The World's Greatest Competition is not the FA Cup despite the ludicrous marketing attempts of the FA itself, the BBC and a whole posse of talking heads (particularly those like Lee Dixon who are working on behalf of the bookmaking industry).
Barnsley, Bristol Rovers, Portsmouth, Cardiff, West Bromwich Albion and Middlesbrough - you're having a laugh. This is equivalent to a glorified Johnstone's Paint or LDV Vans Trophy.
It is also totally corrupted.
Last year, as longer term readers will remember, Dietrological made a small country's GDP out of the "fix" of a Manchester United versus Chelsea FA Cup Final at the newly opened Food Mall. This year's version of this minor brand of a tournament has been criminalised to a different template as we'll discuss below.
The magic of the cup used to be a reality back in the days when the then First Division clubs took the tournament seriously and when the FA was the paramount organisation overseeing the English game. Then along came the Murdochratic Premiership and the Champions League and, suddenly, the FA Cup was a distraction, a competition in which to give your youngsters the chance of a run out. Initially only the leading teams disrespected the competition but, by this season, the majority of the Premiership teams have exited this nonsense as soon as possible - think Everton against Oldham or Fulham against Bristol Rovers or Chelsea's reserves yesterday at Barnsley or numerous other examples too boring to quote. The only leading team to take this year's tournament semi-seriously has been Manchester United and yesterday they received their comeuppance for such integrity. Of course, this is the same Manchester United that decided against entering the cup at all a few years back when oodles of cash were available elsewhere so we shouldn't feel too sorry for the Glazer Boys and, yet, the corruption at Old Traffford yesterday IS something that is worthy of comment.
Harry Redknapp, Sky Bet, a whole host of journalists, Dietrological and various other insiders were all aware of this scam prior to the off. All participants in the manipulation were quids in and the sight of Jamie Redknapp squirming around his chair in the Sky studio, being far more concerned with the outcome of "a little earner" than anything related to the actual match was a visible weak point in the corruption. As, of course, was the performance of the Professional Game Match Officials Board's (PGMOB) Martin Atkinson. United were robbed and Atkinson did the robbing. Not giving a penalty for a version of actual bodily harm, giving a penalty to Milan Baros for kicking the United keeper in the head, a thoroughly deserved sending off resulting for the new PGMOB rule of "involuntarily bringing your head into contact with an opponent's foot". Farcical. Its not sympathy for the Manchester United business empire that underpins this moaning but the fact that large numbers of fans were expected to part with their hard earned cash to witness corruption to the benefit of certain bookmakers, some Guardian and Sun journalists together with 'Arry's boys. Twice in one month Old Trafford has now seen such criminality.
The quotes are revealing.
Harold Redknapp: "If it had been a pen, he'd have given it. He gave them everything today". Planet earth, pal...
Carlos Queiroz : "Give the referee a red card". A great idea except that a similarly corrupt PGMOB official would perform to the same hidden agenda...
Ronaldo: "...if the referee doesn't want to give yellow cards or penalties, he cannot protect the skilful players. I am becoming scared to go past people. It is difficult to play football in these circumstances. It is just a joke". Sorry mate, its not a joke, it is a massive corruption. I'd move to Spain asap if I were you...
Sir Fergy: "This game was decided when the Ronaldo penalty was refused... that gave them great confidence to hang on knowing the referee was on their side... Keith Hackett is in a nice comfortable position up in his eyrie and does nothing really. I don't think he makes a contribution to the refereeing performances in this country and I think this needs to be assessed as he is not doing his job properly. That guy will go and referee again next week. No problem. We've seen time after time, his favourites always get the games and I think that is the disappointing factor... The refereeing standards in our country are not as good as in Europe".
Lets examine some of Fergy's points in a more realistic fashion in comparison with the girlie shrieking of Lineker, Dixon, Shearer, Le Tissier, Redknapp, Keys etc who were all so desperate to disguise the corruption and to bolster the minimal integrity left in the World's Greatest Competition.
We are able to prove conclusively that PGMOB officials are actively involved in the corruption of English football. The Premiership uses an excessively small pool of officials and the Dirty Dozen (plus two "reserves") who cover the vast majority of games are virtually all known to have inappropriate linkages with the fragmented cartel that is criminalising the game on behalf of the bookmakers and certain institutional bodies. Keith Hackett is the boss at the PGMOB and he has to take responsibility for the corruption of his employees. We have no evidence that Hackett is directly involved in the corruption although it would take a mathematical probability of some magnitude for the selection of the match officials to fall randomly into such a corrupt format. So, mismanagement at best and outright corruption at worst, either way Hackett is failing in his job and should be sacked immediately.
There is no validity in maintaining such a small pool of match officials apart from it being the most suitable structure for the people corrupting the game. The referees performances simply do not warrant it. For example, UEFA have actively sidelined the PGMOB officials since Platini took over as they are more than aware of the dodgy linkages of the English officials. This external benchmarking backs up Ferguson's latter point and also undermines any validity to maintaining such a small grouping of referees for Premiership and FA Cup matches. Following this weekend's Premiership matches, 272 games will have been completed in the current season and 251 of these games have been refereed by Riley, Webb, Styles, Clattenburg, Foy, Wiley, Dean, Bennett, Halsey, Atkinson, Walton, Dowd, Marriner and Tanner. That's 92% of the games. In comparison, Italy's Serie A has used 31 officials not one of whom has covered 15 matches in the season to date whereas 11 of the PGMOB's Dirty Dozen (+2) have covered at least this number of games.
So, who benefits from this corruption apart from the Premier League, a whole host of European bookmakers and the Murdochracy? Well, Portsmouth for one... Last year, Harold Redknapp was caught on camera by the BBC Panorama programme discussing the feasibility of accepting a bung on a player. This self same individual is also currently awaiting trial as part of the Pompey 5 who are allegedly involved in money laundering and other financial irregularities. Rumours around the game also indicate a high likelihood that the manager who placed £12 million worth of bets on Premiership games in just one season might also allegedly have had the initials HR. Additionally, Portsmouth are run by an arms dealer's son who has an arrest warrant on his head in France for such trading and they are also closely linked to the Moscow betting markets so beloved by the Russian/Israeli club owners. Being careful what we say, it is worth doing some back-of-the-envelope figures on how a bog standard football manager is able to afford a £10 million luxury home on the south coast as well as being part of a property empire that encompasses nearly 1000 houses in south and east London.
An alien might think that, in a reasonable society, sport might punish such entities for the scams perpetrated against the interests of the integrity of the sport. Not so. In a double whammy of some considerable magnitude, Portsmouth have this season been the most favoured team in BOTH the Premiership and the FA Cup. What sort of punishment is that?
Portsmouth, the Premier League, the PGMOB, they are all teflon. There is no assessment of the corruption related to these bodies either within the game or the equally corrupted mainstream media. When The Guardian's Paul Wilson boasts in his match report about winning big on his private bet on Pompey yesterday, what is the reader supposed to feel? Delight that the man has profited from inside information is evidently the expected reaction in the eyes of this shoddy little journalist...
Earlier in the week, Roy Hodgson and Mohamed Al-Fayed demanded and received an audience with Keith Hackett to complain about the corruption against Fulham in the current Premiership season. No team has been as badly treated by the PGMOB officials as have Fulham and, yet, Hackett remained true to form and attempted to justify these machinations. To see whether such a process had any impact, one should check out the continuing corruption against Fulham yesterday when that incredibly slimy and weak individual, Mike Riley, totally mugged Fulham once again. The English deep state is after Al-Fayed on a range of levels for having the audacity to complain about the murder of his son and football is simply one example of this range of dynamics. Incidentally, a leading football agent of my acquaintance has seen evidence that irrefutably backs the conspiratorial nature of this establishment cover up but that is another story for another time. The job's a good'un and Fulham are to be demoted, a fact that is only given greater credence by the statement of Ladbrokes employee Lee Dixon on last night's Match Of The Day programme. When asked by some bonehead whether Fulham will stay up, Dixon replied: "I think they probably will. Just...". The man is a disgrace to god's own city. Incidentally, Dixon also reckons Boro will win the FA Cup - you have been warned...
The biggest losers out of the 2007/08 FA Cup are the FA themselves. No matter how exhilarating we are expected to believe this lower division tournament is, it has been a feature of this year's event that the grounds are half empty, the leading teams are disinterested and the PGMOB match officials have been reading from a hidden agenda. We are all expected to celebrate the triumph of little Barnsley and to be joyous that 'Arry is going to the Food Mall for the first time in his career. Oh my gosh, how exciting is that? Perhaps the mugging of Manchester United has more to do with the FA's opposition to the Premier League's 39th game conspiracy than first meets the eye.
Finally, while we were watching the corruption unfold yesterday, the groundwork for future corruptions was being laid at Gleneagles where the International Football Associations Board finally decided to freeze further trials of the HawkEye goalline technology and to push ahead with experiments to have two extra assistant criminals standing behind each goalline instead. This fake marketing trial has cost the Premier League hundreds of thousands of pounds while Adidas and Cairos Technologies have spent millions on microchipping the ball. All for nothing. In a similar manner that the US elections will be warped by non-open source software in the voting machines, the game of football in this country will continue to be criminalised by the match officials. Of course, simply using the television images is not even on the agenda as authenticity of match outcome is the very last thing on the private agendas of the crooks who are destroying the game.
So, credit to the excellent town of Barnsley and total discredit to virtually everybody else...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
