strategy". Inside information is only a valid tool if you are one step away from the source of the "information" - everything else is bobbins. The "knowledge" was plugged into our realities by Loughran and his lack of proximity to the source of his verbal "output" was the fundamental flaw in his betting plan, strategy being too generous term to describe Statto's rise and fall. Disinformational talking heads must mix it up in their tilted analysis - Lawrenson's PR job on the PGMOB would become even more ludicrous if he didn't occasionally "admit" that, perhaps for example, Clattenburg "did" get the Bowyer sending off wrong (how far has football sunk when an incident involving Bowyer and Clattenburg - last year's best referee and this year's worst in the Premiership - results in Bowyer acting with dignity and Clattenburg doing the lack of integrity thing?).
Ampleforth to Bowdon was the rise of Loughran. The Manchester courtroom on February 4th was the downfall. The man does not have the funds to service his creditors - apparently Eurosport, Easyodds bookmakers, the Daily Telegraph, ESPN and the BBC (together with his real paymasters) do not pay enough to cover an appalling trading project. Over the years, Loughran has been responsible for the financial losses of huge numbers of gullible market participants, schadenfreude demands that we celebrate the mashing up of this "sports consultant".
In ancient Greece if a man owed money and could not pay, his family were forced into slavery for his creditor. We look forward to seeing Loughran brushing the Old Trafford streets in servitude to the local council :)
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 12 February 2008
Power And Privacy
Privacy is paramount in a world where knowledge and data are the only competitive advantages. The warped narrative sold to a consumerist planet by shareholder capitalism is based on the proprietary ownership and the withholding of such information but this exchange is uni-directional and the masses must be as diligent as the autocrats in protecting their own individual liberties.
"As long as the game is not a game of perfect information, the advantage will be with the player who has knowledge and can obtain information" - Lyotard. This is the macro structure of information. The technocrats, on behalf of the elite, protect their knowledge using patents, secrecy, the imposition of sanctions and punishments for groupings who invade the territory of their "rights" as the foot soldiers of the systemic controllers. This privacy also engenders such criminality as insider trading and the establishment of economic systems that shield real knowledge from the masses. This core knowledge is guarded jealously, think military research or nanotechnology, and frequently results in our world being made a more dangerous place as the focus is on performativity, efficiency and productivity rather than the law, safety issues or human rights and freedoms. Taking nanotechnology as a particular example, there is no body which is undertaking basic risk analysis regarding this new scientific area - there is no incentive for any body to do so. The race to profit and competitive advantage is the sole dynamic and, yet, there are many scientists within the discipline who are expressing concern as to the extreme risks posed by nanotechnology.
Although we are denied access to much of the key core data and information, we are able to address this imbalance in two ways. The first mode is to monitor the hidden information using analysis based on co-ordinated lateral thinking (not an issue for this particular post). The second route is through self-protection.
Globalised society under the yoke of shareholder capitalism depends upon incentives and fear. These two narratives spread from the top to the bottom of the highly unequal system. The poor in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) experience both these frameworks to the same degree as those at the top of the Murdochracy. The incentives are the mind-distorting drug that leads to one human being exploiting another for personal advantage. The fear immediately kicks in once this adam's apple has been plucked from the mythical tree - the fear of loss of assets, the fear of competition, the fear of losing your edge, the fear that somebody out there is willing to use tactics even more antisocial than those employed by yourself. The inevitable race to the bottom of the barrel where excessive profit may be achieved in a non-regulated marketplace is the inevitable (and only) outcome to this particular game. Welcome to capitalism in a 2008 stylee.
Privacy is the core competency required to be able to operate in this psychopathic system and privacy requires addressing on two levels - the societal (the macro) and the individual (the micro). We will take each of these core areas in turn, first lets do the macro...
We should all be grateful for organisations like Privacy International (PI). Their aim is to: "...recognize countries in which privacy protection and respect for privacy is nurtured. This is done in the hope that others can learn from their example. Second we intend to identify countries in which governments and privacy regulators have failed to create a healthy privacy environment". This mission statement might sound meek and mild but it should form the fundamental basis of all of our lives, both private and business/employment. The 2007 International Privacy Ranking may be found at http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-559597 and we paraphrase some of PI's findings in this post. Firstly, not one country ranks at level 4.1-5.0 (the grading which represents a nation which "consistently upholds human rights standards") - this is the most depressing feature of the 47 countries covered in the report. Breaking down the data reveals more monsters lurking in the deep.
Eight countries are graded at the bottom level - "endemic surveillance societies" in the words of the report. That such an antisocial grouping would include China, Russia, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia is hardly surprising but the other two "free" societies should be of far greater concern in the west. For the green unpleasant land that is England and the land of the free that is the USA are also rated as endemic surveillance societies. That Britain falls below such free societies as South Africa, the Philippines, Brazil and Israel should be remembered the next time a tory MP implies that the Brits are living in a police state. A further interesting point to be gained from the PI report is that the state of privacy decays and deteriorates in countries which "elect" right wing governments - check out the 2007 realities in France, Germany, Canada, Poland, Austria and Sweden, for example.
The fallacious war of terror is only a minor part of this invasion of our privacy as members of the populace, a far greater proportion of the probing into our lives by the US and GB is related to fear and incentives.
The societal leash allows that we might enjoy freedom of speech and rights of assembly but only within a structure which enables the deep state and their colleagues in business to monitor our behaviour closely and invalidly. Below is the analysis of Britain by the PI.
* World leading surveillance schemes
* Lack of accountability and data breach disclosure law
* Commissioner has few powers
* Interception of communications is authorised by politician, evidence not used in court, and oversight is by commissioner who reports only once a year upon reviewing a subset of applications
* Hundreds of thousands of requests from government agencies to telecommunications providers for traffic data
* Data retention scheme took a significant step forward with the quiet changes based on EU law
* Plans are emerging regarding surveillance of communications networks for the protection of copyrighted content
* Despite data breaches, 'joined-up government' initiatives continue
* Identity scheme still planned to be the most invasive in the world, highly centralised and biometrics-driven; plan to issue all foreigners with cards in 2008 are continuing
* E-borders plans include increased data collection on travellers
We trust that this makes our British readers feel far safer - you are living in the most invasive country in the EU...
When we established Dietrological and Football Is Fixed, these issues relating to privacy, and hence our security, were the first ones which we addressed. We set up the business in a highly unusual way - we used a cell-and-web structure across a range of nations. Looking at this in more detail will, hopefully, demonstrate the values of such an approach. Dietrological is a knowledge cell, we are a small grouping of individuals who create value through specific analysis and modelling of the global financial system and its derivatives. We are linked to other cells across the world which have their own particular core competencies - information technology, the Far East betting markets, business model innovation, political, the international financial markets etc. We elected to base these cells in surveillance-lite territories and this decision remains the prime basis of our business and personal security. The territories chosen (in a somewhat randomised order!) are Australia, Romania, Greece, Japan and a Caribbean island. The latter is not covered by the PI report but Greece is the most free country of the 47 assessed by PI and Romania is in 2nd place while all of the others rank several levels above the wonderful "free democracies" of your propaganda. The cell-and-web structure works on a range of privacy and security levels, the structure even allows us to provide rampant disinformation via the creative use of the monitoring tactics within England which serve to enhance the strength of our edifice. Through the use of intranets, pagers, spiders collating information from the First World without the First World being aware that their precious data is being monitored, the encoding of information etc etc, we are able to operate in a semi-open source manner say, for example, with regard to Football Is Fixed, while being basically secure in the core of our competitive advantage and our informational and personal security.
We would advise all readers who are unfortunate enough to live in police states to take their privacy seriously. Any email you send, any website you visit, any online purchase you make, every contract you enter into, all travel that you undertake, every phonecall (landline or mobile) that you make may be monitored by the invasive eyes and arms of the state. It is possible using imagination and a little creative thinking to render much of such intrusion obsolete or useless - confuse those eyes and twist those arms. We are not dealing with an intellectual surveillance here and it is a reasonably simple task to distort the picture which the state is trying to build up. We have mentioned before J.J. Luna's "How To Be Invisible" and, although it focuses particularly on the USA and he holds back on some really valuable tools, it is a great basis from which to extrapolate a safer and more secure existence in our fascistic world.
For the time being, "we" will be allowed to produce "our" blogs and link our realities with other social groups across the planet as such behaviours are believed by the system to be of more value to the state than to the individuals. In the words of the prescient Lyotard: "It may even be said that the system can and must encourage such movement to the extent that it combats its own entropy; the novelty of an unexpected "move" can supply the system with that increased performativity it forever demands and consumes".
The most depressing aspect to Football Is Fixed and similar blogs is that we merely enable the psychopaths to take account of the new realities to morph their system to new structures of inappropriate control and power.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
"As long as the game is not a game of perfect information, the advantage will be with the player who has knowledge and can obtain information" - Lyotard. This is the macro structure of information. The technocrats, on behalf of the elite, protect their knowledge using patents, secrecy, the imposition of sanctions and punishments for groupings who invade the territory of their "rights" as the foot soldiers of the systemic controllers. This privacy also engenders such criminality as insider trading and the establishment of economic systems that shield real knowledge from the masses. This core knowledge is guarded jealously, think military research or nanotechnology, and frequently results in our world being made a more dangerous place as the focus is on performativity, efficiency and productivity rather than the law, safety issues or human rights and freedoms. Taking nanotechnology as a particular example, there is no body which is undertaking basic risk analysis regarding this new scientific area - there is no incentive for any body to do so. The race to profit and competitive advantage is the sole dynamic and, yet, there are many scientists within the discipline who are expressing concern as to the extreme risks posed by nanotechnology.
Although we are denied access to much of the key core data and information, we are able to address this imbalance in two ways. The first mode is to monitor the hidden information using analysis based on co-ordinated lateral thinking (not an issue for this particular post). The second route is through self-protection.
Globalised society under the yoke of shareholder capitalism depends upon incentives and fear. These two narratives spread from the top to the bottom of the highly unequal system. The poor in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) experience both these frameworks to the same degree as those at the top of the Murdochracy. The incentives are the mind-distorting drug that leads to one human being exploiting another for personal advantage. The fear immediately kicks in once this adam's apple has been plucked from the mythical tree - the fear of loss of assets, the fear of competition, the fear of losing your edge, the fear that somebody out there is willing to use tactics even more antisocial than those employed by yourself. The inevitable race to the bottom of the barrel where excessive profit may be achieved in a non-regulated marketplace is the inevitable (and only) outcome to this particular game. Welcome to capitalism in a 2008 stylee.
Privacy is the core competency required to be able to operate in this psychopathic system and privacy requires addressing on two levels - the societal (the macro) and the individual (the micro). We will take each of these core areas in turn, first lets do the macro...
We should all be grateful for organisations like Privacy International (PI). Their aim is to: "...recognize countries in which privacy protection and respect for privacy is nurtured. This is done in the hope that others can learn from their example. Second we intend to identify countries in which governments and privacy regulators have failed to create a healthy privacy environment". This mission statement might sound meek and mild but it should form the fundamental basis of all of our lives, both private and business/employment. The 2007 International Privacy Ranking may be found at http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-559597 and we paraphrase some of PI's findings in this post. Firstly, not one country ranks at level 4.1-5.0 (the grading which represents a nation which "consistently upholds human rights standards") - this is the most depressing feature of the 47 countries covered in the report. Breaking down the data reveals more monsters lurking in the deep.
Eight countries are graded at the bottom level - "endemic surveillance societies" in the words of the report. That such an antisocial grouping would include China, Russia, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia is hardly surprising but the other two "free" societies should be of far greater concern in the west. For the green unpleasant land that is England and the land of the free that is the USA are also rated as endemic surveillance societies. That Britain falls below such free societies as South Africa, the Philippines, Brazil and Israel should be remembered the next time a tory MP implies that the Brits are living in a police state. A further interesting point to be gained from the PI report is that the state of privacy decays and deteriorates in countries which "elect" right wing governments - check out the 2007 realities in France, Germany, Canada, Poland, Austria and Sweden, for example.
The fallacious war of terror is only a minor part of this invasion of our privacy as members of the populace, a far greater proportion of the probing into our lives by the US and GB is related to fear and incentives.
The societal leash allows that we might enjoy freedom of speech and rights of assembly but only within a structure which enables the deep state and their colleagues in business to monitor our behaviour closely and invalidly. Below is the analysis of Britain by the PI.
* World leading surveillance schemes
* Lack of accountability and data breach disclosure law
* Commissioner has few powers
* Interception of communications is authorised by politician, evidence not used in court, and oversight is by commissioner who reports only once a year upon reviewing a subset of applications
* Hundreds of thousands of requests from government agencies to telecommunications providers for traffic data
* Data retention scheme took a significant step forward with the quiet changes based on EU law
* Plans are emerging regarding surveillance of communications networks for the protection of copyrighted content
* Despite data breaches, 'joined-up government' initiatives continue
* Identity scheme still planned to be the most invasive in the world, highly centralised and biometrics-driven; plan to issue all foreigners with cards in 2008 are continuing
* E-borders plans include increased data collection on travellers
We trust that this makes our British readers feel far safer - you are living in the most invasive country in the EU...
When we established Dietrological and Football Is Fixed, these issues relating to privacy, and hence our security, were the first ones which we addressed. We set up the business in a highly unusual way - we used a cell-and-web structure across a range of nations. Looking at this in more detail will, hopefully, demonstrate the values of such an approach. Dietrological is a knowledge cell, we are a small grouping of individuals who create value through specific analysis and modelling of the global financial system and its derivatives. We are linked to other cells across the world which have their own particular core competencies - information technology, the Far East betting markets, business model innovation, political, the international financial markets etc. We elected to base these cells in surveillance-lite territories and this decision remains the prime basis of our business and personal security. The territories chosen (in a somewhat randomised order!) are Australia, Romania, Greece, Japan and a Caribbean island. The latter is not covered by the PI report but Greece is the most free country of the 47 assessed by PI and Romania is in 2nd place while all of the others rank several levels above the wonderful "free democracies" of your propaganda. The cell-and-web structure works on a range of privacy and security levels, the structure even allows us to provide rampant disinformation via the creative use of the monitoring tactics within England which serve to enhance the strength of our edifice. Through the use of intranets, pagers, spiders collating information from the First World without the First World being aware that their precious data is being monitored, the encoding of information etc etc, we are able to operate in a semi-open source manner say, for example, with regard to Football Is Fixed, while being basically secure in the core of our competitive advantage and our informational and personal security.
We would advise all readers who are unfortunate enough to live in police states to take their privacy seriously. Any email you send, any website you visit, any online purchase you make, every contract you enter into, all travel that you undertake, every phonecall (landline or mobile) that you make may be monitored by the invasive eyes and arms of the state. It is possible using imagination and a little creative thinking to render much of such intrusion obsolete or useless - confuse those eyes and twist those arms. We are not dealing with an intellectual surveillance here and it is a reasonably simple task to distort the picture which the state is trying to build up. We have mentioned before J.J. Luna's "How To Be Invisible" and, although it focuses particularly on the USA and he holds back on some really valuable tools, it is a great basis from which to extrapolate a safer and more secure existence in our fascistic world.
For the time being, "we" will be allowed to produce "our" blogs and link our realities with other social groups across the planet as such behaviours are believed by the system to be of more value to the state than to the individuals. In the words of the prescient Lyotard: "It may even be said that the system can and must encourage such movement to the extent that it combats its own entropy; the novelty of an unexpected "move" can supply the system with that increased performativity it forever demands and consumes".
The most depressing aspect to Football Is Fixed and similar blogs is that we merely enable the psychopaths to take account of the new realities to morph their system to new structures of inappropriate control and power.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Sunday, 10 February 2008
Eight Days In The Life Of A Fascist
This has been a big 8 days for the corrupt business practices of Thaksin Shinawatra. We informed readers a few weeks back that the mass murderer was intending to be more selective in his choice of matches to buy in the latter part of the season and his first target was the Manchester derby.
It all began at White Hart Lane last Saturday afternoon when Shinawatra's one aim was to ensure that Wayne Rooney was booked hence ensuring that he would miss this afternoon's memorial derby. Shinawatra directly owns several Professional Match Game Officials Board (PGMOB) officials and his closest contact is with Mark Clattenburg. It was Clattenburg who was selected to model the new AirAsia sponsorship kit alongside Shinawatra at the start of the season and the pair were chummy beyond integrity at the pre-season Hong Kong tournament where so much business went on. At Tottenham, Clattenburg booked Rooney for simulation while failing to book Huddlestone for the same (this latter un-booking should have resulted in a sending off). Of course, Clattenburg was also in control of the first Manchester derby of the season where he denied Evra a clear penalty at 0-0 and one would hope that his pay off is suitably luxurious as the man is turning Thai big style.
The second reason for Shinawatra's sickly smile to spread wider was when Samak Sundaravej announced his new cabinet to run Thailand - the posse is full of Shinawatra loyalists and paves the way for a triumphant return of Shinawatra to Bangkok in May. Being a coward by nature, as all psychopaths are, Shinawatra sent his wife back to gauge how intent the independent Thai judiciary would be in prosecuting his clan for the Shin Corp/Temasek robbery and those illegal Bangkok land deals, both of which enabled him to squirrel away the money to offshore financial centres to fund his Manchester City publicity vehicle. It will soon be time to start his war-on-drugs policy again, otherwise known as a shoot-to-kill tactic targeting lesser mortals who venture onto yet another of the doctor's areas of business interest. It is no coincidence that both the amount and the quality of cannabis from Thailand hitting the Manchester streets has multiplied since the competition met an early grave - Thai Sticks/ Thaksin Shinawatra, it has a peculiar resonance, a psychoactive drug from a psychopathic thug...
The third extension to that grin came when another of his proxies, Richard Scudamore, announced that the Premier League would be taking its product global. Shinawatra gains out of this in two clear ways. Firstly, Bangkok is one of the chosen cities and, secondly, it will increase liquidity in the Far East betting markets that represent yet another of this multi-faceted man's business concerns.
Howard Webb allowed the week to finish on an impossibly high note for Shinawatra and his mafia. The refereeing by Webb and his assistants was dire for this afternoon's derby match. The denial of a penalty for Hamann's trip on Ronaldo was only the most significant of a spectrum of mass corruption on yet another Sky Super Sunday scam. Hamann committing 6 first half fouls without a card whereas O'Shea was booked for his first one; the number of incorrect offside decisions against United nearly reached double figures while an equivalent number of free kicks around the penalty area and corners were simply converted into nothing but a bias to the visitors. Only two fifty-fifty decisions went in the favour of United all afternoon - a free kick at 0-2 towards the end of the 1st Half and the same after 72 minutes. The man even pulled up United for two foul throws, one of which was a valid decision, but when was the last time that a foul throw was prosecuted in a Premiership game?
The gamble on Manchester United was the biggest of the weekend and that is always a concern when the PGMOB's alleged top official is in charge of a match - the correlation between betting liabilities and Webb's officiating is a particularly robust mathematic. It is not for the quality of his officiating that Howard Webb has been given 15 live matches this season when no other referee has reached double figures!
So, a great week for corruption, bribery, corruption, coercion, violence, corruption and corruption. If the smile were to grow any broader, the top of the man's head would fall off, which would be no bad thing.
The only positive note of the afternoon was the City fans behaving during the minute's silence rather better than the England fans managed during the 17 seconds cacophony at The Food Mall (although it should be noted that the threat of a lifetime ban hung above the Blue gathering which would indicate that the silence was enforced and they did jeer the pipers playing a United refrain as the teams entered onto the pitch). As expected, United playing without AIG being splashed across their shirts merely resulted in AIG advertisements being repeatedly prominent on the moving advert hoardings - nobody could expect that the American insurance firm would miss out on their slice of the profit from the anniversary of Flight 609.
The Premier League has suddenly realised that they may safely ignore both FIFA and UEFA with regard to the Premiership becoming a global gamble but this has been offset by news that the FA are able to undermine the nonsense. Scudamore is offering Barwick all sorts of temptations and, presumably, kickbacks from the offshore financial centres under the control of Shinawatra. None of these concessions amount to a whole lot of beans - no players to be rested for FA Cup ties, support for the 2018 World Cup that the FA hope to hold in England (although the Premier League are probably now outsourcing some of it to First World Fascist locations as is their wont), no problems with releasing players for England internationals etc etc.
The defining moment of the Shinawatra Scudamore Scam came not in Hong Kong but at the City of Manchester Stadium on the first home game of the season against Derby County. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had just released details of Shinawatra's involvement in extra-judicial killings and the massive corruption associated with his regime. The Premier League's fit-and-proper persons factor hung heavily in the air. And what did Scudamore do? He sat next to Shinawatra at Eastlands laughing and joking his way through the 90 minutes showing no respect for the game. Oh, and nor for the over 2,000 people murdered by Shinawatra's mafia when he was last in power.
The memory of those that lost their lives 50 years ago produced a rare occurrence of Mancunian unity but all that we will remember of this farcical match is the complete lack of respect to that memory as the powers that run the English game were more concerned with pocketing the emotional betting money and allowing an autocratic tyrant to buy the match outcome.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
It all began at White Hart Lane last Saturday afternoon when Shinawatra's one aim was to ensure that Wayne Rooney was booked hence ensuring that he would miss this afternoon's memorial derby. Shinawatra directly owns several Professional Match Game Officials Board (PGMOB) officials and his closest contact is with Mark Clattenburg. It was Clattenburg who was selected to model the new AirAsia sponsorship kit alongside Shinawatra at the start of the season and the pair were chummy beyond integrity at the pre-season Hong Kong tournament where so much business went on. At Tottenham, Clattenburg booked Rooney for simulation while failing to book Huddlestone for the same (this latter un-booking should have resulted in a sending off). Of course, Clattenburg was also in control of the first Manchester derby of the season where he denied Evra a clear penalty at 0-0 and one would hope that his pay off is suitably luxurious as the man is turning Thai big style.
The second reason for Shinawatra's sickly smile to spread wider was when Samak Sundaravej announced his new cabinet to run Thailand - the posse is full of Shinawatra loyalists and paves the way for a triumphant return of Shinawatra to Bangkok in May. Being a coward by nature, as all psychopaths are, Shinawatra sent his wife back to gauge how intent the independent Thai judiciary would be in prosecuting his clan for the Shin Corp/Temasek robbery and those illegal Bangkok land deals, both of which enabled him to squirrel away the money to offshore financial centres to fund his Manchester City publicity vehicle. It will soon be time to start his war-on-drugs policy again, otherwise known as a shoot-to-kill tactic targeting lesser mortals who venture onto yet another of the doctor's areas of business interest. It is no coincidence that both the amount and the quality of cannabis from Thailand hitting the Manchester streets has multiplied since the competition met an early grave - Thai Sticks/ Thaksin Shinawatra, it has a peculiar resonance, a psychoactive drug from a psychopathic thug...
The third extension to that grin came when another of his proxies, Richard Scudamore, announced that the Premier League would be taking its product global. Shinawatra gains out of this in two clear ways. Firstly, Bangkok is one of the chosen cities and, secondly, it will increase liquidity in the Far East betting markets that represent yet another of this multi-faceted man's business concerns.
Howard Webb allowed the week to finish on an impossibly high note for Shinawatra and his mafia. The refereeing by Webb and his assistants was dire for this afternoon's derby match. The denial of a penalty for Hamann's trip on Ronaldo was only the most significant of a spectrum of mass corruption on yet another Sky Super Sunday scam. Hamann committing 6 first half fouls without a card whereas O'Shea was booked for his first one; the number of incorrect offside decisions against United nearly reached double figures while an equivalent number of free kicks around the penalty area and corners were simply converted into nothing but a bias to the visitors. Only two fifty-fifty decisions went in the favour of United all afternoon - a free kick at 0-2 towards the end of the 1st Half and the same after 72 minutes. The man even pulled up United for two foul throws, one of which was a valid decision, but when was the last time that a foul throw was prosecuted in a Premiership game?
The gamble on Manchester United was the biggest of the weekend and that is always a concern when the PGMOB's alleged top official is in charge of a match - the correlation between betting liabilities and Webb's officiating is a particularly robust mathematic. It is not for the quality of his officiating that Howard Webb has been given 15 live matches this season when no other referee has reached double figures!
So, a great week for corruption, bribery, corruption, coercion, violence, corruption and corruption. If the smile were to grow any broader, the top of the man's head would fall off, which would be no bad thing.
The only positive note of the afternoon was the City fans behaving during the minute's silence rather better than the England fans managed during the 17 seconds cacophony at The Food Mall (although it should be noted that the threat of a lifetime ban hung above the Blue gathering which would indicate that the silence was enforced and they did jeer the pipers playing a United refrain as the teams entered onto the pitch). As expected, United playing without AIG being splashed across their shirts merely resulted in AIG advertisements being repeatedly prominent on the moving advert hoardings - nobody could expect that the American insurance firm would miss out on their slice of the profit from the anniversary of Flight 609.
The Premier League has suddenly realised that they may safely ignore both FIFA and UEFA with regard to the Premiership becoming a global gamble but this has been offset by news that the FA are able to undermine the nonsense. Scudamore is offering Barwick all sorts of temptations and, presumably, kickbacks from the offshore financial centres under the control of Shinawatra. None of these concessions amount to a whole lot of beans - no players to be rested for FA Cup ties, support for the 2018 World Cup that the FA hope to hold in England (although the Premier League are probably now outsourcing some of it to First World Fascist locations as is their wont), no problems with releasing players for England internationals etc etc.
The defining moment of the Shinawatra Scudamore Scam came not in Hong Kong but at the City of Manchester Stadium on the first home game of the season against Derby County. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had just released details of Shinawatra's involvement in extra-judicial killings and the massive corruption associated with his regime. The Premier League's fit-and-proper persons factor hung heavily in the air. And what did Scudamore do? He sat next to Shinawatra at Eastlands laughing and joking his way through the 90 minutes showing no respect for the game. Oh, and nor for the over 2,000 people murdered by Shinawatra's mafia when he was last in power.
The memory of those that lost their lives 50 years ago produced a rare occurrence of Mancunian unity but all that we will remember of this farcical match is the complete lack of respect to that memory as the powers that run the English game were more concerned with pocketing the emotional betting money and allowing an autocratic tyrant to buy the match outcome.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 8 February 2008
The End Of A Game As We Knew It
The death knell of the English Premiership as a fan-based competition was sounded yesterday by Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore, with the announcement that, from season 2010/11, Premiership games will be branded around the world as a globalised product. His selection of the day of Chinese New Year for the publication of this proposed strategy is more than revealing.
Aside from being an original way of dealing with the declining domestic attendances, this globalisation of the game will have huge and dramatic influences on the global betting turnover as more and more punters become plugged into the theatricals. This regression is one of the standard practices of a highly abusive form of capitalist flight - take over a viable business, flog it to death in its core territory, as it deteriorates towards the demise of its meaninglessness, simply take the business model to new territories that might be sold the invalid narrative. It is a cyclical private enquity entity.
The trial window of 2010/11 will lead to that season's Premiership being increased to 39 games with an extra weekend of five games on each of the days spread neatly across the 24 hour clock to maximise exposure. The clubs are been guaranteed a basic £5 million. The cool reaction from FIFA, the British government and supporter's lobby groups to this Scudamore spectacular society scam will be addressed by some platitudinal irrelevencies and the project will move forward. The FA were only told of the project two hours prior to the release of the proposals which is as clear an indication of where the real power lies in the English game as you are likely to find. Even more so when one considers the response of Brian Buffoon Barwick to the breaking news as he blabbered out some randomly selected words that indicated that he might be cautiously supportive of such a development, perhaps.
Extensive marketing should secure an extension of the project for the following seasons. As there is no feasibility of the league season extending to forty games and beyond, the increase in the games outsourced to desirable locations will eat into the season proper. Unless the matches are assigned symmetrically, the obvious concern has to be that Chelsea get Arsenal at home whereas Arsenal have their "home" match in the real Emirates or Bangkok. Assuming that the 39 game season is a one-off to assess the feasibility of a suitable input-output ratio of profit, and that symmetry will triumph - not necessarily a good call when Scudie has got his hand in the till - the following seasons may see the export of 2, 4, 6, 8...n (where n is any number up to 38). Additionally, although the teams are being guaranteed a week of non-activity both prior to and following the global adventures, once the project begins in earnest, there will numerous occurrences of invalid weekend advantage where the Wenger boys will have to face a 15 hour flight back from the Venetian Macau in order to face Man Utd away. This will be a further strong persuader for the Arsenal board to do the decent thing and join the club. Being slightly less flippant, Scudamore gave us one of his duplicitous grins prior to informing us that: "Every club knows they will have an equal chance of being treated unfairly [in the choice of the head-to-heads]". The fixture list is already a carefully constructed entity, all this talk about computers and randomisation should be replaced in the public consciousness by the reality of tuned software creating exactly the correct number of Super Sundays and Grand Slam Saturdays coinciding with known windows of gambling liquidity - nothing is left to chance, and the 39th game will be a step too far in this fabrication of a branding exercise. The product's value will be optimised by an estimation at the season start based on a layered structure. This would allow a futurological maximisation process to be developed. The "perfect" 39th round could include the events below:
Arsenal v Chelsea (Bangkok); Manchester United v The Liverpool Reds (Beijing); Manchester City v Everton (Bangkok); Sunderland v Newcastle (Dubai); Villa v Brum (New York); Portsmouth v West Ham (Macau); Bolton v Blackburn (Preston - only joking...).
Rewinding to the pre-season tournament in Hong Kong where several Premiership teams fought it out with a local team under the tutelage of Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) officials and, among the "dignitaries" present were Scudamore and his sidekick Shinawatra (obviously, on a hierarchical basis this partnership should be inversed, and then some). There was no reason for Scudamore to be there but it was in the shadows of this event that the completion of an entirely new strategy for the Premiership was hatched - the planning had been moving along relentlessly, even further in to the shadows, in the previous months. Despite media lies to the contrary, the English Premiership has only broken through in certain Far East countries. Although the Chinese dominate the professional betting markets, only a miniscule portion of the Chinese people watch the game (I think I am correct in stating that the Premiership was 14th ranked among the global football leagues for television coverage last year). This whole project has marketing and gambling as its core concerns.
This current season in the Premiership has seen an entirely new template of reality which is evolving in real time both incrementally and holistically. It keeps us traders on our toes. It is a cowboy trading market and we're happy to slug it out in this bare-fisted environment. You pays your money... The most major impact of the Sinawatra-Scudie Spectacular (SSS) will be on the betting markets. New addicts will be created, new liquidity will be introduced into the markets. New liquidity from unprofessional sources merely leads to greater winnings for the professional ones. Buyer's should obviously beware but, having a legal narrative based on the responsibility of authenticity being in the hands of the purchaser rather than on the purveyor under the watchful eyes of the regulators, there will be a lot of irrationals out there lining up to be fleeced. The dovetailing of the Premier League, its Asian, Russian, Israeli and American paymasters, the bookmakers, the PGMOB officials into a tightly knit cartel bound together by excessive pools of profit absolutely optimises the infrastructure. At the same time, this oligarchy totally destroys the game. The Premier League will morph into OPEC and product will be dealt with as a commodity bearing no resemblance to the community game of yesteryear. A further massive problem will be coercion. Powerful people exert control over sporting events in a range of manners, the two most obvious of which (but by no means the only) being bribery and coercion. A leading young footballer, away from his girlfriend, is "set up" with an underage Thai boy by, say, a leading English bookmaker. The job's a good'un. There will also be ample leisure time for the various participants to meet informally with the necessary people to strengthen bonds, to enhance the web, to solidify the corruption. Stuff happens but this stuff happening to football is one bad thing.
Aside from the evident concerns towards the extension of the gambling elements underpinning the sport, what about the fans? Well, apart from the multitudes who no longer bother attending the gambling theatres in our midst, that would be. What about the obsessive who hasn't missed a Reading game for 27 years? Who cares? No, really, who cares? Reading? 27 years? The truly fundamental will pilgrimage their way to the distant lands which have a footballing culture etched into their national psyche - the USA, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Thailand, Macau, Hong Kong, China, Israel, Moscow, Gibraltar (?)... Now if the SSS were thinking of football culture liaising with football culture, a swap of selected games between the main European soccer cities would be feasible, possibly - an extra Milan derby at Old Trafford, El Clásico at The Food Mall, Arsenal v Chelsea in Paris etc. But football and the fans are the very very last items on the agendas of the SSS. We're in the territory of product and branding and gambling and efficiency and productivity and input-output-optimisation and a spectacular society consumerist entity being created from what was once just this totally amazing game. The fucking bastards... We are not even allowed the option of not playing along with their propaganda and lies. If we fold our arms and say "No", they will pick up their product and go home (to where the next dollar might be earned).
In one of our occasional bouts of public scenario analysis, we suggest that the product might be further optimised by the merger mentality coming to the fore. Forget Anfield, what about the Houston/Liverpool Reds or the Bangkok/Manchester City Blues? What about a season where the home matches are divided between the two merged entities? Oh, fucking joy...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Aside from being an original way of dealing with the declining domestic attendances, this globalisation of the game will have huge and dramatic influences on the global betting turnover as more and more punters become plugged into the theatricals. This regression is one of the standard practices of a highly abusive form of capitalist flight - take over a viable business, flog it to death in its core territory, as it deteriorates towards the demise of its meaninglessness, simply take the business model to new territories that might be sold the invalid narrative. It is a cyclical private enquity entity.
The trial window of 2010/11 will lead to that season's Premiership being increased to 39 games with an extra weekend of five games on each of the days spread neatly across the 24 hour clock to maximise exposure. The clubs are been guaranteed a basic £5 million. The cool reaction from FIFA, the British government and supporter's lobby groups to this Scudamore spectacular society scam will be addressed by some platitudinal irrelevencies and the project will move forward. The FA were only told of the project two hours prior to the release of the proposals which is as clear an indication of where the real power lies in the English game as you are likely to find. Even more so when one considers the response of Brian Buffoon Barwick to the breaking news as he blabbered out some randomly selected words that indicated that he might be cautiously supportive of such a development, perhaps.
Extensive marketing should secure an extension of the project for the following seasons. As there is no feasibility of the league season extending to forty games and beyond, the increase in the games outsourced to desirable locations will eat into the season proper. Unless the matches are assigned symmetrically, the obvious concern has to be that Chelsea get Arsenal at home whereas Arsenal have their "home" match in the real Emirates or Bangkok. Assuming that the 39 game season is a one-off to assess the feasibility of a suitable input-output ratio of profit, and that symmetry will triumph - not necessarily a good call when Scudie has got his hand in the till - the following seasons may see the export of 2, 4, 6, 8...n (where n is any number up to 38). Additionally, although the teams are being guaranteed a week of non-activity both prior to and following the global adventures, once the project begins in earnest, there will numerous occurrences of invalid weekend advantage where the Wenger boys will have to face a 15 hour flight back from the Venetian Macau in order to face Man Utd away. This will be a further strong persuader for the Arsenal board to do the decent thing and join the club. Being slightly less flippant, Scudamore gave us one of his duplicitous grins prior to informing us that: "Every club knows they will have an equal chance of being treated unfairly [in the choice of the head-to-heads]". The fixture list is already a carefully constructed entity, all this talk about computers and randomisation should be replaced in the public consciousness by the reality of tuned software creating exactly the correct number of Super Sundays and Grand Slam Saturdays coinciding with known windows of gambling liquidity - nothing is left to chance, and the 39th game will be a step too far in this fabrication of a branding exercise. The product's value will be optimised by an estimation at the season start based on a layered structure. This would allow a futurological maximisation process to be developed. The "perfect" 39th round could include the events below:
Arsenal v Chelsea (Bangkok); Manchester United v The Liverpool Reds (Beijing); Manchester City v Everton (Bangkok); Sunderland v Newcastle (Dubai); Villa v Brum (New York); Portsmouth v West Ham (Macau); Bolton v Blackburn (Preston - only joking...).
Rewinding to the pre-season tournament in Hong Kong where several Premiership teams fought it out with a local team under the tutelage of Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) officials and, among the "dignitaries" present were Scudamore and his sidekick Shinawatra (obviously, on a hierarchical basis this partnership should be inversed, and then some). There was no reason for Scudamore to be there but it was in the shadows of this event that the completion of an entirely new strategy for the Premiership was hatched - the planning had been moving along relentlessly, even further in to the shadows, in the previous months. Despite media lies to the contrary, the English Premiership has only broken through in certain Far East countries. Although the Chinese dominate the professional betting markets, only a miniscule portion of the Chinese people watch the game (I think I am correct in stating that the Premiership was 14th ranked among the global football leagues for television coverage last year). This whole project has marketing and gambling as its core concerns.
This current season in the Premiership has seen an entirely new template of reality which is evolving in real time both incrementally and holistically. It keeps us traders on our toes. It is a cowboy trading market and we're happy to slug it out in this bare-fisted environment. You pays your money... The most major impact of the Sinawatra-Scudie Spectacular (SSS) will be on the betting markets. New addicts will be created, new liquidity will be introduced into the markets. New liquidity from unprofessional sources merely leads to greater winnings for the professional ones. Buyer's should obviously beware but, having a legal narrative based on the responsibility of authenticity being in the hands of the purchaser rather than on the purveyor under the watchful eyes of the regulators, there will be a lot of irrationals out there lining up to be fleeced. The dovetailing of the Premier League, its Asian, Russian, Israeli and American paymasters, the bookmakers, the PGMOB officials into a tightly knit cartel bound together by excessive pools of profit absolutely optimises the infrastructure. At the same time, this oligarchy totally destroys the game. The Premier League will morph into OPEC and product will be dealt with as a commodity bearing no resemblance to the community game of yesteryear. A further massive problem will be coercion. Powerful people exert control over sporting events in a range of manners, the two most obvious of which (but by no means the only) being bribery and coercion. A leading young footballer, away from his girlfriend, is "set up" with an underage Thai boy by, say, a leading English bookmaker. The job's a good'un. There will also be ample leisure time for the various participants to meet informally with the necessary people to strengthen bonds, to enhance the web, to solidify the corruption. Stuff happens but this stuff happening to football is one bad thing.
Aside from the evident concerns towards the extension of the gambling elements underpinning the sport, what about the fans? Well, apart from the multitudes who no longer bother attending the gambling theatres in our midst, that would be. What about the obsessive who hasn't missed a Reading game for 27 years? Who cares? No, really, who cares? Reading? 27 years? The truly fundamental will pilgrimage their way to the distant lands which have a footballing culture etched into their national psyche - the USA, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Thailand, Macau, Hong Kong, China, Israel, Moscow, Gibraltar (?)... Now if the SSS were thinking of football culture liaising with football culture, a swap of selected games between the main European soccer cities would be feasible, possibly - an extra Milan derby at Old Trafford, El Clásico at The Food Mall, Arsenal v Chelsea in Paris etc. But football and the fans are the very very last items on the agendas of the SSS. We're in the territory of product and branding and gambling and efficiency and productivity and input-output-optimisation and a spectacular society consumerist entity being created from what was once just this totally amazing game. The fucking bastards... We are not even allowed the option of not playing along with their propaganda and lies. If we fold our arms and say "No", they will pick up their product and go home (to where the next dollar might be earned).
In one of our occasional bouts of public scenario analysis, we suggest that the product might be further optimised by the merger mentality coming to the fore. Forget Anfield, what about the Houston/Liverpool Reds or the Bangkok/Manchester City Blues? What about a season where the home matches are divided between the two merged entities? Oh, fucking joy...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 7 February 2008
Kung Hei Fat Choy
A Happy New Year to all of our Chinese and Asian clients and readers.
All Asian clients should check their emails where you will find a suitable red packet when you return to business mode.
The mythology of Chinese New Year seems particularly apt when compared with the modern day realities of the global football betting markets. The Nián was a man-eating monster from the mountains which appeared once per year to prey on human flesh - any similarities to the business practices of the European bookmakers must surely be purely coincidental. The people, realising that this monster was undermined by loud noises and the colour red, utilised fireworks and liberal use of all shades of scarlet to frighten the monster away. If only it were so easy to rid the world of Ladbrokes!
Chinese New Year sees the largest migration of beings on the planet as everybody puts family and friends ahead of business, money and power. Confucius would have approved. Despite the fact that this window of up to 40 days results in a loss of market control together with associated profits, it actually is a prime example (probably the first in business) of creating an enlightened work/life balance. As the European layers scramble around to pick up extra earnings in the Chinese New Year window, the Chinese layers are relaxing and reordering their prerogatives in order to return to the marketplace at the peak of their game towards the end of the month.
Strategy is everything to the Chinese and represents the main reason why they have dominated the global football markets since time immemorial. A creative version of centralised planning incorporating space for business development enables the betting sector in Asia to collectively and individually out-manoeuvre the clumsy European outfits, who depend on the base qualities of coercion, thuggery, corruption and a startling lack of a big picture overview. Where the Chinese are proactive and possess a cutting edge attitude to the correct types of risk, the Europeans are entirely reactive and simply do not do risk. The Asian layers invite all and sundry to participate in their markets to any degree of liquidity in the safe knowledge that they possess the ultimate trading models and hedging strategies. The Europeans close winning accounts after having previously restricted the amounts able to be bet. The Asians monitor the corruption endemic in the European system and model it to their own competitive advantage utilising cutting edge trading and modelling techniques together with highly developed evolutionary algorithms. The Europeans buy off the referees.
In the hopefully not-too-distant future when football is protected from the incredibly negative influences of the bookmakers via proper bottom-up regulation, the Asians will dominate the markets. Good. We, as analysts and traders, will then be treated to a meritocratic marketplace where participants are rewarded for their professionalism rather than for their corrupt practices.
Of course, not all Asian market participants rely on intelligence and meritocracy and it is no coincidence that the likes of Shinawatra have cosied up to other autocratic presences at the Premier League, the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) and selected private markets to establish entirely corrupt structures. But, as soon as these corrupted entities put their collective heads above the parapet, their lack of strategy is targeted and undermined by the slick Asian analysts utilising creative modelling and cloned trading. It is a constant source of amazement to our Trading Team that the Asian market makers understand the Europeans better than the Europeans understand themselves. The fact that they also understand football better than the European layers is equally astonishing - how many traders at Ladbrokes could compete against the Asians at, say, sumo wrestling markets?
And it is not just in sport that the Asians demonstrate an ability to plan strategically - a skill singularly absent in the short-termism of western shareholder capitalism. Who was there to replace the immediacy of the private equity firms when the liquidity crisis loomed? Asian sovereign-wealth funds, that's who. Such funds modelled the instability of the western economic system and built reserves so as to be able to ride to a profitable rescue when the west was facing systemic ruin. With the capitalism of the west increasingly dependent on the financial muscle, innovation and growth of the Asian markets and the fate of the dollar being in Asian hands, Goldman Sachs' projection of 2027 for when the Chinese economy exceeds the American one is certainly far too optimistic from a US perspective. A superb example of the strategic thinking in China is that motorways have already been built between cities that do not yet exist! Try and get a free market economy to plan that far ahead or, indeed, ahead at all. Or even to plan, for that matter! Another key point demonstrating the difference between the two cultures is that a Chinese military book, The Art Of War, is used as a manual in western military circles today. And it is thought of as being ahead of its time. It was written by Sun Tzu over 2,000 years ago!
All of our analysts use Tai Chi and/or Qigong as a support to the trading process. The Chinese, unaffected by the ludicrous restrictions imposed on western scientific knowledge by government and business, are able to explore entirely original work/life balances which create entirely new realities with the massive benefits consequently bestowed on the individuals. Mention universal energy in a western boardroom and you will be shown the door; a similar statement in China opens doors of consequence.
In the west, Lyotard says: "Effectively truth is trumped by the best possible input-output equation... The state and/or company must abandon the idealist and humanist narrative of legitimation in order to justify the new goal: in the discourse of today's financial backers of research, the only credible goal is power. Scientists, technicians and instruments are purchased not to find truth but to augment power". China too seeks power but through a mixture of cynical realism and post-modernism, China's emphasis is, again utilising the words of Lyotard: "...placed on the increase in being, the jubilation that results from the invention of new rules of the game".
We celebrate Chinese philosophy.
新年快樂.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
All Asian clients should check their emails where you will find a suitable red packet when you return to business mode.
The mythology of Chinese New Year seems particularly apt when compared with the modern day realities of the global football betting markets. The Nián was a man-eating monster from the mountains which appeared once per year to prey on human flesh - any similarities to the business practices of the European bookmakers must surely be purely coincidental. The people, realising that this monster was undermined by loud noises and the colour red, utilised fireworks and liberal use of all shades of scarlet to frighten the monster away. If only it were so easy to rid the world of Ladbrokes!
Chinese New Year sees the largest migration of beings on the planet as everybody puts family and friends ahead of business, money and power. Confucius would have approved. Despite the fact that this window of up to 40 days results in a loss of market control together with associated profits, it actually is a prime example (probably the first in business) of creating an enlightened work/life balance. As the European layers scramble around to pick up extra earnings in the Chinese New Year window, the Chinese layers are relaxing and reordering their prerogatives in order to return to the marketplace at the peak of their game towards the end of the month.
Strategy is everything to the Chinese and represents the main reason why they have dominated the global football markets since time immemorial. A creative version of centralised planning incorporating space for business development enables the betting sector in Asia to collectively and individually out-manoeuvre the clumsy European outfits, who depend on the base qualities of coercion, thuggery, corruption and a startling lack of a big picture overview. Where the Chinese are proactive and possess a cutting edge attitude to the correct types of risk, the Europeans are entirely reactive and simply do not do risk. The Asian layers invite all and sundry to participate in their markets to any degree of liquidity in the safe knowledge that they possess the ultimate trading models and hedging strategies. The Europeans close winning accounts after having previously restricted the amounts able to be bet. The Asians monitor the corruption endemic in the European system and model it to their own competitive advantage utilising cutting edge trading and modelling techniques together with highly developed evolutionary algorithms. The Europeans buy off the referees.
In the hopefully not-too-distant future when football is protected from the incredibly negative influences of the bookmakers via proper bottom-up regulation, the Asians will dominate the markets. Good. We, as analysts and traders, will then be treated to a meritocratic marketplace where participants are rewarded for their professionalism rather than for their corrupt practices.
Of course, not all Asian market participants rely on intelligence and meritocracy and it is no coincidence that the likes of Shinawatra have cosied up to other autocratic presences at the Premier League, the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) and selected private markets to establish entirely corrupt structures. But, as soon as these corrupted entities put their collective heads above the parapet, their lack of strategy is targeted and undermined by the slick Asian analysts utilising creative modelling and cloned trading. It is a constant source of amazement to our Trading Team that the Asian market makers understand the Europeans better than the Europeans understand themselves. The fact that they also understand football better than the European layers is equally astonishing - how many traders at Ladbrokes could compete against the Asians at, say, sumo wrestling markets?
And it is not just in sport that the Asians demonstrate an ability to plan strategically - a skill singularly absent in the short-termism of western shareholder capitalism. Who was there to replace the immediacy of the private equity firms when the liquidity crisis loomed? Asian sovereign-wealth funds, that's who. Such funds modelled the instability of the western economic system and built reserves so as to be able to ride to a profitable rescue when the west was facing systemic ruin. With the capitalism of the west increasingly dependent on the financial muscle, innovation and growth of the Asian markets and the fate of the dollar being in Asian hands, Goldman Sachs' projection of 2027 for when the Chinese economy exceeds the American one is certainly far too optimistic from a US perspective. A superb example of the strategic thinking in China is that motorways have already been built between cities that do not yet exist! Try and get a free market economy to plan that far ahead or, indeed, ahead at all. Or even to plan, for that matter! Another key point demonstrating the difference between the two cultures is that a Chinese military book, The Art Of War, is used as a manual in western military circles today. And it is thought of as being ahead of its time. It was written by Sun Tzu over 2,000 years ago!
All of our analysts use Tai Chi and/or Qigong as a support to the trading process. The Chinese, unaffected by the ludicrous restrictions imposed on western scientific knowledge by government and business, are able to explore entirely original work/life balances which create entirely new realities with the massive benefits consequently bestowed on the individuals. Mention universal energy in a western boardroom and you will be shown the door; a similar statement in China opens doors of consequence.
In the west, Lyotard says: "Effectively truth is trumped by the best possible input-output equation... The state and/or company must abandon the idealist and humanist narrative of legitimation in order to justify the new goal: in the discourse of today's financial backers of research, the only credible goal is power. Scientists, technicians and instruments are purchased not to find truth but to augment power". China too seeks power but through a mixture of cynical realism and post-modernism, China's emphasis is, again utilising the words of Lyotard: "...placed on the increase in being, the jubilation that results from the invention of new rules of the game".
We celebrate Chinese philosophy.
新年快樂.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
Kind Of Blue
An omnipresent backdrop to my early years in Manchester was the shadow of the München air crash which killed 23 people including not only Manchester United footballers but also the club secretary and two coaches, two members of the plane's crew, a travel agent, a supporter and eight journalists. If it had not been for the heroism of United keeper Harry Gregg, more would have died. As a child the folk stories we were told featured not only the crash but how great Duncan Edwards would have been if he had lived (Edwards was the last to die after two weeks on a life support system).
At 15:04 GMT this afternoon, there will be a service to commemorate these tragic deaths exactly 50 years to the minute after the crash happened. At 19:58 GMT (peculiarly apt) tonight, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of England football fans will demonstrate their hatred of the red three-quarters of Manchester by whistling, chanting or booing the minute's silence in memory of the Busby babes and the others who died. At 12:58 GMT on Sunday, supporters from Eastlands will also be able to show a complete lack of evolution by a similar display of their ever-so-witty humour - the year 1258 is the pre-enlightenment temporal reality occupied by such individuals. Expect München 58 replica shirts and the singing of "Always look on the runway for ice" by the comics who also bring up the nazi gas chambers whenever City play Tottenham via the hilarious sound of the hissing of gas. City fans (sic) should remember that one of their own, Frank Swift, died in the crash although rationality is not their strong suit so we must expect the worst as the commemorative poster outside Old Trafford has already been defaced once.
The mainstream media have amply covered the disaster and the heroism of the players, Matt Busby and other employees of the club during the remainder of that football season in micro-detail although it should be added that The Guardian's coverage by a public schoolboy from the Midlands, their idiot football editor and a Manchester City fan is rather nuanced. Indeed, the Manchester City fan, David Conn (generally the second best football writer at the paper) spends half of his article focusing on the lack of support for the players by the club hierarchy in the years following the crash. Like nothing so inhumane went on at Manchester City? Really. He should read Gary Imlach's "Working-Class Football Heroes" to understand that the abuse of worker by management is not a recent development in sport nor anywhere else for that matter.
The power bases behind the leading football clubs are rarely an edifying site and Edwards, Swales, Bates, Moores have merely been out-psychoed by the Glazers, Shinawatra, Abramovich, Hicks/Gillett. As Honoré de Balzac once put it: "Behind every great fortune lies a forgotten crime".
To their credit, the Man Utd fans are the only ones who have protested against this takeover of English football clubs by global business and gambling concerns via the formation of FC United of Manchester, a development strangely lacking at Eastlands where a fascistic mass murderer has been embraced as a saviour - somebody to remove 32 years of anonymity in the area of sporting success. Dream on.
But, the business machine that is Manchester United will undoubtedly cash in on the distant memories of München. The heavily manipulated fixture list for the Premiership season repeatedly throws up scenarios specifically designed for Sky Television and the wider media and the timing of the Manchester derby for next Sunday should be seen as par for the course. Both teams will play in 50's replica kits at the weekend and one should not be surprised if there is an accompanying increase in the number of such kits being made available in the club hypermarket both pre- and post-match. It would also be astonishing if there are not numerous other commemorative items marketed equally distastefully in the aftermath. Business is business... This is the club, after all, formerly run by Martin Edwards, who sold contaminated meat to Manchester schools when his animal abuse business was unable to palm off the rotting flesh on anybody else. Plus ça change...
The München disaster catapulted United into global prominence, a position which they have maintained in the intervening half century. This inappropriate strata of global awareness is founded more on the disaster than on events on the pitch as, the Benfica and Bayern München European Cup victories apart, most of United's success in the top English league has been based on their omnipotence during the Sky years which, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with Sky's ownership of 9.9% of United's shares. Really.
At the Mega-Mall tonight, Fabio Capello's first England side will play Switzerland after the minute's non-silence. We are delighted that so many of our suggestions have been incorporated into Capello's squad and team (check out: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2008/01/creating-incentives-to-win-world-cup.html). Gerrard as captain is a master stroke and it seems that Capello has put an end to the England squad get-togethers merely being an excuse for card playing, golf and gambling on the match outcome. "On Thursday they can play golf all they like" said the Boss. Additionally, the rumours are that global gambler Michael Owen will merely start the match on the bench. Good. Owen has scored three Premiership goals for Newcastle this season and all have been timed to perfection not to help the Toon's desperate attempts to steer clear of the drop but to enhance the chances of the little criminal featuring in the England team. On September 1st, Owen scored against Wigan in the match immediately prior to the Israel and Russia Euro 2008 Qualifiers and The Slime achieved similarly with his goal against Everton on October 7th just before the Estonia game and the Russian return match. It should hardly come as a surprise that Owen's third goal came in last weekend's match against 'Boro. The man is evidently taking the piss big style.
Whenever one returns to the police state that is modern day England and experiences the xenophobia and outright racism that permeate all areas of what is laughingly referred to as English society (witness Gordon Brown's acquisition of the National Front's former slogan of "British jobs for British people"), it is difficult to comprehend that such a country should embrace, not once but twice, non-English control of the national football team. No other leading football country would consider having a foreigner in charge of the national team - such an occurrence has never been the strategy for Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Spain or Germany. This is a tactic used by the second tier nations who buy in expertise due to the paucity of experience in their own leagues. And England are a second tier nation - they have won as many international tournaments as Denmark, Greece, Czechoslovakia and Russia and they needed both home advantage and a Russian linesman to achieve that one success. Compare Capello with Keegan, McClaren, Taylor etc and any of the other current options and our point gains greater resonance.
We finish on today's commemoration. The Guardian public schoolboy is correct in comparing the München air crash to other events that defined an era - the murder of JFK by the American deep state, the killing of John Lennon by the same, the murder of Lady Diana by the English deep state or the 9/11 statement by both the Saudi and the American deep state. We all remember where we were when these atrocities/ disasters occured and each consequently resulted in a mini-baby boom as spectacular society grief made the general population briefly focus on the love of a partner rather than the love of consumerism - which, of course, is the system's template of choice. Indeed, I was conceived just days after München and I will need to check up with my father to see whether my conception was related to the blanket of grief that hung over god's own city in the aftermath of the crash of Flight 609. RIP.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
At 15:04 GMT this afternoon, there will be a service to commemorate these tragic deaths exactly 50 years to the minute after the crash happened. At 19:58 GMT (peculiarly apt) tonight, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of England football fans will demonstrate their hatred of the red three-quarters of Manchester by whistling, chanting or booing the minute's silence in memory of the Busby babes and the others who died. At 12:58 GMT on Sunday, supporters from Eastlands will also be able to show a complete lack of evolution by a similar display of their ever-so-witty humour - the year 1258 is the pre-enlightenment temporal reality occupied by such individuals. Expect München 58 replica shirts and the singing of "Always look on the runway for ice" by the comics who also bring up the nazi gas chambers whenever City play Tottenham via the hilarious sound of the hissing of gas. City fans (sic) should remember that one of their own, Frank Swift, died in the crash although rationality is not their strong suit so we must expect the worst as the commemorative poster outside Old Trafford has already been defaced once.
The mainstream media have amply covered the disaster and the heroism of the players, Matt Busby and other employees of the club during the remainder of that football season in micro-detail although it should be added that The Guardian's coverage by a public schoolboy from the Midlands, their idiot football editor and a Manchester City fan is rather nuanced. Indeed, the Manchester City fan, David Conn (generally the second best football writer at the paper) spends half of his article focusing on the lack of support for the players by the club hierarchy in the years following the crash. Like nothing so inhumane went on at Manchester City? Really. He should read Gary Imlach's "Working-Class Football Heroes" to understand that the abuse of worker by management is not a recent development in sport nor anywhere else for that matter.
The power bases behind the leading football clubs are rarely an edifying site and Edwards, Swales, Bates, Moores have merely been out-psychoed by the Glazers, Shinawatra, Abramovich, Hicks/Gillett. As Honoré de Balzac once put it: "Behind every great fortune lies a forgotten crime".
To their credit, the Man Utd fans are the only ones who have protested against this takeover of English football clubs by global business and gambling concerns via the formation of FC United of Manchester, a development strangely lacking at Eastlands where a fascistic mass murderer has been embraced as a saviour - somebody to remove 32 years of anonymity in the area of sporting success. Dream on.
But, the business machine that is Manchester United will undoubtedly cash in on the distant memories of München. The heavily manipulated fixture list for the Premiership season repeatedly throws up scenarios specifically designed for Sky Television and the wider media and the timing of the Manchester derby for next Sunday should be seen as par for the course. Both teams will play in 50's replica kits at the weekend and one should not be surprised if there is an accompanying increase in the number of such kits being made available in the club hypermarket both pre- and post-match. It would also be astonishing if there are not numerous other commemorative items marketed equally distastefully in the aftermath. Business is business... This is the club, after all, formerly run by Martin Edwards, who sold contaminated meat to Manchester schools when his animal abuse business was unable to palm off the rotting flesh on anybody else. Plus ça change...
The München disaster catapulted United into global prominence, a position which they have maintained in the intervening half century. This inappropriate strata of global awareness is founded more on the disaster than on events on the pitch as, the Benfica and Bayern München European Cup victories apart, most of United's success in the top English league has been based on their omnipotence during the Sky years which, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with Sky's ownership of 9.9% of United's shares. Really.
At the Mega-Mall tonight, Fabio Capello's first England side will play Switzerland after the minute's non-silence. We are delighted that so many of our suggestions have been incorporated into Capello's squad and team (check out: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2008/01/creating-incentives-to-win-world-cup.html). Gerrard as captain is a master stroke and it seems that Capello has put an end to the England squad get-togethers merely being an excuse for card playing, golf and gambling on the match outcome. "On Thursday they can play golf all they like" said the Boss. Additionally, the rumours are that global gambler Michael Owen will merely start the match on the bench. Good. Owen has scored three Premiership goals for Newcastle this season and all have been timed to perfection not to help the Toon's desperate attempts to steer clear of the drop but to enhance the chances of the little criminal featuring in the England team. On September 1st, Owen scored against Wigan in the match immediately prior to the Israel and Russia Euro 2008 Qualifiers and The Slime achieved similarly with his goal against Everton on October 7th just before the Estonia game and the Russian return match. It should hardly come as a surprise that Owen's third goal came in last weekend's match against 'Boro. The man is evidently taking the piss big style.
Whenever one returns to the police state that is modern day England and experiences the xenophobia and outright racism that permeate all areas of what is laughingly referred to as English society (witness Gordon Brown's acquisition of the National Front's former slogan of "British jobs for British people"), it is difficult to comprehend that such a country should embrace, not once but twice, non-English control of the national football team. No other leading football country would consider having a foreigner in charge of the national team - such an occurrence has never been the strategy for Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Spain or Germany. This is a tactic used by the second tier nations who buy in expertise due to the paucity of experience in their own leagues. And England are a second tier nation - they have won as many international tournaments as Denmark, Greece, Czechoslovakia and Russia and they needed both home advantage and a Russian linesman to achieve that one success. Compare Capello with Keegan, McClaren, Taylor etc and any of the other current options and our point gains greater resonance.
We finish on today's commemoration. The Guardian public schoolboy is correct in comparing the München air crash to other events that defined an era - the murder of JFK by the American deep state, the killing of John Lennon by the same, the murder of Lady Diana by the English deep state or the 9/11 statement by both the Saudi and the American deep state. We all remember where we were when these atrocities/ disasters occured and each consequently resulted in a mini-baby boom as spectacular society grief made the general population briefly focus on the love of a partner rather than the love of consumerism - which, of course, is the system's template of choice. Indeed, I was conceived just days after München and I will need to check up with my father to see whether my conception was related to the blanket of grief that hung over god's own city in the aftermath of the crash of Flight 609. RIP.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
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