Allegedly, Howard Webb is the best referee in England, although it would prove difficult to prove such a defence in a court of law.
Over the last twelve months, Webb has been sent home early from Euro 2008 after he erroneously gave Austria a fake penalty in injury time against Poland, he decided both the Premier League title race and the relegation of Newcastle, once again via incorrect interpretations of the rules, and, as a cake-icing, he managed to get two key decisions and a reading of the regulations wrong in yet another injury time chaos in the Confederations Cup match between Brazil and Egypt.
Yet, Keith Hackett of the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) saw fit to give Webb 34 matches last season. Of these events, fully 24 games were live televised matches, 19 of which were on the BSkyB platform.
That is, in every other round of matches, Webb was given a high profile Sky match to officiate.
And these matches were most definitely high profile...
Liverpool v Manchester United, Chelsea v Liverpool, Arsenal v Manchester United, Arsenal v Liverpool, Manchester United v Chelsea and Liverpool v Arsenal meaning that Webb officiated at 50% of the Big 4 clashes.
Oh, and he was given the FA Cup Final as well.
Now if the PGMOB were a meritocracy, how could such a template be justified?
What would have happened in the title race if Webb had not given Manchester a fictitious penalty at 0-2 versus Spurs?
What would have happened if PC Webb had not falsely cancelled out the Newcastle "equaliser" against Fulham on the penultimate weekend?
But the man is certainly powerful as the regulations are altered based on his professional indiscretions.
After he gave Brazil a corner in the Confed Cup match, he was informed of the reality via the 4th Official who was viewing events on a tv monitor. He consequently sent off the Egyptian defender and gave Brazil a match-winning penalty.
After the North Africans protested, Webb pretended that it was an Assistant Referee who had informed him of his error, a position that was rather undermined by FIFA's removal of pitchside monitors in the aftermath of this latest web of deceit.
There are other factors relating to our Yorkshire bobby too.
We have posted before about racist biases in his match decision selection - his last 15 sendings off in matches involving Premier League teams in the last three seasons has seen only two white British players dismissed.
Meanwhile, one Black player alone, Emmanuel Adebayor, has seen red twice at the hands of Plod.
Webb also has the most profound Bias Ratio of any PGMOB match official.
One particular team benefits massively from Plod's input - #####################
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Webb also demonstrates other match bias matrices not entirely surprising in a policeperson.
Obviously, it must go without being said, that all such biases are unconscious.
Webb isn't racist, he isn't biased, he isn't ############, he is simply our best referee.
But, what about Plod's links to ################ then?
Why would our leading match referee have statistically significant links with ####
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But apparently, Webb isn't a market manipulator either - such sigmatic statistics prove nothing in ScudamoreWorld.
Even if Plod is none of these things, a fact that we would be willing to contest in a court of law, he is absolutely not the best referee in the country OR the whole PGMOB roster needs to be overhauled so that talent rises to the surface rather than those suitably connected.
Meanwhile, in Turkey, the Turkish Football Federation (TTF) has banned referee Halil Ibrahim Dincdag for the "crime" of being Homosexual, after the ref outed himself on television.
The TTF dug around to find an argument to revoke Dincdag's licence: since he was exempt from military service due to his Homosexuality, thus falling into the army's classification of "unfit", the federation said he would be physically unfit for a refereeing job as well. Dincdaq has also been retired from a radio show that he used to host in Trabzon and is now in hiding in Istanbul.
Being a bit of a hero, Dincdag intends fighting his case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.
And it probably will be so.
"While an openly homosexual mayor is running Paris, [in Turkey] we are still at the point of discussing whether a homosexual can run a football match," grumbled Murat Soylemez, Dincdag's lawyer.
"While openly talented referees officiate in the lower English leagues, [in England] we are still at the point of discussing whether a racist, ########################, biased, professionally compromised policeman can run a football match," grumbled the Plain People of England.
Its Queer Up North.
Qualitatively Queer At Least.
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