The Great Pretence of ScudamoreWorld suggests that footballing finances are sustainable into the future.
The Fake Reality of ScudamoreWorld not only avoids contrarian Realities within the English game, but fails to take account of the holistic nature of the onset of a global Depression.
The Hyperreality of ScudamoreWorld has only one strategic route ahead to balance the books - the simulacrum of football becoming a gambling sport.
All of the talking heads and the smiley faces are hiding a great lie - the selling out of English football to the bookmaking fraternity.
The people that the fan depends on to share the hyperrealities at large are a part of this lie, just as much so as if they were perpetrating the scams themselves.
"Don't rock the boat, we've all got our fingers in the till to some extent, we are each earning a derivative retainer for staying quiet and trading the inside information."
In the game, it is an accepted wisdom that this is taking place, all insiders have their own particular favourite anecdote relating to the criminalisation of match outcomes to the benefit of insider traders, the layers or, more generally, both parties.
The general attitude is one of shared ownership of the criminality, being in on a societal scam.
It enables the insignificant to develop a feeling of self-importance.
The unsustainability of the English game is perfectly evident to any observer.
* £3 billion worth of collected debts.
* The Big 2 have fully half of this debt on their books.
* Chelsea will have just eighteen months to repay Mr Abramovich his £700 million investment should the Great Man decide to return to the cornering of energy markets in Russia. Paper losses of 60% of the Great Man's assets have resulted in the sacking of 15 coaches and Scolari being told that he must sell before he is able to buy in the January transfer window.
* West Ham United are £40 million in debt, and may face a further £50 million of costs over their illegalities regarding the Premier League, Carlos Tevez and the rules of the game relating to 3rd Party Transfers (in that such rules may be said to exist). Keith Harris keeps informing us that the club is a going concern despite administration rulings starting to take force against the club this week. Apparently, because the club is structured in a financially complex manner, some of these debts will be able to be avoided, initially at least. Financial sleight of hand is a core competency in the fake ScudamoreWorld.
* Arkadi Gaydamak received just 3.5% of the vote in the election to become mayor of Jerusalem - most of these votes came from Palestinians and were based not on his politics but on the fact that he doesn't look Jewish, apparently.
Having liquidated many of his assets in order to bankroll this campaign, the man is now increasingly desperate to get shut of Portsmouth FC, the foreign asset that he cannot be seen to own, as it would be yet another Reality that would expose the myth of legality surrounding ScudamoreWorld. Pompey are non-sustainable. Redknapp's idiotic transfer policies, a systemic gambling culture, £32 million of debts, wages representing 90% of turnover and a financially compromised and fake owner is suggestive of a close race between West Ham and Portsmouth to see which club first shows the non-strategic nature of ScudamoreWorld via bankruptcy.
* Keith Harris of Seymour Pierce investment boutique has a great job. There is no chance in him being successful and yet he gets paid handsomely for this utter lack of progress. Mr Harris is trying to find buyers for, among others, Newcastle United, West Ham, Portsmouth, Charlton Athletic and Everton.
No chance.
These clubs are toxic assets to be avoided or a better price may be engendered by delaying purchase.
Just how many of those 8 bids for Mike Ashley's House of Cards turned out to be Real?
Mr Harris is simply being paid for creating believable hyperreal scenarios that provide the public pretence that everything is okay in the game - a diamond dealers cartel, a Far East bookmaking organisation, a very serious proposition from Lagos businessmen and other such nonsenses.
These clubs will not be sold.
Some of these clubs will cease to exist.
We are in the middle of a twenty year secular bear market - stock market evaluations are no different now than they were 11 years ago, these clubs are distressed assets.
* Attendances in the Premiership are falling. The largest drop of 10% is at Newcastle United and only three clubs have seen a season-on-season rise in people paying to watch the gambles unfold - Bolton, Manchester City and Middlesboro.
A Premier League spokesperson spins this Reality out as: "Some figures are up, and some are down" when a more accurate reflection would be three teams have improved attendances while 17 are showing a decline.
Together with Sky and the disguise of the fall-off in satellite subscriptions, these twin revenue streams are going to severely undermine the fake structure of ScudamoreWorld.
* Gaydamak, Shinawatra, Abramovich, Mansion88, SBOBet, AIG, Mike Ashley, Abu Dhabi United, Hicks and Gillett, just how bad does an entity need to be to fall foul of the Premier League's fit-and-proper-person's test (FPPT)? Or the non-existent rules relating to the efficacy of a club sponsor?
In ScudamoreWorld, there is no public justification for the psychopathic structures.
Just business as usual with no checks nor balances.
Of course, ScudamoreWorld is allowed to continue due to the compliance of the corporate media. There is simply no dynamic within the game to prevent the full takeover of football by the betting industry.
None.
In other territories, concerns are aired in the media and inappropriates are forced to justify their strategies.
In Italy, falling attendances and corrupt referees are seen as part of the same problem, hence calciopoli, the fraudulent assessment of current match officials and a genuine horror at the number of empty seats at the Roma derby last weekend.
In Spain, there are six Spanish teams in administration, including Celta Vigo and Real Sociedad, who were both only recently in the Champions League. Spanish clubs owe over £500 million to the tax authorities alone, and the total debt comes in at a very English £2.5 billion.
Angel Barajas, an economist, states: "I'm really afraid about football because the situation is not sustainable in the medium term."
Javier Tebas, the vice-president of the Spanish Football League is "very worried" about the financial situation, while Jaime Lissavetzky, the Spanish Secretary of State for Sport is concerned that "...if [insolvency rules] continue to be abused as a stop-gap measure, and expenses aren't brought under control, you could call it a complicated moment."
Very complicated...
Even Joan Laporta, a man not renowned for his prescience, at Barcelona recognises that "attendance at the stadium is down from last year due to the global financial crisis."
But ScudamoreWorld think that debt is a good thing.
ScudamoreWorld understand that, when all the distressed assets and dodgy deals are totalised together, the only route out of the morass will be gambling money.
This is why Scudamore himself cosied up so closely to ########################
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Prior to the last round of betting events in the Premiership, referees were under pressure as managers were threatening strike action over the dire quality of the officiating in England's top league.
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Not ScudamoreWorld.
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There's nothing like meritocracy and this is nothing like meritocracy.
Two Premiership matches experienced that peculiarly PGMOB tactic of a late change of referee. Both of these matches were heavy gambling events (Man United v Stoke City and Blackburn v Sunderland).
What were the reasons behind these adjustments?
Illness evidently wasn't the issue for Mr Walton as he was moved from the Blackburn game to Old Trafford. If Mike Halsey, the original ref for the United game, was unavailable or otherwise indisposed, why didn't the PGMOB just change that one referee? Why the delay and the serious impact on the betting markets, obviously with the usual insider trading on the new hyperreality before the changes had been made public?
The outcomes of seven of the last round of Premiership matches were affected by gambling money. Some of this was rogue operators, some of it systemic, some of it cartelised and some solo and proprietary, but all of it was criminal and a damning indictment of the state of play in ScudamoreWorld.
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Colin Calderwood on referees: "They are the rulers of the game."
David Moyes on the FA, the PGMOB and referees: "They are a law unto themselves, aren't they? They make their own rules, they bring their own people in on the panels and make their own decisions, so it is very difficult... We are finding that their [the FA's] rules are very hard for people in the game to respect."
Still, it is good to see that the inappropriate linkages of match officials is not only a ScudamoreWorld issue.
Former leading UEFA official, Ľuboš Micheľ, the man who refereed the Champions League Final in Moscow last year between Champions of England/ Champions of Europe and Chelsea, has accepted a new role in the game post-retirement. He has taken the post of Director of International Competitions at Ukrainian club, Shakhtar Donetsk!
Wasn't this the man's unwritten job title anyway?
Rampant and systemic criminality set against the backdrop of a global Depression.
Instead of hiding in his burrow, trying to find some chameleonesque ordering of words that might explain his support of Thaksin Shinawatra or his dichotomous reactions to the truth in relation to West Ham and Carlos Tevez, Richard Scudamore needs to explain to all fans how he sees that this medium is sustainable without the input of gambling money.
For, as Charlemagne states in the Economist, in reference to the euro rather than ScudamoreWorld, but the scenario analysis is the same: "The euro's defenders are convinced that the currency will still be there at the end of the crisis. That is a reasonable bet. But public support for the euro may still be painfully tested as economies deteriorate. Over-high expectations cannot help. Calling the euro a haven from the storm is not just economic nonsense. It is political bad sense, since nobody is going to be sheltered from this deluge."
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