There are, undoubtedly, some characters in the game who are more murky than Peter Kenyon.
But, despite this proviso, you wouldn't want him going out with your daughter, would you?
This week Kenyon, who tries to justify the stability of one of the most psychopathic entities in world football, decided that it was a suitable time to lecture others from his House of Cards. It is time that the non-Big 4 teams "got their houses in order" stated Uncle Fester, carefully avoiding any reference to Chelsea's financial security being based on their ability to repay Roman Abramovich over £600 million ($1,200 million) within a period of 18 months if the oligarch's legal travails should prove too arresting.
Referring to the proposals to dilute the foreign players in the game, Kenyon continued "we shouldn't dumb down the game and use artificial ways to get an even platform".
Coming from the chief executive of a team that utilises as many 'artificial' ways as possible to gain an unfair advantage both on the field of play and off it, this is a little disingenuous.
Artificial levelling of the playing field is a bad thing.
Artificial corruption to tilt the playing field is a good thing.
At Football Is Fixed, we try to assess the game and its hyperrealities while not losing sight of the postmodern template in which it must exist.
There was virtually nothing in the mainstream press about corruption and the impact of betting markets upon football match outcomes until we started this blog around 21 months ago.
There still isn't.
But conversations among the fans have altered considerably.
The Illusion is no longer being bought to anywhere near the same extent.
Certain Illusions are able to repeatedly morph into new corrupt structures in response to externalised analyses, assessments, regulatory impacts and investigative journalism. Financial markets would fall into this category. So many of the key decisions are taken in very shady places with no public oversight. Cartels, monopolies, fragmented cartels, insider trading, collusion and price fixing are the accepted norm. Each crisis is followed by toothless new regulation which merely serves as a new structure for the chosen few to game the system all over again for proprietary profit.
Other narratives are only able to exist for a window, the narrative is not sustainable - think holocaust.
Other Illusions are in the final stages of their fake realities - think horseracing or greyhound racing, where punters understand that they are being fleeced but accept it as a form of addictive self-enslavement.
Both of these 'sports' are entirely gambling entities.
The impact of the bookmakers has converted both of these 'sports' from ones of mass entertainment and attendance to ones of mass apathy and small gatherings of individuals with personality disorders, both on-course and off.
Football, particularly the English Premiership, is following the same path.
There are only two options for fake hyperrealities in a postmodern world.
Either they do the holocaust thing or they do the horseracing thing.
Football is slowly but surely succumbing to a future of psycho-soccer, the ultimate global gambling product.
Of course, nobody will watch it (witness the small attendance for the Manchester United v Portsmouth 39th Step experiment in Lagos).
But addicts will gamble on rigged markets with the aid of a compliant mass media.
We're pretty much already there - welcome to the brave new world of #########, ##########, the Association of Major Levy Payers, ##########, ########, the ###############################################, bungs, private equity, insider trading, coercion, kickbacks, the illegal underground Far East betting markets, rogue players and predatory pricing and trading.
Punishment rarely fits the crime.
Compare two national leaders, each responsible for illegal wars, torture and mass killings, while carefully ignoring the Geneva Conventions.
Each reinvents themselves as faith-based healers.
One is Serbian and is arrested and put on trial for war crimes in Den Haag.
The other is English and is serving his catholic confessional on the peripheries of the horrors that he helped to unleash in the Middle East. It will be a plum job in Belgium rather than a padded cell in the Netherlands for Mr Blair.
Punishment fitting the crime?
Having spent too much time with my lawyers of late, I'll spend the next part of this post addressing justice and punishment in the arenas of geopolitics, finance and football.
* The Guardian and Joey Barton - There is a rancid piece of journalism in The Guardian today on the release of Joey Barton from prison. The reactionary response to the flawed personality of Barton is totally inappropriate from a newspaper that:
i) Gives a voice to spokespeople from Ladbrokes to peddle betting disinformation about the forthcoming markets.
ii) Allows Keith Pullein of the bookmaker-controlled Racing Post to provide equivalent disinformation from a statistical perspective.
iii) Closely works with certain leading agents to plant 'transfer news' stories to facilitate or massage fees for the agents.
iv) Provides regular columns for the players linked to these agents either via ghost writing or interviews.
v) Allows individual players closely associated with the ################### to place their bobbins journalism in the paper.
####################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################
It has come to something when we would have to say that the Telegraph offers a more balanced and less corrupt coverage of the sport than The Guardian.
The key point here is this. Barton did his crime and did his punishment.
The players and bookmaker's lackeys who write for The Guardian are being paid handsomely for their role in the demise of our great game.
Crime.
But no punishment.
* Nike and Joey Barton - The scrapping scouser has been dropped by Nike for "bringing the brand into disrepute".
We would have thought that Nike are quite capable of achieving such brand depreciation by themselves via their rampant use of sweatshop labour in the Third World (sic).
Why pick on Barton?
Disproportionate punishment, that's why...
* Insider trading in the City of London - Since insider trading was changed from being a perk of the job to being a crime in 1981, there has not been one conviction for such rigging of the markets.
In over a quarter of a century, insider trading has never occurred.
Apparently.
Disability Benefit and Dole Fraud are rampant but Market Fraud is conspicuous by its absence.
Further regulation was introduced in 2001 allowing, finally, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) the power to bring criminal charges.
Still nothing.
Until this year when the FSA has, from out of the blue, launched three insider cases in a week. Traders at Swiss bank UBS and JPMorgan Cazenove were arrested for alleged insider dealing on Tuesday as police raids sent a chill through the UK capital’s trading rooms. Tuesday’s raids came less than a week after the agency charged a veteran former Cazenove partner with a dozen counts of insider dealing between 2003 and 2005.
Insider trading is also rife in football - certain Premiership managers ######################################## in the Premiership season, for instance.
For goodness sake, some industry insiders have even bought information from Dietrological (our Football Information Provision Service) and offered us inside information in return.
Any sign of any prosecutions here?
Get real...
* Corruption in Basketball - Although you would have been hard-pressed to notice it if you only read the output of the Murdochracy, Tim Donaghy, the NBA referee who rigged games on behalf of bookmakers was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment on Tuesday.
This is a cover up.
The lenient sentence is one giveaway but there are many others.
No attention was paid to the several hundred phonecalls between Donaghy and fellow referee Scott Foster during the period of his misdemeanour.
Why has there been no absolute proof to rebut Donaghy's accusations that results were manipulated to boost television ratings and the league's visibility?
Donaghy whistleblew the fraternisation between match officials, coaches, owners, players, the authorities and bookmakers but no new regulation has been introduced to prevent future repeats of this episode.
Of course, the Murdochracy carefully filter the news hyperrealities that ##################################.
Hence the Donaghy story was buried.
As one reader wrote earlier in the month: "I am very tempted to put some money on the Premiership title not being decided until the final game of the season, this and every other year until Sky lose their grip".
Murdoch is untouchable.
No punishment.
* Financial Shenanigans in the USA - A Congressional Sub-Committee last week estimated that the US Treasury loses $200 billion dollars per year in offshore tax abuses.
Check out the conviction rates for Tax Fraud. Many bastions of western shareholder capitalism even offer a regulatory structure whereby tax evasion is legal.
Or, check out the financial rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the Federal Reserve. The lack of strategic thought in the rescue package effectively allows these two insolvent mammoths of mammon to issue their own debt and exchange it for loans from the government - the equivalent of, as The Economist puts it: "having access to the printing press" for US dollars.
Punishment fitting the crime again...
* Teflon Agents - On top of the Luton Town fracas which clearly demonstrated that whistleblowing is punishable by banishment and excommunication, while illegal bungs activity is rewarded with official impunity, many agents abuse Black players, in particular, in their very murky sector.
So Willie McKay is Joey Barton's agent and yet, for example, The Guardian is very careful how they word any column inches relating to the agent/ horserace trainer/ bookmaker character from Glasgow.
Furthermore, there is never any mention of how agents manipulate the loopholed regulations for profit at the expense of African players.
Economics is all about incentives and an agent has far more interest in developing a long-term relationship with a leading manager or club than with a particular West African player.
The only exceptions to this general rule are the rare geniuses like Didier Drogba.
We know of more than one agent who, while claiming to represent the player, are actually representing the buying or selling club. The desperation that exists across Africa means that families are taking on huge amounts of debt just to get their talented offspring into one of the thousands of soccer schools that offer a remote chance of a career in European football.
The agents game this desperation.
They understand that African players will sign virtually anything to escape the grinding poverty of globalisation.
Via this illegal linkage between club and agent, profits are shared at the expense of the disenfranchised player.
Any sign of any punishment here? Yeah right...
* Ulvaro Uribe - When Uribe managed to release anti-corruption politician Íngrid Betancourt and, less gloriously, several US mercenaries or security contractors or whatever hyperreal term is used to label these agents of illegal wars, he timed the daring raid to coincide with his own bid to overturn the Colombian laws that prevent a leader seeking a third term.
Altruism and Self-Interest.
But not in equal quantities.
By using the Red Cross symbol on military planes during the rescue, Uribe has ensured that huge numbers of innocent and brave individuals globally have had their lives put at significantly greater risk just so he can continue with his psychopathy as a US puppet in a US client state.
And this is prior to considering his illegal cross-border military forays into Ecuador, the biased targeting of FARC left-wing drug barons as opposed to AUC right-wing drug barons, and the role of several of his top lieutenants in this self-same cocaine trade.
No punishment here either.
Noam Chomsky states that: "We have a state-based economic system".
As taxpayers money is utilised on both sides of the Atlantic to save the financial system from implosion, this assertion is clearly proved.
The same Illusory reality exists within English football - we have a state-based economic system.
Some members of our Trading Team have undertaken consultancies for the British government and, in the course of the research and think-tanking, found that there was no interest in the inappropriate and corrupt linkages between Premiership football and the bookmaking industry.
Tessa Jowell was particularly obstructive but, then again, her estranged (and strange) husband is, like Blair, one of Berlusconi's buddies.
'Nuff said.
Honoré de Balzac: "Behind every great fortune lies a forgotten crime".
No punishment.
Jean Baudrillard: "Monopoly structures (and any state is a monopoly, since it claims a monopoly in the political and social spheres) cannot but secrete a para-political society, a mafia of some sort, to control this form of generalised corruption. It is pure hypocrisy on the part of the political authorities to fight this mafia, since it is an emanation of those authorities themselves".
No punishment.
A working class bloke from Liverpool loses the plot big style.
Send him down.
Reduce his wages.
Smash his sponsorship.
Invade his privacy.
Make him a figure of hate increasing the likelihood that someone will take a pop at him again, repeating the hyperreality, selling more newspapers in the process.
Ah! Proper punishment.
Regressive justice.
Just one final question.
Who is most at fault for the rampant corruption in English football?
Joey Barton?
Or the ##################################################################################################################################################################################################################?
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 31 July 2008
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
The Fetishism Of The English Premiership - A Flashback
The new subscription structure of Football Is Fixed includes provision for a couple of Flashback posts per month, in order that we may either demonstrate our prescience or allow for the continuation of the arguments set out in the original post.
The article below was originally printed in April 2008 and relates to the illegal machinations that were being unveiled in order that the English Premiership title race would go to the wire.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
THE FETISHISM OF THE ENGLISH PREMIERSHIP
What have Robert Mugabe and ################# in common?
They are both prone to manipulate realities for personal gratification.
The outrageously racist coverage in the northern hemispheric media regarding the situation in Zimbabwe stands in marked contrast to a dissimilar lack of coverage for the grotesque corruption underpinning the world of English football.
Okay so, Mugabe has lost the plot and needs to stand aside. But let us not forget that the man was a liberation hero and let us also not forget the fact that Rhodesia was a vicious fascistic racist monstrosity - a fact conveniently forgotten both in the current mainstream media coverage as well as in the press focus around the time of independence in 1980. Modern day Mugabe merely represents your average "absolute power corrupts absolutely" template of political psychopathy - a bit like Dick Cheney or Silvio Berlusconi, only Black. The Zimbabwean president's manipulation of the electoral results is his attempt to establish a fake reality loosely based on that other fake reality known as democracy.
################# is also autocratic. He is omnipotent within the Premier League and, as such, he is directly responsible for everything which occurs on his watch. And that would necessarily include corruption.
Integrity is crossed out in crayon in the ######### family dictionary whereas profit is underlined several times together with an adjacent asterisk.
Football is not supposed to be a handicap sport. Unlike horseracing, where talented creatures are provided with equalising weights for the benefit of the bookmaking industry, football is supposed to be about level playing fields and fair play and meritocratic glory. Of course, it has never been that thing but, historically, it always, at least, had tentacles that reached back to a purer form of the game - a recreation. Recreation, the very name, to re-create - football was a celebration, a joyous freedom from the yoke of wage slavery.
Posh people possess neither soul nor culture. To offset this palpable vacuum of an existence, they establish fake cultures that are always based on one basic premise, namely, that the culture must be entirely opaque to all "lesser" beings - think Wagner, polo, amateur dramatics, croquet, hunting or whatever.
The original takeover of football was also simply posh people buying playthings. But, what Scudamore is presiding over is the complete demolition of football as a sport and the reconstruction of the Illusion of football as a gambling and media medium. This Illusion represents a fetishistic version of the game which bears no relation to the Reality of the original sport. Lets look at a few examples which demonstrate the conveyor belt of corruption which has produced this Illusion.
Steaua Bucureşti represent the oldskool. At the mid-season break, the army team trailed league leaders CFR Cluj by 10 points. This situation was anathema to controversial weirdo, Gigi Becali, the fundamentalist orthodox christian head-the-ball who corrupts both Romanian football and wider society. He made the Divizia A title race into a matter of god and nationalism - Cluj are soft western christians run by Transylvanian Hungarians, you see, and, consequently, they must not be allowed to win the league. These two factors provide the "just" foundation for gross corruption. Becali buys games. He buys referees, assistant referees, the opponents of CFR Cluj, the opponents of Steaua - all in the name of national and religious pride. Oh, and profit... The refereeing in favour of Steaua has been astonishing by its lack of any attempt to conceal the machinations being perpetrated in their favour. Just one example was the key Bucureşti derby versus Rapid (the team of the Roma community and the railway workers and, by some distance, the only one of the Big 3 who a person of sound mind might support). Steaua trailed 1-0 with time running out when the referee, Alexandru Deaconu, imitated Hugh Dallas' headbutting the queen incident, only with a cigarette lighter. The game was abandoned and Steaua were given a 3-0 win proving, once and for all, that god does indeed move in mysterious ways. The fact that Deaconu and his assistants were photographed secretly meeting in a petrol station three days prior to the derby obviously has absolutely no significance here!
Romanian Federation Director, Ionut Lupescu, stated: "We can't tolerate it anymore as refereeing has fallen under the control of a group of club owners and presidents - an efficient way to rig matches".
Can it be long before we get to see the image of ########### and his assistants hanging around the car park at Knutsford Services waiting for the man? We don't think so - although it will probably be a golf clubhouse or a masonic hall, away from prying eyes...
Which brings us to the second type of corruption, the type that represents the complete breaking of the link between the Reality and the Illusion of football. For, although Steaua's title is flawed and invalid, it is simply the standard example of club institutional power. What we have in the Premiership is a very different beast.
Lets focus on those lovable rogues at Chelsea for this one.
We have a suggestion before we start. Branding being everything in football nowadays, the Chelsea brand is dated in many inappropriate ways by the nickname, The Pensioners. The other option, The Blues, similarly shows a typical prawn-sandwich-munching lack of ingenuity. In deference to post-match events at the weekend, we would like to suggest "The Fucking Immigrants" - this is meant, of course, as a reclamation of an abusive term in the same way that it is cool to use nigger, paddy or queer when appropriate.
Anyway, The Fucking Immigrants are the Illusion. Not content with the buying of Premiership matches à la Steaua, Chelsea are also working very closely alongside the ##############, the ############################################### and ### Television to achieve this Illusion.
The media, the advertisers but, far more influentially, the bookmakers and the Premier League all required one thing - the creation of a Premiership conclusion that is fundamentally spectaclist. More people buy the papers as the cliffhanger develops, more beer is drunk as conversations focus on the fake excitement, more people watch the games on tv giving joy to the odious and invalid world of advertising, more bums sit on Oven Chip Stadium seats, more global territories buy the visuals of the manipulated encore of a conclusion, more fortunes are made by bookmakers and their accomplices via the rigging of match outcomes. What could be finer?
It is not only match outcomes that are fixed. The Premier League and Sky have fine tuned the fixture list manipulations to maximise the possibility of the farce going down to the very last game, the very last injury time minute of the very last game if feasible. Or, perhaps, if United and The Fucking Immigrants are only separated by goal difference, we could have a global series of head-to-heads to determine the "actual" winners of the Illusion 2007/08. Why hasn't ######### come up with that one yet?
Towards the conclusion of any competition where integrity has not yet turned her head and ran, the issue of fair play and equality of opportunity is everything. The coincidence of kick off times for the last rounds of games is seen as the basic condition of late season fairness around Europe - in the relatively uncorrupt Bundesliga, the last two rounds of games are concurrent while in Serie A, which is slightly more dodgy, the last four rounds all start at the same time. In the English Premiership, by some distance the MOST corrupt of these three territories, only the last round of matches are concurrent. And, even then, advantage through kick off delay is the norm.
The final league table which results from this criminality is the conclusion to this Illusion. And it is false, doubly falsified by further falsification of an earlier fallacy.
The Premiership is not the only English league to demonstrate this imbalance as the decision to allow West Bromwich Albion and Southampton, the latter the most powerful of the relegation threatened teams, to play last Monday night when all the other results were known clearly demonstrates.
Of course, the Scottish Premier League simply extends the season to reach a suitable accommodation of the Illusion. It is worthy of note, here, that FC United of Manchester had to play their last 11 games in a 26 day period and still finished runners up in the UniBond 1st Division North although this, of course, ignores the fact that the SPL and Rangers don't do second.
Another example of postmodernist reality is provided by Portsmouth who, on top of all other illegality and criminality, have been allowed to reach Wembley for the season's culinary finale. The FA are clearly in a love triangle with the Premier League and Pompey as the south coast outfit ########################################################################################### The rewards for such criminalised machinations and the atmospheric calm-before-the-storm of Redknapp's legal travails is not only an FA Cup Final place but also a listing for Fratton Park on the roster of venues for the Über-Illusion of the 2018 World Cup bid.
How many more spectacular images of a consumerist society are to be laid at the doors of Gaydamak and Redknapp?
Our final port of call, on this voyage around footballing antisocials, is Eastlands. We posted on Sunday that Thaksin had spat out his dummy due to his prime ministerial proxy exhibiting freedom of association. A cat had to be kicked and that feline was Swedish Forest Cat, Sven Goran Eriksson. I am grateful to the citeh-citeh blog (www.citeh-citeh.blogspot.com) for pointing out to us that: "Not content with his photo on the front cover of the Fulham matchday programme, Thaksin then ordered his editors to insert a further six photos in not one, but two self-flattering articles. If this wasn't enough, he then took to the field before and after the game".
Then he lost the plot Bangkok style and sacked his one real competitive advantage. Who else is going to go to the City of Manchester under the latter day Far East version of Mussolini?
Noel Gallagher sums it right regarding Shinawatra: "He seems like a bit of a nutcase". And if Noel met Sven: "I'd give him a big kiss and tell him 'you know what, take him to the cleaners'".
Still, can't wait for the Champions League Final between Manchester's München Memories Brand and either The Fucking Immigrants (would they become The Fucking Emigrants for the Final?) or The Fucking Scousers (joke). Whichever "English" teams participate in the Champions League Final, the match will undoubtedly be ruined by the impact of Power and Illusion. There is a solution.
UEFA should select an upwardly mobile and talented young referee and three assistants from a random country and secrete them away for three weeks until the day of the event. As the teams line up on the pitch, the match officials will enter via helicopter. At half time, a platoon of Ghurkas will accompany the officials to and from the changing rooms. Additionally, all key match decisions will be determined utilising video replays. Lets see Roman or Tom buy that one!
Feuerbach: "But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence... truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness".
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The article below was originally printed in April 2008 and relates to the illegal machinations that were being unveiled in order that the English Premiership title race would go to the wire.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
THE FETISHISM OF THE ENGLISH PREMIERSHIP
What have Robert Mugabe and ################# in common?
They are both prone to manipulate realities for personal gratification.
The outrageously racist coverage in the northern hemispheric media regarding the situation in Zimbabwe stands in marked contrast to a dissimilar lack of coverage for the grotesque corruption underpinning the world of English football.
Okay so, Mugabe has lost the plot and needs to stand aside. But let us not forget that the man was a liberation hero and let us also not forget the fact that Rhodesia was a vicious fascistic racist monstrosity - a fact conveniently forgotten both in the current mainstream media coverage as well as in the press focus around the time of independence in 1980. Modern day Mugabe merely represents your average "absolute power corrupts absolutely" template of political psychopathy - a bit like Dick Cheney or Silvio Berlusconi, only Black. The Zimbabwean president's manipulation of the electoral results is his attempt to establish a fake reality loosely based on that other fake reality known as democracy.
################# is also autocratic. He is omnipotent within the Premier League and, as such, he is directly responsible for everything which occurs on his watch. And that would necessarily include corruption.
Integrity is crossed out in crayon in the ######### family dictionary whereas profit is underlined several times together with an adjacent asterisk.
Football is not supposed to be a handicap sport. Unlike horseracing, where talented creatures are provided with equalising weights for the benefit of the bookmaking industry, football is supposed to be about level playing fields and fair play and meritocratic glory. Of course, it has never been that thing but, historically, it always, at least, had tentacles that reached back to a purer form of the game - a recreation. Recreation, the very name, to re-create - football was a celebration, a joyous freedom from the yoke of wage slavery.
Posh people possess neither soul nor culture. To offset this palpable vacuum of an existence, they establish fake cultures that are always based on one basic premise, namely, that the culture must be entirely opaque to all "lesser" beings - think Wagner, polo, amateur dramatics, croquet, hunting or whatever.
The original takeover of football was also simply posh people buying playthings. But, what Scudamore is presiding over is the complete demolition of football as a sport and the reconstruction of the Illusion of football as a gambling and media medium. This Illusion represents a fetishistic version of the game which bears no relation to the Reality of the original sport. Lets look at a few examples which demonstrate the conveyor belt of corruption which has produced this Illusion.
Steaua Bucureşti represent the oldskool. At the mid-season break, the army team trailed league leaders CFR Cluj by 10 points. This situation was anathema to controversial weirdo, Gigi Becali, the fundamentalist orthodox christian head-the-ball who corrupts both Romanian football and wider society. He made the Divizia A title race into a matter of god and nationalism - Cluj are soft western christians run by Transylvanian Hungarians, you see, and, consequently, they must not be allowed to win the league. These two factors provide the "just" foundation for gross corruption. Becali buys games. He buys referees, assistant referees, the opponents of CFR Cluj, the opponents of Steaua - all in the name of national and religious pride. Oh, and profit... The refereeing in favour of Steaua has been astonishing by its lack of any attempt to conceal the machinations being perpetrated in their favour. Just one example was the key Bucureşti derby versus Rapid (the team of the Roma community and the railway workers and, by some distance, the only one of the Big 3 who a person of sound mind might support). Steaua trailed 1-0 with time running out when the referee, Alexandru Deaconu, imitated Hugh Dallas' headbutting the queen incident, only with a cigarette lighter. The game was abandoned and Steaua were given a 3-0 win proving, once and for all, that god does indeed move in mysterious ways. The fact that Deaconu and his assistants were photographed secretly meeting in a petrol station three days prior to the derby obviously has absolutely no significance here!
Romanian Federation Director, Ionut Lupescu, stated: "We can't tolerate it anymore as refereeing has fallen under the control of a group of club owners and presidents - an efficient way to rig matches".
Can it be long before we get to see the image of ########### and his assistants hanging around the car park at Knutsford Services waiting for the man? We don't think so - although it will probably be a golf clubhouse or a masonic hall, away from prying eyes...
Which brings us to the second type of corruption, the type that represents the complete breaking of the link between the Reality and the Illusion of football. For, although Steaua's title is flawed and invalid, it is simply the standard example of club institutional power. What we have in the Premiership is a very different beast.
Lets focus on those lovable rogues at Chelsea for this one.
We have a suggestion before we start. Branding being everything in football nowadays, the Chelsea brand is dated in many inappropriate ways by the nickname, The Pensioners. The other option, The Blues, similarly shows a typical prawn-sandwich-munching lack of ingenuity. In deference to post-match events at the weekend, we would like to suggest "The Fucking Immigrants" - this is meant, of course, as a reclamation of an abusive term in the same way that it is cool to use nigger, paddy or queer when appropriate.
Anyway, The Fucking Immigrants are the Illusion. Not content with the buying of Premiership matches à la Steaua, Chelsea are also working very closely alongside the ##############, the ############################################### and ### Television to achieve this Illusion.
The media, the advertisers but, far more influentially, the bookmakers and the Premier League all required one thing - the creation of a Premiership conclusion that is fundamentally spectaclist. More people buy the papers as the cliffhanger develops, more beer is drunk as conversations focus on the fake excitement, more people watch the games on tv giving joy to the odious and invalid world of advertising, more bums sit on Oven Chip Stadium seats, more global territories buy the visuals of the manipulated encore of a conclusion, more fortunes are made by bookmakers and their accomplices via the rigging of match outcomes. What could be finer?
It is not only match outcomes that are fixed. The Premier League and Sky have fine tuned the fixture list manipulations to maximise the possibility of the farce going down to the very last game, the very last injury time minute of the very last game if feasible. Or, perhaps, if United and The Fucking Immigrants are only separated by goal difference, we could have a global series of head-to-heads to determine the "actual" winners of the Illusion 2007/08. Why hasn't ######### come up with that one yet?
Towards the conclusion of any competition where integrity has not yet turned her head and ran, the issue of fair play and equality of opportunity is everything. The coincidence of kick off times for the last rounds of games is seen as the basic condition of late season fairness around Europe - in the relatively uncorrupt Bundesliga, the last two rounds of games are concurrent while in Serie A, which is slightly more dodgy, the last four rounds all start at the same time. In the English Premiership, by some distance the MOST corrupt of these three territories, only the last round of matches are concurrent. And, even then, advantage through kick off delay is the norm.
The final league table which results from this criminality is the conclusion to this Illusion. And it is false, doubly falsified by further falsification of an earlier fallacy.
The Premiership is not the only English league to demonstrate this imbalance as the decision to allow West Bromwich Albion and Southampton, the latter the most powerful of the relegation threatened teams, to play last Monday night when all the other results were known clearly demonstrates.
Of course, the Scottish Premier League simply extends the season to reach a suitable accommodation of the Illusion. It is worthy of note, here, that FC United of Manchester had to play their last 11 games in a 26 day period and still finished runners up in the UniBond 1st Division North although this, of course, ignores the fact that the SPL and Rangers don't do second.
Another example of postmodernist reality is provided by Portsmouth who, on top of all other illegality and criminality, have been allowed to reach Wembley for the season's culinary finale. The FA are clearly in a love triangle with the Premier League and Pompey as the south coast outfit ########################################################################################### The rewards for such criminalised machinations and the atmospheric calm-before-the-storm of Redknapp's legal travails is not only an FA Cup Final place but also a listing for Fratton Park on the roster of venues for the Über-Illusion of the 2018 World Cup bid.
How many more spectacular images of a consumerist society are to be laid at the doors of Gaydamak and Redknapp?
Our final port of call, on this voyage around footballing antisocials, is Eastlands. We posted on Sunday that Thaksin had spat out his dummy due to his prime ministerial proxy exhibiting freedom of association. A cat had to be kicked and that feline was Swedish Forest Cat, Sven Goran Eriksson. I am grateful to the citeh-citeh blog (www.citeh-citeh.blogspot.com) for pointing out to us that: "Not content with his photo on the front cover of the Fulham matchday programme, Thaksin then ordered his editors to insert a further six photos in not one, but two self-flattering articles. If this wasn't enough, he then took to the field before and after the game".
Then he lost the plot Bangkok style and sacked his one real competitive advantage. Who else is going to go to the City of Manchester under the latter day Far East version of Mussolini?
Noel Gallagher sums it right regarding Shinawatra: "He seems like a bit of a nutcase". And if Noel met Sven: "I'd give him a big kiss and tell him 'you know what, take him to the cleaners'".
Still, can't wait for the Champions League Final between Manchester's München Memories Brand and either The Fucking Immigrants (would they become The Fucking Emigrants for the Final?) or The Fucking Scousers (joke). Whichever "English" teams participate in the Champions League Final, the match will undoubtedly be ruined by the impact of Power and Illusion. There is a solution.
UEFA should select an upwardly mobile and talented young referee and three assistants from a random country and secrete them away for three weeks until the day of the event. As the teams line up on the pitch, the match officials will enter via helicopter. At half time, a platoon of Ghurkas will accompany the officials to and from the changing rooms. Additionally, all key match decisions will be determined utilising video replays. Lets see Roman or Tom buy that one!
Feuerbach: "But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence... truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness".
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Monday, 28 July 2008
Why Bookmakers Hate The Olympics #
Only 11 days until the Greatest Sporting Show on Earth.
The Olympic Games represents the pinnacle, a summit that cannot be matched by any of the other mega-events like the World Cup or the World Athletics Championships.
Sure enough, the global power loci flex their muscles via their compliant media, and the selection of the host city for the extravaganza is a process mired in the murky world of kickbacks and coercion. But these same charges may be addressed to the World Cup too - all these hyper-sporting-realities are political at their base.
The MAJOR difference with the Olympic Games is revealed by even a cursory glance at the economics of incentives.
Every financial market is driven by the behaviouralism of incentives. Although there are any number of market participants who fail to act in their own best interests, the key players and insiders can generally be relied upon to trade, in what they believe to be, the manner of greatest utility.
The Olympics offer a highly unusual set of betting markets - for virtually all competitors, the kudos of winning gold trumps any consideration to take a backhander from the bookmakers.
And then some.
The Olympic Games are therefore the worst of these global extravaganzas from the perspective of the bookmakers. The layers prefer events where they have proprietary inside information, control of the outcome via participants, or very competitive and highly liquid markets that, at the least, randomise outcome, while, at best, offer insider certainties masquerading as boiler room scams.
One might expect, with the Opening Ceremony just one-and-a-half weeks away, that the trading rooms would be buzzing with anticipation at the betting opportunities offered by the Greatest Show on Earth.
But they aren't.
Trepidation is the generalised trading sentiment.
The bookmakers cannot develop a coercive/kickback edge in the vast majority of events.
Furthermore, inside information is much thinner on the ground regarding injuries and the like...
Truly competitive markets with a virtually level playing field regarding market access and integrity are a bookies nightmare.
With 11 days to go, NONE of the major Asian layers have priced up even one event at the Olympics Games which are, after all, taking place in the Gambling Capital of the World, China. There is not even a mention of the likelihood of markets being developed in these meritocratic events.
Nada!
William Hill, one of the major English firms, have priced up one event - the highly competitive Men's 100 metres - plus a couple of markets relating to the Medals Tables.
But that is it.
And even the 100 metres market is priced up to an outrageous overround, in order to protect the Leeds-based firm still further.
But, this is nothing compared to Betfair.
For one example, the 'market' for the Men's Cycle Track Individual Sprint offers an overround of 400% in an eight runner field.
"Betting As It Should Be"...
By the time the first event hits the ground running, there will be a limited range of markets. We offer a few general prompts to improve your chances of out-trading the bookmakers.
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The Olympic Games represents the pinnacle, a summit that cannot be matched by any of the other mega-events like the World Cup or the World Athletics Championships.
Sure enough, the global power loci flex their muscles via their compliant media, and the selection of the host city for the extravaganza is a process mired in the murky world of kickbacks and coercion. But these same charges may be addressed to the World Cup too - all these hyper-sporting-realities are political at their base.
The MAJOR difference with the Olympic Games is revealed by even a cursory glance at the economics of incentives.
Every financial market is driven by the behaviouralism of incentives. Although there are any number of market participants who fail to act in their own best interests, the key players and insiders can generally be relied upon to trade, in what they believe to be, the manner of greatest utility.
The Olympics offer a highly unusual set of betting markets - for virtually all competitors, the kudos of winning gold trumps any consideration to take a backhander from the bookmakers.
And then some.
The Olympic Games are therefore the worst of these global extravaganzas from the perspective of the bookmakers. The layers prefer events where they have proprietary inside information, control of the outcome via participants, or very competitive and highly liquid markets that, at the least, randomise outcome, while, at best, offer insider certainties masquerading as boiler room scams.
One might expect, with the Opening Ceremony just one-and-a-half weeks away, that the trading rooms would be buzzing with anticipation at the betting opportunities offered by the Greatest Show on Earth.
But they aren't.
Trepidation is the generalised trading sentiment.
The bookmakers cannot develop a coercive/kickback edge in the vast majority of events.
Furthermore, inside information is much thinner on the ground regarding injuries and the like...
Truly competitive markets with a virtually level playing field regarding market access and integrity are a bookies nightmare.
With 11 days to go, NONE of the major Asian layers have priced up even one event at the Olympics Games which are, after all, taking place in the Gambling Capital of the World, China. There is not even a mention of the likelihood of markets being developed in these meritocratic events.
Nada!
William Hill, one of the major English firms, have priced up one event - the highly competitive Men's 100 metres - plus a couple of markets relating to the Medals Tables.
But that is it.
And even the 100 metres market is priced up to an outrageous overround, in order to protect the Leeds-based firm still further.
But, this is nothing compared to Betfair.
For one example, the 'market' for the Men's Cycle Track Individual Sprint offers an overround of 400% in an eight runner field.
"Betting As It Should Be"...
By the time the first event hits the ground running, there will be a limited range of markets. We offer a few general prompts to improve your chances of out-trading the bookmakers.
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Sunday, 27 July 2008
Berbatov/Barry/Owen/Ronaldo/Lampard - The Truth #
Its the height of the Silly Season.
The options...
The Inter Toto Cup or watching Chelsea and Manchester United annihilate teams from economically disenfranchised regions - Sky tried to excite us about the breaking news that Derby County only managed a victory at Mansfield Town due to a last minute penalty save by Roy Carroll.
When reality is like this, a spectacular brand requires a spectacular hyperreality.
And the summer transfer market is that hyperreality...
Many leading agents regard their ties to the leading mainstream journalists as THE critical tool to lever suitable transfers and, with it, suitable percentages of the deal.
The result for the reader who buys into this rubbish, is a cascade of fallacious storylines and articles describing this-or-that clubs interest in such-and-such a player.
When, in fact, no such interest exists.
In a highly manipulated media, it is an interesting reversal that the transfer sagas that are, in fact, real achieve far less media space (as the last thing an agent requires when a suitable deal is in motion is for external influences to potentially destabilise the revenue stream).
As Noam Chomsky says: "History and reality are too dangerous".
In the instance of the Silly Season transfer rumours, this is undoubtedly the case.
Below we itemise the top transfer rumours of Silly Season 2008.
We also, for good measure, have a laugh at the expense of the more dysfunctional teams in the English Premiership.
And, we assess some of the transfer activity to date.
* Michael Owen - Linked with JEF Chiba in Japan and Manchester United, Owen has been granted outrageous media exposure in that he might ply his irregular trade elsewhere.
For a player who seemingly only scores for his club when his profitable international team place is under threat, Owen must be regarded as valueless. In fact, we believe that he should be paying £100,000 per week to a club so that he can adjust match results to his heart's content. Owen believes that he deserves to be paid an equivalent amount - he bases this nonsense plea on 10 goals in 19 games at the end of last season, when Newcastle were receiving much official help in their efforts to remain in the Premiership.
'History' and 'reality' are more realistic ways to assess a player's true value.
And, utilising the data to date in his career, we reckon Owen should be shelling out approximately £9 million per year (in transfer fees and wages to the club) in order to play.
Owen is now threatening to walk out on a free. We'll leave it to you to do the mathematics of this from Newcastle's perspective - there's some interesting gaming of that particular transfer market available to the participants!
Owen is unable to feature in Newcastle's pre-season losses to small northern towns as he is behind in his pre-season training due to his originally publicised football injury morphing into mumps.
Injury? Mumps? Walking out? Manchester United? JEF Chiba?
Its all marketed trash.
You should not care.
Oh my gosh, I should not care...
No player wants to see wage freezes/decreases at Newcastle.
Nobody wants to join Newcastle.
There may be trouble ahead...
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The options...
The Inter Toto Cup or watching Chelsea and Manchester United annihilate teams from economically disenfranchised regions - Sky tried to excite us about the breaking news that Derby County only managed a victory at Mansfield Town due to a last minute penalty save by Roy Carroll.
When reality is like this, a spectacular brand requires a spectacular hyperreality.
And the summer transfer market is that hyperreality...
Many leading agents regard their ties to the leading mainstream journalists as THE critical tool to lever suitable transfers and, with it, suitable percentages of the deal.
The result for the reader who buys into this rubbish, is a cascade of fallacious storylines and articles describing this-or-that clubs interest in such-and-such a player.
When, in fact, no such interest exists.
In a highly manipulated media, it is an interesting reversal that the transfer sagas that are, in fact, real achieve far less media space (as the last thing an agent requires when a suitable deal is in motion is for external influences to potentially destabilise the revenue stream).
As Noam Chomsky says: "History and reality are too dangerous".
In the instance of the Silly Season transfer rumours, this is undoubtedly the case.
Below we itemise the top transfer rumours of Silly Season 2008.
We also, for good measure, have a laugh at the expense of the more dysfunctional teams in the English Premiership.
And, we assess some of the transfer activity to date.
* Michael Owen - Linked with JEF Chiba in Japan and Manchester United, Owen has been granted outrageous media exposure in that he might ply his irregular trade elsewhere.
For a player who seemingly only scores for his club when his profitable international team place is under threat, Owen must be regarded as valueless. In fact, we believe that he should be paying £100,000 per week to a club so that he can adjust match results to his heart's content. Owen believes that he deserves to be paid an equivalent amount - he bases this nonsense plea on 10 goals in 19 games at the end of last season, when Newcastle were receiving much official help in their efforts to remain in the Premiership.
'History' and 'reality' are more realistic ways to assess a player's true value.
And, utilising the data to date in his career, we reckon Owen should be shelling out approximately £9 million per year (in transfer fees and wages to the club) in order to play.
Owen is now threatening to walk out on a free. We'll leave it to you to do the mathematics of this from Newcastle's perspective - there's some interesting gaming of that particular transfer market available to the participants!
Owen is unable to feature in Newcastle's pre-season losses to small northern towns as he is behind in his pre-season training due to his originally publicised football injury morphing into mumps.
Injury? Mumps? Walking out? Manchester United? JEF Chiba?
Its all marketed trash.
You should not care.
Oh my gosh, I should not care...
No player wants to see wage freezes/decreases at Newcastle.
Nobody wants to join Newcastle.
There may be trouble ahead...
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 25 July 2008
Manipulated Markets And Agreed Draws #
Market manipulation comes in many forms.
Prosecutions are exceedingly rare.
The free market is dependant on market manipulation.
For the first three days of last week, the global financial markets were plummeting towards more realistic levels.
And bear territory was breached.
And the recession loomed.
The banking sectors were getting hammered.
There were rumours that leading investment bank Lehman Brothers were on the verge of bankruptcy.
So, what was the response of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)?
Well, they only went for market manipulation, didn't they?
(Subscribers receive an analysis of the impacts of this market manipulation).
Of course, football is also fixed and we utilise the corrupt regulatory input of the SEC to introduce a common corruption in football betting markets - the Agreed Draw.
Agreed Draws are among the least palatable of football matches and also are highly profitable to the discerning trader. There are two analytical areas that a trader should show concern towards with regards to these events. Firstly, the holistic background to the event and, secondly, the 'events' as they unfold on the pitch.
We'll check these out in turn.
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Prosecutions are exceedingly rare.
The free market is dependant on market manipulation.
For the first three days of last week, the global financial markets were plummeting towards more realistic levels.
And bear territory was breached.
And the recession loomed.
The banking sectors were getting hammered.
There were rumours that leading investment bank Lehman Brothers were on the verge of bankruptcy.
So, what was the response of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)?
Well, they only went for market manipulation, didn't they?
(Subscribers receive an analysis of the impacts of this market manipulation).
Of course, football is also fixed and we utilise the corrupt regulatory input of the SEC to introduce a common corruption in football betting markets - the Agreed Draw.
Agreed Draws are among the least palatable of football matches and also are highly profitable to the discerning trader. There are two analytical areas that a trader should show concern towards with regards to these events. Firstly, the holistic background to the event and, secondly, the 'events' as they unfold on the pitch.
We'll check these out in turn.
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Is It Ethical To Support Glasgow Celtic? #
Poodle's lackey John Reid is chairman, the largest shareholder and quasi-owner Dermot Desmond has business interests in casinos, bookmaking, investment and underwriting, banking, oil, healthcare and airports, chief executive Peter Lawwel comes from a big pharma, chemicals and mining background, and manager Gordon Strachan shows an inappropriate nationalistic and, some might say racist bias, in his team selection. Additionally, some of the other characters that leech onto the club could hardly be described as principled business operators.
Now, it cannot be said that, cumulatively, these people are the equal of the psychopathic ownership and, in some cases, management at Portsmouth, Chelsea, West Ham United, Milan, Steaua Bucureşti or Manchester City, for examples.
But what about the second tier psycho-merchants at Liverpool, Manchester United, Aston Villa and, coming soon, Arsenal?
If Celtic are run by a bunch of characters no different, in hyperreality, from the capitalist charlatans owning Manchester United, should there be a FC Celtic of Glasgow?
Dr John Reid probably started off alright, although, no doubt, constantly developing his bullying and menacing manner.
Anyway.
9/11 changed the man.
Throughout 2001, Reid had served as the first catholic Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (sic) and moved the "peace process" on considerably by talking to the UVA, UDF and the 'RA. While successfully equalising the political perceptions of "terrorism" on both sides of the divide, Reid also managed to move the decommissioning of weapons forwards.
Then, overnight, he became an autocratic, police state supporting, warmongering, civil rights abusing disgrace.
Even in a New Labour party that starts merely at the centre-right, Reid has moved from the middle ground of that centre-right to the far-right.
Just like that.
Overseeing the killing of Iraqi and Afghani civilians on behalf of the American and British corporate machines, Reid decided that paranoia demanded that the state must impose rigorous surveillances on its population. He also must have been aware of torture and extraordinary rendition issues in his time at Defence.
John Reid was one of the architects of the current state of this sorry excuse for a society.
John Reid thinks that we don't get it.
We think that John Reid has lost the plot.
I had reason to stand opposite Dr John Reid in the Celtic boardroom prior to Barcelona's demolition of Celtic at Parkhead in February.
4 minutes and fifteen seconds of silence I managed before he slithered away - I glared at him, checked out the replica 1967 European Cup trophy, made the occasional long nose on the sly... The random grimace helped to fill out the time adequately.
I demanded no introduction and got away without saying a word.
I'd already decided prior to attending the match that I had no intention of undertaking any consultancy work for this outfit.
Childish, I know...
But can I still support them?
With its rarefied atmosphere - half accountancy boardroom, half public school prefect room - the military ritual of clean-shaved suited identikit individuals (sic), marching in time to place their overcoats on the clothing rails, before marching back to collect prior to the match, was stultifyingly ordered and controlled compared to the celebrating fans in the ground.
A peculiarity of precision...
My host insisted on getting to the Directors Box ten minutes prior to the game to sample the atmosphere.
There was no atmosphere in the Directors Box.
All sound seems to bypass it like there exists some type of gravitational field that removes the concept of enjoyment from this miserable bunch of numero-judicial autistic types.
"The Fields of Athenry" rang out around the stadium.
I joined in.
Then I realised that nobody within twenty metres of me was singing along.
My volume fell away exponentially.
Characterless environment.
Dermot Desmond has one very good point in his favour.
He was born in Co. Cork.
It all went downhill from there on.
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Now, it cannot be said that, cumulatively, these people are the equal of the psychopathic ownership and, in some cases, management at Portsmouth, Chelsea, West Ham United, Milan, Steaua Bucureşti or Manchester City, for examples.
But what about the second tier psycho-merchants at Liverpool, Manchester United, Aston Villa and, coming soon, Arsenal?
If Celtic are run by a bunch of characters no different, in hyperreality, from the capitalist charlatans owning Manchester United, should there be a FC Celtic of Glasgow?
Dr John Reid probably started off alright, although, no doubt, constantly developing his bullying and menacing manner.
Anyway.
9/11 changed the man.
Throughout 2001, Reid had served as the first catholic Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (sic) and moved the "peace process" on considerably by talking to the UVA, UDF and the 'RA. While successfully equalising the political perceptions of "terrorism" on both sides of the divide, Reid also managed to move the decommissioning of weapons forwards.
Then, overnight, he became an autocratic, police state supporting, warmongering, civil rights abusing disgrace.
Even in a New Labour party that starts merely at the centre-right, Reid has moved from the middle ground of that centre-right to the far-right.
Just like that.
Overseeing the killing of Iraqi and Afghani civilians on behalf of the American and British corporate machines, Reid decided that paranoia demanded that the state must impose rigorous surveillances on its population. He also must have been aware of torture and extraordinary rendition issues in his time at Defence.
John Reid was one of the architects of the current state of this sorry excuse for a society.
John Reid thinks that we don't get it.
We think that John Reid has lost the plot.
I had reason to stand opposite Dr John Reid in the Celtic boardroom prior to Barcelona's demolition of Celtic at Parkhead in February.
4 minutes and fifteen seconds of silence I managed before he slithered away - I glared at him, checked out the replica 1967 European Cup trophy, made the occasional long nose on the sly... The random grimace helped to fill out the time adequately.
I demanded no introduction and got away without saying a word.
I'd already decided prior to attending the match that I had no intention of undertaking any consultancy work for this outfit.
Childish, I know...
But can I still support them?
With its rarefied atmosphere - half accountancy boardroom, half public school prefect room - the military ritual of clean-shaved suited identikit individuals (sic), marching in time to place their overcoats on the clothing rails, before marching back to collect prior to the match, was stultifyingly ordered and controlled compared to the celebrating fans in the ground.
A peculiarity of precision...
My host insisted on getting to the Directors Box ten minutes prior to the game to sample the atmosphere.
There was no atmosphere in the Directors Box.
All sound seems to bypass it like there exists some type of gravitational field that removes the concept of enjoyment from this miserable bunch of numero-judicial autistic types.
"The Fields of Athenry" rang out around the stadium.
I joined in.
Then I realised that nobody within twenty metres of me was singing along.
My volume fell away exponentially.
Characterless environment.
Dermot Desmond has one very good point in his favour.
He was born in Co. Cork.
It all went downhill from there on.
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 18 July 2008
Shinawatra Burying Crystals At Manchester City! #
Heraclitus asserted that most human beings live in a sleep and a false
dream of the world, in constant disharmony.
Enter, stage left, His Excellency, Doctor Thaksin Shinawatra, lover of
the poor, an ethical beacon for all lesser mortals.
The situation at Manchester City is becoming a soap opera. We all
understand that everything is going to end in tears but we are unable
to tear ourselves away from the climax of the plot.
Just how crazy are the levels to which His Excellency might stoop?
Think Feng Shui, and you will be in the right area (see below).
Having lost the support of a good number of Manchester City fans
following his disgraceful treatment of Sven Goran Eriksson, His
Excellency is working hard to regain their trust, which he so
foolishly threw away.
Noel Gallagher thinks His Excellency is "a bit of a nutcase" while we
think Cervantes sums up Shinawatra the best: "One minute, they looked
upon him to be in his senses, and the next, they thought he had lost
them all; so that they could not resolve what degree to assign him
between madness and sound judgement".
In this extensive post, we address three key areas relating to the
2008/09 brand of the English Premiership.
Firstly, we assess the weaknesses in the financing of the clubs in the
Premiership that are reliant on hyperowners, oligarchs and/or global
criminals for their fiscal foundations. We reveal which clubs are most
at risk of suffering in the current credit crunch climate, where no
banks are willing to lend to highly leveraged businesses. Nor, indeed,
anyone else.
Secondly, we focus specifically on Manchester City because our recent
privileged access to leaks from within the club and information from
our contact in Bangkok, reveal that His Excellency is going to be
keeping us very entertained over the coming months.
And, thirdly, we provide an intuitive overview of all Premiership
clubs for the coming season. As part of our new business Trade
Markets Data (TMD), we are establishing an Independent Ratings Agency
covering the transfer markets, the holistic financial stabilities of
the clubs and the fundamental parameters that determine the real
evaluations for both of these areas. Of course, TMD will be much more
than this but, now that I have got a top agent in place, we are
holding back on most of the finer details so that our market launch
will have even greater substance and impact.
In this third section of this post, we will provide a buy/sell rating
for all the Premiership teams, and this will be updated on the eve of
the new season when all the transfer and managerial activity has been
completed.
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
dream of the world, in constant disharmony.
Enter, stage left, His Excellency, Doctor Thaksin Shinawatra, lover of
the poor, an ethical beacon for all lesser mortals.
The situation at Manchester City is becoming a soap opera. We all
understand that everything is going to end in tears but we are unable
to tear ourselves away from the climax of the plot.
Just how crazy are the levels to which His Excellency might stoop?
Think Feng Shui, and you will be in the right area (see below).
Having lost the support of a good number of Manchester City fans
following his disgraceful treatment of Sven Goran Eriksson, His
Excellency is working hard to regain their trust, which he so
foolishly threw away.
Noel Gallagher thinks His Excellency is "a bit of a nutcase" while we
think Cervantes sums up Shinawatra the best: "One minute, they looked
upon him to be in his senses, and the next, they thought he had lost
them all; so that they could not resolve what degree to assign him
between madness and sound judgement".
In this extensive post, we address three key areas relating to the
2008/09 brand of the English Premiership.
Firstly, we assess the weaknesses in the financing of the clubs in the
Premiership that are reliant on hyperowners, oligarchs and/or global
criminals for their fiscal foundations. We reveal which clubs are most
at risk of suffering in the current credit crunch climate, where no
banks are willing to lend to highly leveraged businesses. Nor, indeed,
anyone else.
Secondly, we focus specifically on Manchester City because our recent
privileged access to leaks from within the club and information from
our contact in Bangkok, reveal that His Excellency is going to be
keeping us very entertained over the coming months.
And, thirdly, we provide an intuitive overview of all Premiership
clubs for the coming season. As part of our new business Trade
Markets Data (TMD), we are establishing an Independent Ratings Agency
covering the transfer markets, the holistic financial stabilities of
the clubs and the fundamental parameters that determine the real
evaluations for both of these areas. Of course, TMD will be much more
than this but, now that I have got a top agent in place, we are
holding back on most of the finer details so that our market launch
will have even greater substance and impact.
In this third section of this post, we will provide a buy/sell rating
for all the Premiership teams, and this will be updated on the eve of
the new season when all the transfer and managerial activity has been
completed.
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Sunday, 13 July 2008
What's Going On In The Transfer Markets? #
The Brand is Everything.
Nothing must effect negative images of The Brand.
But, The Brand is Murky.
And, sometimes, insiders speak out against The Murky Brand.
When this occurs, the media has no option but to report the Murkiness of The Brand.
So, to protect The Brand, all parties must work together to minimise the negative impact of this Murkiness.
And so, on the least active sporting weekend of the year - an armchair fan has the option of the Speedway World Cup, the World Matchplay Darts Championships (which both begin tomorrow), a couple of Brazilian football matches, a couple of meaningless races at The Curragh or the 4th Day of a lopsided Test Match - the media decides that the time is right to offer rare updates on two of the biggest recent examples of Brand Murkiness.
In Manchester, at least, I hear that it is also the first sunny day since the end of the Cold War, a meteorological event that further reduces any negative publicity actually being seen by the public at large.
So, step forward for their one day in the spotlight - the City of London police probe into the bungs affair and the illegal relegation of Sheffield United in season 2006/07, in order that the infinitesimally more powerful West Ham United (and their Russian and Icelandic backers) should retain their wrongful Premiership place.
In this post, we will fully assess each of these farcical fake realities.
We'll also demonstrate the mathematics of the bungs factor in the transfer markets.
And, just to make your life really really special, we'll take a swift trip around the European continent in order to show that Murkiness is Massive on the Mainland too.
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Nothing must effect negative images of The Brand.
But, The Brand is Murky.
And, sometimes, insiders speak out against The Murky Brand.
When this occurs, the media has no option but to report the Murkiness of The Brand.
So, to protect The Brand, all parties must work together to minimise the negative impact of this Murkiness.
And so, on the least active sporting weekend of the year - an armchair fan has the option of the Speedway World Cup, the World Matchplay Darts Championships (which both begin tomorrow), a couple of Brazilian football matches, a couple of meaningless races at The Curragh or the 4th Day of a lopsided Test Match - the media decides that the time is right to offer rare updates on two of the biggest recent examples of Brand Murkiness.
In Manchester, at least, I hear that it is also the first sunny day since the end of the Cold War, a meteorological event that further reduces any negative publicity actually being seen by the public at large.
So, step forward for their one day in the spotlight - the City of London police probe into the bungs affair and the illegal relegation of Sheffield United in season 2006/07, in order that the infinitesimally more powerful West Ham United (and their Russian and Icelandic backers) should retain their wrongful Premiership place.
In this post, we will fully assess each of these farcical fake realities.
We'll also demonstrate the mathematics of the bungs factor in the transfer markets.
And, just to make your life really really special, we'll take a swift trip around the European continent in order to show that Murkiness is Massive on the Mainland too.
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Saturday, 12 July 2008
The Knight Of The Woeful Figure #
"Many a man who went to bed well, has found himself dead in the morning when he awakes."
Mike Ashley is a latter day Don Quixote.
When Mike Ashley purchased Newcastle United for £134 million ($268 million), he could not have expected his investment to self-destruct as part of a total implosion of his dysfunctional business empire.
Mr Minimum Wage does not do self-enslavement on a financial level, although such a tactic is the one and only competitive advantage for his company, Sports Direct.
Over the last twelve months, the share price of Sports Direct has plummeted as Britain slides inexorably into recession. But the decline in value of Sports Direct is only partly accounted for by the overall declining market sentiment - fully 70% of the devaluation has been as a result of Ashley's inability to create a corporate culture that enjoys any degree of sustainability. The business model simply does not work.
Somebody so patently idiotic is only able to profit by enhanced psychopathy - a condition Ashley has in spades. For nature has denied him a gift for strategic thought, as it has denied him a gift for everything else.
Ashley has also performed his wonders at Newcastle. His whole reign has been characterised by a complete inability to plan ahead, a situation that he papers over by a determination to demonstate economies of truth, whenever his narcissistic self-promotional style falls flat, or when financial reality comes calling.
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Mike Ashley is a latter day Don Quixote.
When Mike Ashley purchased Newcastle United for £134 million ($268 million), he could not have expected his investment to self-destruct as part of a total implosion of his dysfunctional business empire.
Mr Minimum Wage does not do self-enslavement on a financial level, although such a tactic is the one and only competitive advantage for his company, Sports Direct.
Over the last twelve months, the share price of Sports Direct has plummeted as Britain slides inexorably into recession. But the decline in value of Sports Direct is only partly accounted for by the overall declining market sentiment - fully 70% of the devaluation has been as a result of Ashley's inability to create a corporate culture that enjoys any degree of sustainability. The business model simply does not work.
Somebody so patently idiotic is only able to profit by enhanced psychopathy - a condition Ashley has in spades. For nature has denied him a gift for strategic thought, as it has denied him a gift for everything else.
Ashley has also performed his wonders at Newcastle. His whole reign has been characterised by a complete inability to plan ahead, a situation that he papers over by a determination to demonstate economies of truth, whenever his narcissistic self-promotional style falls flat, or when financial reality comes calling.
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 10 July 2008
The Football Underworld - An Augmented Reality #
Ol' Big Ears is Back...
So it seems that England and Thailand are doing the mutually beneficial corruption thing - the English Premier League get Dr Thaksin Shinawatra to own a brand, and to offer inside knowledge regarding the underground Asian betting markets; Thailand get Peter Reid to manage their national team.
Do Thailand know what they are getting?
If not, the Thai FA should understand that they are offering a contract to a sub-standard manager with very close links to the British bookmaking industry.
Additionally, Reid's association with the Murdochracy will, no doubt, result in Sky showing heavily corrupted insider events featuring the Thailand team, akin to the current betting market scams involving the Australians. Can't wait...
Shinawatra is selling his nation short.
Again.
"Natural ignorance has been replaced by the organised spectacle of falsification" - Debord.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Over the years, I have had the good fortune to work with some highly talented and innovative individuals.
Unfortunately, none of them are involved in the football or betting industries.
No matter where you look, the sport is rotten with corruption, coercion, bribery, tax evasion, tax fraud, insider trading and other black market activities.
In this post, we highlight the illegal financial machinations of two Premiership managers, three British football agents, three firms of English bookmakers, three England players, fourteen Premiership referees, one Asian bookmaker, a couple of Russian oligarchs and one piss-poor poker player masquerading as a broker.
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
So it seems that England and Thailand are doing the mutually beneficial corruption thing - the English Premier League get Dr Thaksin Shinawatra to own a brand, and to offer inside knowledge regarding the underground Asian betting markets; Thailand get Peter Reid to manage their national team.
Do Thailand know what they are getting?
If not, the Thai FA should understand that they are offering a contract to a sub-standard manager with very close links to the British bookmaking industry.
Additionally, Reid's association with the Murdochracy will, no doubt, result in Sky showing heavily corrupted insider events featuring the Thailand team, akin to the current betting market scams involving the Australians. Can't wait...
Shinawatra is selling his nation short.
Again.
"Natural ignorance has been replaced by the organised spectacle of falsification" - Debord.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Over the years, I have had the good fortune to work with some highly talented and innovative individuals.
Unfortunately, none of them are involved in the football or betting industries.
No matter where you look, the sport is rotten with corruption, coercion, bribery, tax evasion, tax fraud, insider trading and other black market activities.
In this post, we highlight the illegal financial machinations of two Premiership managers, three British football agents, three firms of English bookmakers, three England players, fourteen Premiership referees, one Asian bookmaker, a couple of Russian oligarchs and one piss-poor poker player masquerading as a broker.
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Enhanced Sabermetrics For Euro 2008 - The Ultimate Squad #
When mainstream media journalists put together their versions of the Team/Squad of the Tournament for events like Euro 2008, no account is taken of the institutional biases or the usage of Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs) in the competitions.
Nor are oligarch or criminalised bookmaker influences incorporated into the assessments.
In the Real World, who should be in the Ultimate Squad for Euro 2008?
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Nor are oligarch or criminalised bookmaker influences incorporated into the assessments.
In the Real World, who should be in the Ultimate Squad for Euro 2008?
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
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