The Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) reluctantly allows twenty match referees to be on their roster, after two referees appealed against their careers being curtailed prior to the start of the season.
To date, only 18 of these officials have been selected due to Clattenburg's financial affairs and Uriah Rennie's skin colour.
In Serie A, 31 referees have been used in the current season, with no one referee having officiated at more than six matches.
Following this next weekend, Howard Webb will have had 17 appointments (including 4th Official slots) in 13 rounds of Premiership games, and twelve of these events have been the high profile live Sky/Setanta events.
For each of the last two seasons, Mr Webb has finished in penultimate position in our Bum Ref Index, and he was sent home early from Euro 2008 for enforcing an unenforceable rule of the game.
With Premiership managers threatening to go on strike over the dreadful standard of the refereeing in the league, it is worth reflecting on why such a small, and largely inept, group are allowed to officiate in the world's biggest league.
When some games are grossing £1 billion pre-match betting liquidity in Asia, having such a structure with so few refs and a high bias in who gets selected for what, is a template seemingly established to be problematical in the integrity department.
Do the mathematics...
The televised matches are the biggest turnover events and, when one assesses the PGMOB selection of referees for these matches, the situation becomes even more perilous.
Only 12 referees ################################################ have been given these appointments, and even within this inner group of the Select Group, there is a hierarchy.
So, Howard Webb has refereed eight of the 47 live events to date, and Mike Dean, who was banned just a couple of years ago for his links to online gambling site, Arbitros Racing, has been given 7 matches.
Riley with 6, Bennett and Wiley with 5 games apiece, Mickey Mouse Atkinson 4 and Dowd 3, suddenly, we are able to see that out of these 47 high turnover live matches, just 7 officials have controlled 38 of these events.
Over 80% of the biggest betting matches are officiated by just 7 officials.
We are not saying in this place that any of these officials are corrupt, although we outline a rather disturbing linkage between one official and one manager below, but why such a structure?
If Premiership managers are threatening to down tools, professional traders are regarding the selection of the particular match officials as of paramount importance in analysing a particular market and when fans are actually discussing the potentially illegal machinations that are determining the outcomes of the matches that they are paying their hard-earned cash to witness, this infrastructure has become invalid.
If I represented a corrupt body that wished to contort hyperrealities in the English Premiership for proprietary gain, I would be desirous of as small a grouping of senior match officials as possible.
After all, how would I go about gaming a pool of 100 officials?
Other territories are significantly more open about the Reality of corruption.
Dynamo Kyiv versus Shakhtar Donetsk games use officials from a different country, La Gazzetta dello Sport analyses referee selections at headline level, etc etc.
Even in Scotland, with its two-tiered bias to Rangers over Celtic, and bias to the Auld Firm over everybody else, there is a momentum to be facing up to the impact of these machinations.
Although it should be added, there appears to be a risk of a distortion of Reality here.
Graham Roberts has just published a book claiming bias in favour of the Auld Firm but he neatly avoids any differentiation between the two Glasgow giants with, if anything, a suggestion that Celtic receive a rub of the green more than 'Gers.
Yeah right...
In a similar manner that calciopoli targeted Juventus, leading to the loss of players, Champions League income and demotion, while equally guilty Milan laughed all the way to the bank despite being more culpable in the match machination department, there is a concern that any evaluation of the bias north of the border will be similarly non-discriminating or selective.
Roberts' suggestion of using foreign referees (not English, please) for the major Rangers v Celtic events surely makes sense though.
There are a couple of other points that need to be made regarding the selection of referees in the English Premiership.
Firstly, there are frequent changes of match official pre-match.
Over the last two seasons and to date for 2008/09, there have been 30 changes of referee in the Premiership.
In 15 years of data for Serie A, Bundesliga and La Liga combined, there have been less than a handful of such alterations.
These changes distort markets and we have evidence that the adjustment process is being gamed by those in possession of the information early. This is both insider trading and market manipulation.
In one weekend, earlier this season, there were 14 changes in the Select Group selections (refs, linesmen, 4th officials) prior to the off.
14??!!
I know its grim living in this island but is there some epidemic that we should be aware of here?
Secondly, why aren't the marks that managers give to officials made public?
Then referees and other officials might be selected meritocratically.
This is such an obvious barrier against corruption that it is ludicrous that the PGMOB doesn't implement it.
It has reached the stage where the managers have had enough. Apart from the threatened strike action, Roy Keane gave Mickey Mouse a 10/10 after three incorrect goals were given to Chelsea in a recent 'game'.
The outcome? A disrepute charge!
Hackett doesn't do Humour.
And, so to the final part of our post, where we demonstrate a rather disturbing pattern between one match referee and one Premiership manager.
We will call them Mr X and Mr Y.
Listed below are the most recent events where Mr X and Mr Y have been in cahoots, or not...
You decide...
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A few final points.
Why are these patterns not spotted within the PGMOB?
Why has Mr X been given 8 of Mr Y's games in one and a third seasons?
The average should be 2 games per season, even in a tilted environment like the Premiership.
As Alex Ferguson said about the retirement of Graham Poll: "He'd better get out before he stopped smiling."
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
