When the Three Card Poll pocketed his whistle and sulked off back to Tring, there was an inevitability that the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) would promote someone else to continue the man's projects. Police sergeant Howard Webb was the man on the square, so to speak.
Just as we had a problem with Poll so we do with Sgt Webb - they share many inappropriate attributes - but, whereas Poll was enigmatic in his influence upon match outcomes, Webb conforms to a range of particular templates.
In that some things are more important than football, lets begin with the man's racism. Now it should not be a surprise that somebody employed by an organisation whose core competency is institutional racism is capable of displaying a racist bias in his officiating (the DNA database being jigsawed together by the police on behalf of the deep state currently covers 7% of the population but 40% of Black males). Webb's racism may be subliminal but it exists if you evaluate his refereeing over the last couple of years. Of course, it does not help that Webb has chosen the aesthetics of a BNP-styled sloppy slaphead but it is a disgrace that the PGMOB does not monitor for any racist bias in decision making in the Premiership.
If it was merely Webb's racism that was an issue then it would not be worth much more than a passing comment in a country where racism and xenophobia are the only culture. But Sgt Webb displays other "qualities" too.
Firstly, lets check out Webb's role in the Premiership. Before we go any further, we need to add that we are being very careful about what we reveal about Sgt Webb here and there are several other very salient points that we might have chosen to raise but our lawyers have said "Ohi".
Webb exhibits a very clear north-south bias in his officiating - London teams suffer markedly at the hands of the Yorkshireman with the one exception of West Ham United who Webb appears to have a very close relationship with. It must be something to do with East London's inherent racism, I guess. Now most officials exhibit subtle forms of regional bias but, using our index whereby 100 = total bias in favour and 0 = total bias against, Webb scores 84 for the north and 17 for the midlands and the south (excluding West Ham). These are statistically significant levels of bias.
The PGMOB have decreed that Webb is the new Poll and his selection for 15 live Sky or Setanta games this season, when not one other official has reached double figures, is simply not valid. Last season, our Bum Ref Index indicated that Webb was the second worst official in the Premiership although this season he has "improved" to being the sixth worst referee (mainly through various other officials selecting the "fall from grace" route to professionalism). Whatever, his officiating does not warrant being selected for so many major televised events.
Looking at Webb's last three Premiership outings demonstrates a typical range of impacts. Firstly, he destroyed the Manchester derby and saved the bookmakers a small fortune by allowing them to bag the emotional money. Webb followed this up by mugging Fulham against West Ham (denying them a penalty; allowing the winning goal to be "armed" into the net; sending off Andreasen for objecting to the corruption) and, at the weekend, he had a further impact on the relegation battle by stopping Boro against Reading. We could go back further but time and space issues prevent us from doing so.
Now the tricky linguistics bit... Sgt Webb shows a correlation between his decision making and the requirements of certain members of the fragmented cartel who are destroying the sport of football. That's it. That's all I am allowed to say on that matter...
Tomorrow evening, Sgt Webb takes his truncheon and stun gun to Porto as, bizarrely, UEFA have determined that Webb is a top-tiered official. Since Platini took over, UEFA have rumbled the inappropriate linkages of many of the English referees on the UEFA roster and this has resulted in the peripheralisation of PGMOB officials with regard to both Champions League and UEFA Cup matches. The latter stages of the Champions League are simply a marketing process as the European governing body ensures that the correct outcomes occur in relation to their hidden agenda. To this end, it is critical to use a small grouping of match officials in much the same way as the PGMOB does while strangling the life out of the Premiership. There is a general perception that Western Europe is clean and Eastern Europe is corrupt. Not so. UEFA should pay heed to the last truncated paragraph as it applies to all of Webb's events. Once again, 'nuff said...
Sgt Webb must be an early favourite to get this summer's Euro 2008 Final as the officials from the other major countries have the inconvenience that their nations have qualified. Such a travesty would at least allow the bookmakers some influence over the markets on such a huge turnover event and would go some small way to offsetting their losses resulting from the bookmaker-created English non-qualification in the first place.
Throughout the English game, there is the stench of corruption. Only last week Arsène Wenger stated: "...over the last three years we have been the team that has been fouled the most, we have been the team that have made the least fouls and we have been the team punished more than any other team in the league". While we do not agree totally with all Wenger's stats, his general prognosis is undoubtedly correct. The match officials are simply too powerful when there is so much betting money to be accounted for. Until something is done to change this state of affairs, we are going to be faced with numerous other instances of that smugness which comes from untouchability as was demonstrated by Howard Webb at Old Trafford last month.
Pig sick...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
