So, who is correct?
Rafa Benítez or Arsène Wenger, Sir Ferguson, and virtually every market analyst on planet Earth?
Does the Premier League (PL) allow for the Fixture List to be manipulated in favour of certain entities?
You might as well ask whether the pope is a catholic?
Football is Fixed say the Fixture List is Fixed!
Football DataCo are the faceless ScudamoreWorld quango that controls the template fondly known as the Premiership Fixture List. This secretive organisation are on a bit of an earner. Through enforcing a licensing arrangement on all media, Football DataCo earn a tidy sum when any newspaper, television channel, pools company or website wishes to print the Premiership Fixture List.
For a newspaper to print the full Premiership schedule currently costs £3931 (prior to VAT), for example.
Woe betide any transgressors!! The legal threats are immediate and heavy-handed - you should expect a lawsuit to be filed as Organismos Prognostikon Agonon Pododfairou found out in Greece.
Football DataCo are wholly owned by the PL and the Football League, although they provide services to the Scottish Premier League and the Scottish League also.
The monies raised are returned to the clubs from the participant leagues.
But, the most important point here is that the PL, in effect, arrange the Premiership Fixture List.
This post is to be divided into four sections.
Firstly, we will provide an overview of the Fixture List manipulation in the Premiership.
Secondly, we'll reveal the Real Premiership table as it would stand this morning without inappropriate externalities.
Thirdly, we intend to dissect parts of Rafa's Keeganesque rant.
And, finally, we'll make up some randomised conclusion.
Serie A, La Primera Liga, Bundesliga, Le Championnat etc etc, all of the top European football leagues use a far more balanced and meritocratic template than that employed in ScudamoreWorld.
In the first half of the season, everybody plays everybody else once, and then, for the second half of the season, the Fixture List is simply inverted.
Furthermore, the institutional incentive in these leagues is to guarantee the Champions League participants as many days as possible to prepare for and recover from European adventures. There is never an instance of, say, Milan being in Kyiv on Wednesday evening and expected to travel to Reggio di Calabria for a lunchtime (or afternoon, for the matter) match just three days later.
Despite this more authentic template, shenanigans still occur, particularly in Spain (each team that Real Madrid meet this season has played Barcelona in the previous match, for example), but in no major territory is the situation as outrageous as it is in the Premiership.
In the first half of this season, there have been 6 Champions League breaks and 4 International breaks. In the matches following these breaks, Manchester United have been away from home on 9 occasions, Arsenal on 8, Chelsea 4 and Liverpool 2.
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Furthermore, the gap in days is critical too. The magic number is three - when there is only a three day gap between the European match and the following league game, this is a major disadvantage to the Champions League outfit.
This season, Arsenal have had 3 three-day gaps, Manchester United have had two, and, surprise surprise, both Liverpool and Chelsea have had none.
Put together these two data sets are key. They represent two separate tiltings of the Premiership title race IN FAVOUR of Liverpool and Chelsea, and AGAINST Manchester United and Arsenal.
Who makes these decisions?
It is interesting to add our tabulations of the 'biases' of the PGMOB match officials to this knowledge. We employ a grouping of people to monitor all of the top tier matches in the territories where we trade. These juniors assess the impact of the impacts of the PGMOB officials on the match outcomes in the Premiership.
Our traders then create an index based on these figures - 100 = total manipulation in favour of a team and 0 = total manipulation against.
The figures for the Big 4 this season are as follows:
Liverpool 75
Chelsea 47
Manchester United 35
Arsenal 18
What is Rafa moaning about?
His team are being given a serious handicap start in the Premiership title race here via these three unmeritocratic advantages.
So, what do the manipulations by the match officials alone mean for the Premiership table?
This is how the table would appear this morning with the erroneous PGMOB input removed from the match outcomes. We understand that this is an approximation. For example, Liverpool were held 2-2 at home by Hull City, yet both Liverpool's goals were preceded by fouls. We have to make a guesstimation as to the likely impact of the match having been 0-2 at Half-Time etc etc. But, despite these limitations, these tabulations are considerably more authentic than those offered by ScudamoreWorld.
1. Chelsea 20 - 44
2. Man Utd 18 - 39
3. Arsenal 20 - 39
4. Liverpool 20 - 36
5. Everton 20 - 36
Liverpool are 9 points better off in ScudamoreWorld, and could end up 6 points clear in the fake entity by tomorrow evening.
Its not Real, is it?
The manipulations spread further down the table.
All market analysts who have the good fortune to work in horserace markets understand a handicapped market when they see one. And that is what the ScudamoreWorld 2008/09 tournament is, a handicap.
All this stuff and nonsense about how exciting the bottom of the table is, in that only 10 points cover 7th to 20th positions, is just a pack of lies. The Real differential between 7th and 20th position is 20 points.
Additionally, the biases have been too obvious, particularly in favour of the promoted trio - Mr Scudamore should simply resort to applying weights to the top teams, and then we can enjoy the handicap race without PGMOB contortions...
Although the biases have been heavily in favour of Liverpool and, to a lesser extent, Chelsea this season, this is just one fake year. Despite that proviso, the PGMOB favouritism hierarchy in 2007/08 also featured Chelsea and Liverpool as the chosen ones.
So lets have a look at what Mr Benítez had to say yesterday against this backcloth of Reality/hyperreality (you take your choice).
"Two years ago we were playing a lot of early kick-offs away on Saturdays when United were playing on Sundays. And we didn't say anything [not true: Rafa complained bitterly about having to endure tricky matches soon after Champions League games in 2006/07]. Now he [Ferguson] is complaining about everything, that everybody is against United. But the second half of the season will see them playing at home against all the teams at the top of the table. It is a fantastic advantage [just as, presumably, it was a massive advantage for United's challengers that United were away in all three fixtures in the first half of the season - this isn't the Champions League, the second match is not dependent on the first and there is no extra time advantage].
"But at Christmas, United played on the 29th and the rest of the teams played on the 28th. We were away against Newcastle two days after playing Bolton. They were playing about 40 hours later, they were not complaining then [rubbish logic Rafa! Liverpool playing Newcastle when both teams had two days rest is a major advantage to Liverpool due to the size of their squad. Meanwhile, Man Utd had no advantage over Boro who also enjoyed a three day break]."
So there! It almost makes you want to go into the Lounge Bar in Southport and create a disturbance.
Ferguson: "They tell me its not planned. I've got my doubts. I'm not saying what they do down there, but next year we will be sending someone to see how it happens, I can assure you."
ScudamoreWorld spokesperson: "The PL fixtures are put together through as random a process as possible... but the overriding factor is luck of the draw."
This ScudamoreWorld statement is ###############################################
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We need to look further into this matter because, underneath, this is not only an issue of two teams gaining an unfair competitive advantage over their two primary opponents in the last two seasons.
There is another collective body who desire the performances of favourites to be problematical. This is, of course, the bookmaking fraternity. Favourites are overbet by the mass body of leisure punters. This is superb for the bookies when they are getting Arsenal turned over, for example, but is not so cool when they are having to pay out to mugs on yet another Man Utd victory.
The various matters mentioned above all have the murky influence of bookmaking in their structure somewhere.
It is our belief that bookmakers (and we are not just talking the manipulations of the Murdochracy here) have a major influence on the Premiership Fixture List. Indeed, I remember having conversations with a leading Asian broker on this very matter fully 12 years ago!
For starters, the bookmakers cannot abide either the England international team overachieving or the Champions League participants progressing too far. The markets on these type of events are very imbalanced due to the impact of the patriotic pound, and last season's Champions League was a dire scenario for the layers when assessed holistically.
Check back through recent years and see how many of the matches between the Big 4 in England have occurred adjacent to a Champions League game. This structure has been utilised ad nauseum.
And it works. If Chelsea and Arsenal are meeting at the weekend after significant Champions League matches, a motivational decision has to be made regarding priorities. Of course, this tactic further randomises the integrity of the Premiership but this is of no concern to the bookmakers.
Similarly, the handicapping of the Premiership this season works hugely to the advantage of the Fat Wallets. The bookies got hammered on Derby County's pitifulness last season, and the compressing of this years' title race has the added benefit that the form book is hyperreal - only keen observers who are willing to maintain their own records are able to assess the true natures of the fundamentals.
The Premier League has too much power spread among too few hands.
Football DataCo works with bookmakers when putting together the Fixture List.
Football DataCo, willingly or not, tilts the Fixture List to the advantage of certain teams.
The match decisions of the PGMOB match officials are also tilted and, bizarrely, in a positively correlated manner with respect to the machinations of Football DataCo.
The PGMOB do not report to the FA, only to the Premier League.
As Graham Poll says: "It is the only country in the world where you [the referee] are not working for the national federation... They're not reporting to the right body."
It is rare to agree with Mr Poll.
Manchester United are correct to be sending down their club lawyer, Maurice Watkins, to monitor the allegedly randomised/luck of the draw event for next season.
And these manipulations, deliberate or not, have serious financial implications.
Tom Hicks and George Gillett have been given six months grace to repay their £350.5 million loan to the Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia. If they are forced to rollover the debt again in the summer, they will be charged a huge penalty fee. Winning the Premiership this year would certainly help solve their financial mess.
Obviously not linked in any manner whatsoever to the above, but it is good to report that Luciano Moggi (a sort of Italian ############################) was sentenced to eighteen months in jail for his role in match fixing and the appropriate selection of referees for Italian Serie A games in the calciopoli scandal.
But it is bad to report that the sneaky little shit will not be incarcerated as his sentence fell within one of Italy's amnesty windows, those wonderful legal statute of limitations required to keep the hairplanted one out of the nick.
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