Back in the good old days, before the commencement of the Barclays Premier League Asia Trophy, we produced a post on July 21st entitled "How The Rules Corrupt The Laws" (http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-rules-corrupt-laws.html).
In the article, we suggested how the Laws of the Game are being contorted by the fake implementation of New Rules that allow too much control to the match officials, particularly the Referee and the 4th Official.
The post prompted a response from subscriber Patrick Morrissey who is Life Vice President of AFA/Lonsar (Amateur Football Alliance/ London Society of Association Referees).
Quoting...
"Thank you for your latest missive. I agree entirely with your point about the interpretation of Laws. It applies particularly to the IFAB interpretation of the Offside Law that has made it so complex that few understand it, and more wrong decisions are being made.
You will have to forgive me as I do not know the Paul Gardner that you quote regarding the Laws of the Game.
But he is way out of date.
The change in Law you refer to concerning making contact with an opponent before the ball was made over a year ago in the Laws for 2008/9 season.
I wrote an article for the 'Argus' - the magazine of the AFA/Lonsar - for the November 2008 edition, covering the same issue. I am attaching a copy for your information (and use if you wish)."
The entire post by Patrick is printed below as it provides a very clear statement regarding the state of the Laws of the Game when under repeated attack from incremental real-time regulatory slants.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Is tackling now an 'offence' under Laws of Game 2008/9?
I wonder if you have read the Laws of the Game 2008/2009? This is a new presentation of the Laws, previously known as 'Laws of Association Football - Guide for Players and Referees'. The new Preface states that the overall wording and structure has been revised to "consolidate and reorganise the content for the sake of consistency, simplification and clarification".
Invariably, when lawmakers use these terms to describe their work, the result is something longer and more confusing. And this is no exception. We now have 133 pages of text and illustrations compared with 116 last year, even after cutting Offside illustration pages from 13 to 7 and removing all 10 of the pages illustrating incidents relating to 'Denying a goal scoring opportunity'.
The Preface says there is only one Law amendment "of substance" from the 2007/8 edition, and this appears to be about the logos to be used on footballs. Hardly earth shattering stuff! And there might seem little reason to bother reading the whole book again!
However, the section in last year's LOAF headed "Additional Instructions for Referees, Assistant Referees and Fourth Officials" has been replaced by "Interpretation of the Laws of the Game and Guidelines for Referees". And the application of the contents of this section is now "a compulsory requirement". So perhaps referees had better read it!
The Preface also says "certain principles that were previously implicitly understood throughout the game but did not explicitly feature in the Laws of the Game have been included in this new edition for completeness". But unfortunately the lawmakers do not tell us what these changes are! Even more reason then to read it all and find out what has changed!
So what do referees need to know about the changes?
Here are some of the changes (and non-changes) that I found:-
1. Law 12 - Fouls and Misconduct - (i) In the 2007/8 LOAF, a direct free kick was to be awarded to the opposing team if a player "tackles an opponent to gain possession of the ball, making contact with the opponent before touching the ball".
In the 2008/9 Laws 'tackles an opponent' is now listed as one of the direct free kick offences. Like the other offences (kicks, trips, jumps at, charges, strikes, pushes) it is only to be penalised if "considered by the referee to be careless, reckless or using excessive force".
The significant change here is that "tackling" now joins the other negative penal offences, as opposed to being an important positive skill and technique in the game. Are the lawmakers signalling that tackling is to be phased out of the game?
The lawmakers did the same thing with "charging" some years ago. And there have followed years of confusion about what is a fair charge - is it just shoulder to shoulder, or can you use any part of the body apart from arms and elbows to "challenge for space within playing distance of the ball " as the Guidelines now suggest?
Incidentally, Steve Bennett, the Premier League referee and our guest at the last Society Meeting, might be upset to discover that the Law on 'denying an obvious goal-scoring opportunity' does not state that the player fouled has to be in possession of the ball. I trust he has rechecked the Law following the debate at our meeting!
2. Law 4 - Players' Equipment for the first time states that "The two teams must wear colours that distinguish them from each other and also the referee and the assistant referees". You would think this might have been in the Laws before! And why the word 'colours'? Surely shirt or jersey would be more appropriate?
3. Law 1 - The Field of Play now includes the optional marks off the field of play 9.15 m (10 yds) from the corner arc on both the Goal Line and Touch Line. And all lines must now be of the same width (not more than 12 cm or 5 ins.).
4. Law 5 - The Referee - Decisions - the referee may now change a decision on the advice of an assistant referee OR the 4th Official.
5. Law 6 - The Assistant Referee - the wording has changed as to when Assistants can indicate offences, from - "whenever the assistants are closer to the action than the referee" to "whenever assistant referees have a better view than the referee".
And at penalty kicks, from - "whether the goalkeeper has moved forward before the ball has been kicked" to - "whether the goalkeeper moves off the goal line before....".
I note the Guidelines still state that the assistant should signal if the goalkeeper blatantly (my italics) moves off the goal line before the ball is kicked and a goal is not scored at a penalty. Why should it be 'blatant' before being penalised? The law is quite clear. Would you allow a long throw expert to go over the touchline when taking a throw-in? I don't think so. We must be consistent in respecting the lines.
6. Law 11 - Offside - my concern here is not with any changes, but that the wording stays in the same confused state as in the 2007/8 LOAF.
(i) The description of when a player in an offside position should be penalised continues to be inaccurate. A literal interpretation of the wording would suggest that to be penalised the offside player has to be interfering with play or an opponent or gaining an advantage at the moment that the ball touches or is played by one of his team. In practice, most situations develop in a phase of play after the ball has been touched or played.
The Lawmakers current opinion on offside would be better expressed as -
"A player in an offside position is only penalised if, from the moment the ball touches or is played by one of his team, he becomes in the same phase of play , in the opinion of the referee, actively involved by:.............."
[It's clumsy - but this is the result of lawmakers introducing concepts like "phases of play" and "involved in active play" and tampering with areas previously left to the referee's interpretation of interfering or gaining advantage.]
(ii) And the same criticism applies to the Guidelines on Offside which continue to seek to so tightly define elements of the Law that it has become almost impossible to implement correctly - as demonstrated by the increased number of errors by even our top Premiership Assistants.
For instance - "nearer to his opponent's goal line" in offside means that any part of the player's head, body or feet is nearer to his opponent's goal line than both the ball and the second last opponent. (The arms are not included in this definition.)
One has to assume that the same head, body or feet criteria apply to the second last defender.
Can we reasonably expect any assistant to determine at a distance up to 70+ yards whether at the moment the ball is last played that part of one attacker's foot was ahead or level with a defender's foot? And how are referees in grassroots football managing games without assistants supposed to work to such ridiculous criteria?
Surely it would make sense for the Laws of a worldwide game (that is 99.9% played without neutral assistants for offside) to be determined by the position of the player's shirt and upper body. If you judge or can see an attacking shirt colour in front of the defending shirt at the moment the ball is played, that should be enough.
(iii) The IFAB interpretations announced a few years ago as to what constitutes "interfering with play", "interfering with an opponent" and "gaining an advantage" continue to be unnecessarily restrictive. They are no part of the tradition or spirit of the game, and merely a 'goal-hanger's charter' for lazy forwards. They encourage attackers to stay goal side of defenders. And the result is defenders drop deeper, and we see less rather than more goals.
The overall result is more complexity and confusion. It is no wonder that Premiership Referees and Assistants are making so many mistakes. Players, managers, referees, and all lovers of the game should be united in their opposition to these interpretations. It is time they were changed.
Conclusion
Despite its increased pagination, and the continuing confusion of IFAB interpretations, The Laws of the Game 2008/2009 should be required reading and study by every referee. You need to understand it to referee your games. And even if you do not agree with everything in there, at least you are then in a better position to argue with it.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Excellent...
The integrity of the game depends on clarity of Laws.
Obfuscation, at a primary level, destroys the enjoyment of the spectacle but, at a deeper and more pertinent level, it allows outcomes to be fluid, providing far too much power to the match officials.
Particularly when we are dealing with billion pound betting markets linked to those very outcomes.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 31 July 2009
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Bhoy Oh Boy! #
Well, we warned you...
Allow your club to be quasi-owned by #####################################, with a ######################################## businessman as chief executive, an extraordinary renditioning self-interested warmonger as chairperson, an inept manager whose former team, in Reality, would have finished trailed off at the bottom of last years' Premier League had it not been for the handicapping of the competition, and a club agent who combines professional deficiencies with rather too much interest in the betting markets, and this is what you get...
Celtic 0 Dinamo Moskva 1.
In 31 home games over seven seasons, only Barcelona have won at Parkhead until last night - Juventus, Bayern Munchen, Milan, Manchester United, Lyon, Valencia, Barcelona and Liverpool have all failed (sometimes more than once) - but the defeat didn't just appear out of the blue.
In this post, we list the organisational and individual irregularities and shortcomings that have resulted in another £10 million or so disappearing down the drain of the Desmondocracy.
It wasn't just the defeat last night.
It was the manner of the defeat.
The team selection was curious, the substitutions pre-programmed, the tactics were wrong throughout the match, while the decision to turn down television money in order to railroad fans down to the stadium was unusual, to say the least - the Celtic match was the only Champions League 3rd Qualifying Round Tie whose tv rights remained unsold.
The planning was tawdry.
The Dinamo match was the most important match in the window.
The timetabling of entry into the ludicrous Wembley Cup was short-termist money-grabbing.
The team needed to be match fit for the Dinamo tie and, for several reasons, they weren't.
Having your entire squad play 90 minutes on either the Friday and Sunday prior to the match while spending four days away from home in a hotel!
Not even getting a competitive match out of the charade, Al-Ahly were poor and Tottenham were betting ######################################################
################################################################# - witness the Spurs turnaround victory against West Ham in Beijing yesterday!!
Furthermore, these fake results and the fake trophy gave the squad an undeserved boost to their feelgood factors, introducing a complacency into the psychological build-up!!!
The summer transfers are entirely uninspiring - that is the problem with utilising an inadequate club agent.
The manner in which Lennon nutmegged Danny Fox at Wembley showed why Coventry fans were delighted with the transfer fee, while Marc-Antoine Fortune is looking like he might evolve into one of Colquhoun's special forward disasters.
Think Bobby Zamora.
The betting market on the match was fascinating.
###################################################################################
############################################################################
##############################################################################
#################################################################################
##############################################################################
###########################################################################
###############################################################################
#############################################################################
################################################################################
###########################################################################
And the desire to be immersed in a flood of money is the fundamental template at Parkhead.
Napoleonic John Reid, a small man with a complex complex - "perhaps if I facilitate torture they might take me seriously?" - converting government largesse into private consultancies; Lie-well and Colquhoun negotiating the terms of the sale of Boruc to Liverpool, in return for Scott Carson, whose agent just happens to be Colquhoun, immediately after the Barcelona defeat 17 months ago; the money sloshing backwards and forwards over the Mowbray appointment (with associated player transfers) reaches a level of 'nepotistic' mutual benefitship as slices of the action oscillate between the same people, always wearing different hats, of course.
And the approach to transfers is all based on simplicity and pseudo-science.
There is no analytical rigour of any robustness underpinning the selection or evaluation of players nor, indeed, managers.
Fake mathematics with highly subjective input is not cutting edge in our sabermetric world.
The Celtic transfer strategy does not even warrant the word 'strategy'.
For instance, one of Colquhoun's goldmine 'strategies' is that there is a scarcity of left-sided defenders hence, as an agent, one is able to cash in on this supply-demand discrepancy.
That is state-of-the-art, apparently.
Celtic will continue to underperform on the field of play while the power struggle continues to destabilise the hierarchy - the Wembley Cup fiasco and the tv rights to last night's game are hardly suggestive of solid financial planning.
Too much focus on their personal fiefdoms...
And what about the fans, those people who were coerced into the stadium to witness the debacle, and those around the world who were denied visual access to the match, where do we stand in all this?
Whichever power base wins the Celtic boardroom battle, it is disastrous for fans, as both camps are patently unsuitable to the management of a club that aspires to European Super League status.
Celtic are Hull City.
Celtic are West Bromwich Albion.
And its getting worse.
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Allow your club to be quasi-owned by #####################################, with a ######################################## businessman as chief executive, an extraordinary renditioning self-interested warmonger as chairperson, an inept manager whose former team, in Reality, would have finished trailed off at the bottom of last years' Premier League had it not been for the handicapping of the competition, and a club agent who combines professional deficiencies with rather too much interest in the betting markets, and this is what you get...
Celtic 0 Dinamo Moskva 1.
In 31 home games over seven seasons, only Barcelona have won at Parkhead until last night - Juventus, Bayern Munchen, Milan, Manchester United, Lyon, Valencia, Barcelona and Liverpool have all failed (sometimes more than once) - but the defeat didn't just appear out of the blue.
In this post, we list the organisational and individual irregularities and shortcomings that have resulted in another £10 million or so disappearing down the drain of the Desmondocracy.
It wasn't just the defeat last night.
It was the manner of the defeat.
The team selection was curious, the substitutions pre-programmed, the tactics were wrong throughout the match, while the decision to turn down television money in order to railroad fans down to the stadium was unusual, to say the least - the Celtic match was the only Champions League 3rd Qualifying Round Tie whose tv rights remained unsold.
The planning was tawdry.
The Dinamo match was the most important match in the window.
The timetabling of entry into the ludicrous Wembley Cup was short-termist money-grabbing.
The team needed to be match fit for the Dinamo tie and, for several reasons, they weren't.
Having your entire squad play 90 minutes on either the Friday and Sunday prior to the match while spending four days away from home in a hotel!
Not even getting a competitive match out of the charade, Al-Ahly were poor and Tottenham were betting ######################################################
################################################################# - witness the Spurs turnaround victory against West Ham in Beijing yesterday!!
Furthermore, these fake results and the fake trophy gave the squad an undeserved boost to their feelgood factors, introducing a complacency into the psychological build-up!!!
The summer transfers are entirely uninspiring - that is the problem with utilising an inadequate club agent.
The manner in which Lennon nutmegged Danny Fox at Wembley showed why Coventry fans were delighted with the transfer fee, while Marc-Antoine Fortune is looking like he might evolve into one of Colquhoun's special forward disasters.
Think Bobby Zamora.
The betting market on the match was fascinating.
###################################################################################
############################################################################
##############################################################################
#################################################################################
##############################################################################
###########################################################################
###############################################################################
#############################################################################
################################################################################
###########################################################################
And the desire to be immersed in a flood of money is the fundamental template at Parkhead.
Napoleonic John Reid, a small man with a complex complex - "perhaps if I facilitate torture they might take me seriously?" - converting government largesse into private consultancies; Lie-well and Colquhoun negotiating the terms of the sale of Boruc to Liverpool, in return for Scott Carson, whose agent just happens to be Colquhoun, immediately after the Barcelona defeat 17 months ago; the money sloshing backwards and forwards over the Mowbray appointment (with associated player transfers) reaches a level of 'nepotistic' mutual benefitship as slices of the action oscillate between the same people, always wearing different hats, of course.
And the approach to transfers is all based on simplicity and pseudo-science.
There is no analytical rigour of any robustness underpinning the selection or evaluation of players nor, indeed, managers.
Fake mathematics with highly subjective input is not cutting edge in our sabermetric world.
The Celtic transfer strategy does not even warrant the word 'strategy'.
For instance, one of Colquhoun's goldmine 'strategies' is that there is a scarcity of left-sided defenders hence, as an agent, one is able to cash in on this supply-demand discrepancy.
That is state-of-the-art, apparently.
Celtic will continue to underperform on the field of play while the power struggle continues to destabilise the hierarchy - the Wembley Cup fiasco and the tv rights to last night's game are hardly suggestive of solid financial planning.
Too much focus on their personal fiefdoms...
And what about the fans, those people who were coerced into the stadium to witness the debacle, and those around the world who were denied visual access to the match, where do we stand in all this?
Whichever power base wins the Celtic boardroom battle, it is disastrous for fans, as both camps are patently unsuitable to the management of a club that aspires to European Super League status.
Celtic are Hull City.
Celtic are West Bromwich Albion.
And its getting worse.
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Selective Imposition Of Intelligence #
The Champions League Qualifiers together with the Europa Cup early round events are a primary focus for the various 'betting intelligence' units within UEFA.
Apparently, the narrative reads that teams from the lower tier countries are more likely to bolster their balance sheets with the aid of a little under- or over-performance.
So, FK Pobeda's deliberate defeat to FC Pyunik last season and the shenanigans between Dinamo Tbilisi and Panionios are displayed as examples of co-ordinated fraud.
UEFA moves to punish such recalcitrants with bans and rampant finger-pointing.
Already in the early rounds of the Europa Cup this season, there have been some striking events, generally involving teams from the usual suspect nations - ########
############################################################################
##################################### for example, but also #################
################################################################################
############################
But do the authorities really expect the average fan to believe that it is only in these peripheral events that match outcome and betting market patterns arrive in conjunction?
And, straining the issue, why is it only these lesser events that are highlighted as being big on skulduggery?
Individuals corrupt football matches for very differing reasons, although in times of Recession/Depression, the greed-need continuum usually plots most corruptions accurately.
Teams like FK Pobeda do not have many occasions where they might enhance their finances with some creative sporting play, hence the targeting of the early rounds of European competition. Furthermore, their betting operations are not very sophisticated with bets being placed publicly with organisations that are unwilling to pay out money to insiders on illiquid markets.
The Early Warning system utilised by UEFA filters these events with ease, leaving the European governing body with a simple decision about whether to publicise the insider trading or whether to polish the brand with selected silence.
UEFA exerts another control over these events through the careful selection of match officials.
##################################################################################
################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
################################################################################
##############################################################################
###################################################################################
#############################################################################
So, the powers-that-be wish for us to think that not only is insider betting on matches a very rare occurrence, but also only poverty-stricken 2nd and 3rd World territories and lower league teams engage in such criminality.
Consequently, the likes of FK Pobeda, Forest Green, Bury, Accrington Stanley, Weymouth and Grays Athletic perform wonders for the integrity of the sport.
But what if this list was extended to cover insider trading by the bigger outfits?
With access to the private and underground markets, the Big Boys are able to disguise their positions and the increased liquidity allows much greater corruption to be perpetrated - a certainty on a £500 million book is more rewarding than one on a £2 million one, obviously.
And much more damaging to the image of the sport too...
We could select many of the G14(18) teams in order to expose their market creativity but, for this post, we'll highlight ################## both because they are not very slick at it and because ############## is not as squeaky clean as he likes to portray.
##################################################################################
##############################################################################
################################################################################
################################################################################
###############################################################################
Its just like the coke trade really.
Subsistence farmers in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia experience US client state death squads, aerial spraying and manual eradication of the crop...
The distributive cartels in Mexico and the Caribbean are taken out by the drug enforcement paramilitaries and mercenaries...
Meanwhile, the great and good of the 21st Century Mongol State are able to deal and snort their powder with impunity.
But only if they are white...
Woe betide any Black man turning Charlie into Crack Cocaine.
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Apparently, the narrative reads that teams from the lower tier countries are more likely to bolster their balance sheets with the aid of a little under- or over-performance.
So, FK Pobeda's deliberate defeat to FC Pyunik last season and the shenanigans between Dinamo Tbilisi and Panionios are displayed as examples of co-ordinated fraud.
UEFA moves to punish such recalcitrants with bans and rampant finger-pointing.
Already in the early rounds of the Europa Cup this season, there have been some striking events, generally involving teams from the usual suspect nations - ########
############################################################################
##################################### for example, but also #################
################################################################################
############################
But do the authorities really expect the average fan to believe that it is only in these peripheral events that match outcome and betting market patterns arrive in conjunction?
And, straining the issue, why is it only these lesser events that are highlighted as being big on skulduggery?
Individuals corrupt football matches for very differing reasons, although in times of Recession/Depression, the greed-need continuum usually plots most corruptions accurately.
Teams like FK Pobeda do not have many occasions where they might enhance their finances with some creative sporting play, hence the targeting of the early rounds of European competition. Furthermore, their betting operations are not very sophisticated with bets being placed publicly with organisations that are unwilling to pay out money to insiders on illiquid markets.
The Early Warning system utilised by UEFA filters these events with ease, leaving the European governing body with a simple decision about whether to publicise the insider trading or whether to polish the brand with selected silence.
UEFA exerts another control over these events through the careful selection of match officials.
##################################################################################
################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
################################################################################
##############################################################################
###################################################################################
#############################################################################
So, the powers-that-be wish for us to think that not only is insider betting on matches a very rare occurrence, but also only poverty-stricken 2nd and 3rd World territories and lower league teams engage in such criminality.
Consequently, the likes of FK Pobeda, Forest Green, Bury, Accrington Stanley, Weymouth and Grays Athletic perform wonders for the integrity of the sport.
But what if this list was extended to cover insider trading by the bigger outfits?
With access to the private and underground markets, the Big Boys are able to disguise their positions and the increased liquidity allows much greater corruption to be perpetrated - a certainty on a £500 million book is more rewarding than one on a £2 million one, obviously.
And much more damaging to the image of the sport too...
We could select many of the G14(18) teams in order to expose their market creativity but, for this post, we'll highlight ################## both because they are not very slick at it and because ############## is not as squeaky clean as he likes to portray.
##################################################################################
##############################################################################
################################################################################
################################################################################
###############################################################################
Its just like the coke trade really.
Subsistence farmers in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia experience US client state death squads, aerial spraying and manual eradication of the crop...
The distributive cartels in Mexico and the Caribbean are taken out by the drug enforcement paramilitaries and mercenaries...
Meanwhile, the great and good of the 21st Century Mongol State are able to deal and snort their powder with impunity.
But only if they are white...
Woe betide any Black man turning Charlie into Crack Cocaine.
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
If You're Not At The Table, You're On The Menu #
"What, me, Richard Scudamore, hanging around ################################### at three in the morning, with my reputation. What were they thinking of? Has no one thought of the consequences?"
Yes, Our Great Leader is planning another Great Leap Forward in Beijing, where the eagerly awaited betting event known as the Premier League Asia Trophy begins tomorrow.
This biennial benefit for the bookies brings together four sides in the usual format - one team managed by Harry Redknapp, ##################################
###############################################################################
#########################################################, a powerful team in financial distress receiving a pre-season earner from The Boss and a local team to pull in the punters.
Three dodgy teams, Our Great Leader, some carefully selected match officials, a sprinkling of AFC officials and members of the local trading community undertaking the Premier League's version of Davos.
In China...
As The Boss said yesterday: "We are in Beijing to pass on some of our knowledge and expertise, not only in running a successful competition that has grown to be internationally renowned, but in other areas of the game too."
Really...?
Scudamore's bloated opinion of his dominion goes before him...
A week ago (the Premier League will not release the latest figures), only 20,000 of the 120,000 tickets had been sold for the tournament, and most of these were for the cheap seats.
Local interest is non-existent as it is rumoured that the local team, Beijing Guoan are fielding a team of reserves as they have a Chinese Super League match on August 2nd.
It is worthy of note that 70,000 tickets had been sold by last week for the match between Internazionale and Lazio at the Bird's Nest Stadium.
The biggest league in the world?
Of course, on the last occasion when the jamboree descended on the Far East, Mark Clattenburg was 'introduced' to Thaksin Shinawatra, and we all understand where that little relationship ended - ###################################################
##############################################################################
#################################################################################
################################################################################
#############################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
################################################################################
With his reputation?
And Our Great Leader is a happy boy at the moment after his political masters, the Murdochracy, picked up the rights to Scottish Premier League games for just 60% of the fee they had offered a year earlier, plus the Community Charity Mall Entity, with the usual opaque bidding process already being tabled for Setanta's FA Cup contracts.
Meanwhile, back in the land of "forlorn back gardens, grey shopping malls, and so forth", the FA have taken action against the five players from Bury and Accrington Stanley who were involved in a little insider trading on the final match of the 2007/08 season.
The players have effectively been fined their winnings and banned for various periods.
We look forward to similar punishments being handed out to members of the Fulham and Wigan Athletic teams and their cohorts, who conspired to rig the match at Craven Cottage last October.
All of the relevant information is in the knowledge sphere within the loop, and the betting patterns are available.
We could itemise literally hundreds of other Premier League matches where market makers and insiders have influenced the outcome for private financial benefit, but the Fulham versus Wigan match is equivalent to the one selected case that lawyers choose in mass-action cases - you pin the most evident 'atrocity' on the abuser.
And the primary abuser in the Premier League remains the Murdochracy and its entrails around the media.
If anybody understands the Murdochracy, it is John Pilger.
So we'll finish today with some proper journalism on the Digger Deviant himself...
"I met Eddie Spearritt in the Philharmonic pub, overlooking Liverpool. It was a few years after 96 Liverpool football fans had been crushed to death at Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield, on 15 April 1989. Eddie's son, Adam, aged 14, died in his arms. The "main reason for the disaster", Lord Justice Taylor subsequently reported, was the "failure" of the police, who had herded fans into a lethal pen.
"As I lay in my hospital bed," Eddie said, "the hospital staff kept the Sun away from me. It's bad enough when you lose your 14-year-old son because you're treating him to a football match. Nothing can be worse than that. But since then I've had to defend him against all the rubbish printed by the Sun about everyone there being a hooligan and drinking. There was no hooliganism. During 31 days of Lord Justice Taylor's inquiry, no blame was attributed because of alcohol. Adam never touched it in his life."
Three days after the disaster, Kelvin MacKenzie, Rupert Murdoch's "favourite editor", sat down and designed the Sun front page, scribbling "THE TRUTH" in huge letters. Beneath it, he wrote three subsidiary headlines: "Some fans picked pockets of victims" . . . "Some fans urinated on the brave cops" . . . "Some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life". All of it was false; MacKenzie was banking on anti-Liverpool prejudice. When sales of the Sun fell by almost 40 per cent on Merseyside, Murdoch ordered his favourite editor to feign penitence. BBC Radio 4 was chosen as his platform. The "sarf London" accent that was integral to MacKenzie's fake persona as an "ordinary punter" was now a contrite, middle-class voice that fitted Radio 4. "I made a rather serious error," said MacKenzie, who has since been back on Radio 4 in a very different mood, aggressively claiming that the Sun's treatment of Hillsborough was merely a "vehicle for others".
When we met, Eddie Spearritt mentioned MacKenzie and Murdoch with a dignified anger. So did Joan Traynor, who lost two sons, Christopher and Kevin, whose funeral was invaded by MacKenzie's photographers even though Joan had asked for her family's privacy to be respected. The picture of her sons' coffins on the front page of a paper that had lied about the circumstances of their death so deeply upset her that for years she could barely speak about it."
I think I'll be giving the Premier League Asian Trophy a miss this year...
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Yes, Our Great Leader is planning another Great Leap Forward in Beijing, where the eagerly awaited betting event known as the Premier League Asia Trophy begins tomorrow.
This biennial benefit for the bookies brings together four sides in the usual format - one team managed by Harry Redknapp, ##################################
###############################################################################
#########################################################, a powerful team in financial distress receiving a pre-season earner from The Boss and a local team to pull in the punters.
Three dodgy teams, Our Great Leader, some carefully selected match officials, a sprinkling of AFC officials and members of the local trading community undertaking the Premier League's version of Davos.
In China...
As The Boss said yesterday: "We are in Beijing to pass on some of our knowledge and expertise, not only in running a successful competition that has grown to be internationally renowned, but in other areas of the game too."
Really...?
Scudamore's bloated opinion of his dominion goes before him...
A week ago (the Premier League will not release the latest figures), only 20,000 of the 120,000 tickets had been sold for the tournament, and most of these were for the cheap seats.
Local interest is non-existent as it is rumoured that the local team, Beijing Guoan are fielding a team of reserves as they have a Chinese Super League match on August 2nd.
It is worthy of note that 70,000 tickets had been sold by last week for the match between Internazionale and Lazio at the Bird's Nest Stadium.
The biggest league in the world?
Of course, on the last occasion when the jamboree descended on the Far East, Mark Clattenburg was 'introduced' to Thaksin Shinawatra, and we all understand where that little relationship ended - ###################################################
##############################################################################
#################################################################################
################################################################################
#############################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
################################################################################
With his reputation?
And Our Great Leader is a happy boy at the moment after his political masters, the Murdochracy, picked up the rights to Scottish Premier League games for just 60% of the fee they had offered a year earlier, plus the Community Charity Mall Entity, with the usual opaque bidding process already being tabled for Setanta's FA Cup contracts.
Meanwhile, back in the land of "forlorn back gardens, grey shopping malls, and so forth", the FA have taken action against the five players from Bury and Accrington Stanley who were involved in a little insider trading on the final match of the 2007/08 season.
The players have effectively been fined their winnings and banned for various periods.
We look forward to similar punishments being handed out to members of the Fulham and Wigan Athletic teams and their cohorts, who conspired to rig the match at Craven Cottage last October.
All of the relevant information is in the knowledge sphere within the loop, and the betting patterns are available.
We could itemise literally hundreds of other Premier League matches where market makers and insiders have influenced the outcome for private financial benefit, but the Fulham versus Wigan match is equivalent to the one selected case that lawyers choose in mass-action cases - you pin the most evident 'atrocity' on the abuser.
And the primary abuser in the Premier League remains the Murdochracy and its entrails around the media.
If anybody understands the Murdochracy, it is John Pilger.
So we'll finish today with some proper journalism on the Digger Deviant himself...
"I met Eddie Spearritt in the Philharmonic pub, overlooking Liverpool. It was a few years after 96 Liverpool football fans had been crushed to death at Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield, on 15 April 1989. Eddie's son, Adam, aged 14, died in his arms. The "main reason for the disaster", Lord Justice Taylor subsequently reported, was the "failure" of the police, who had herded fans into a lethal pen.
"As I lay in my hospital bed," Eddie said, "the hospital staff kept the Sun away from me. It's bad enough when you lose your 14-year-old son because you're treating him to a football match. Nothing can be worse than that. But since then I've had to defend him against all the rubbish printed by the Sun about everyone there being a hooligan and drinking. There was no hooliganism. During 31 days of Lord Justice Taylor's inquiry, no blame was attributed because of alcohol. Adam never touched it in his life."
Three days after the disaster, Kelvin MacKenzie, Rupert Murdoch's "favourite editor", sat down and designed the Sun front page, scribbling "THE TRUTH" in huge letters. Beneath it, he wrote three subsidiary headlines: "Some fans picked pockets of victims" . . . "Some fans urinated on the brave cops" . . . "Some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life". All of it was false; MacKenzie was banking on anti-Liverpool prejudice. When sales of the Sun fell by almost 40 per cent on Merseyside, Murdoch ordered his favourite editor to feign penitence. BBC Radio 4 was chosen as his platform. The "sarf London" accent that was integral to MacKenzie's fake persona as an "ordinary punter" was now a contrite, middle-class voice that fitted Radio 4. "I made a rather serious error," said MacKenzie, who has since been back on Radio 4 in a very different mood, aggressively claiming that the Sun's treatment of Hillsborough was merely a "vehicle for others".
When we met, Eddie Spearritt mentioned MacKenzie and Murdoch with a dignified anger. So did Joan Traynor, who lost two sons, Christopher and Kevin, whose funeral was invaded by MacKenzie's photographers even though Joan had asked for her family's privacy to be respected. The picture of her sons' coffins on the front page of a paper that had lied about the circumstances of their death so deeply upset her that for years she could barely speak about it."
I think I'll be giving the Premier League Asian Trophy a miss this year...
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Monday, 27 July 2009
Lie, You Fucking Clown #
David Gill, chief executive of Manchester United and active member of the FA Board, speaks the ScudamoreWorld Mantra.
Take the bombing of the hotel in Indonesia just 36 hours before the Manchester United squad were due to arrive on their merchandising tour of the Far East.
Gill denied that the Manchester club had taken any risk in going ahead with the visit to Jakarta despite the fact that the Foreign Office had issued warnings that the country is a high-risk territory for terrorism.
Gill: "We discussed it with the experts and it is an important market for us."
Which 'experts' were so expert that their knowledge of the information on the ground in Indonesia was assumed to be more robust than that of the British Embassy?
Does the importance of the market trump security fears in the quest for the Asian dollar?
Another "important market" is the transfer market, and Gill has been waxing lyrical here too in stating that United "won't match the wages" being offered by Manchester City.
We think the word that he was seeking was "can't"...
###############################################################################
##############################################################################
############################################################################
################################################################################
And, of course, it was Gill, in his position on the FA Board, who was instrumental in getting Andy Burnham's 'Seven Points That Might Save The Game' squashed in procedure, taking the ScudamoreWorld line that excessive debt and creative self-regulation is the sectoral structure of choice.
Meanwhile, the Premier League is delighted to tell us that an agent is now able to represent both player and the buying/selling club in a transfer deal, so long as the player is aware of the agents' duplicity.
The ScudamoreWorld entity insisted on this accommodation in return for agents' fees being disclosed in future transfers.
These guys have got old age and treachery on their side...
###############################################################################
##########################################################################
#################################################################################
################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
##################################################################################
########################################################################
##################################################################################
#############################################################################
#####################################################
Dubious owners, dubious agents, dubious bookmakers and dubious institutions...
Mick Wallace, Irish agent: "If you look at the owners of any of the [English] clubs, you'd have nothing to do with them."
The Financial Action Task Force: "Many clubs are financially in bad shape and their financial trouble could urge football clubs to accept funds from dubious parties. Football clubs are indeed seen by criminals as the perfect vehicles for money laundering."
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Take the bombing of the hotel in Indonesia just 36 hours before the Manchester United squad were due to arrive on their merchandising tour of the Far East.
Gill denied that the Manchester club had taken any risk in going ahead with the visit to Jakarta despite the fact that the Foreign Office had issued warnings that the country is a high-risk territory for terrorism.
Gill: "We discussed it with the experts and it is an important market for us."
Which 'experts' were so expert that their knowledge of the information on the ground in Indonesia was assumed to be more robust than that of the British Embassy?
Does the importance of the market trump security fears in the quest for the Asian dollar?
Another "important market" is the transfer market, and Gill has been waxing lyrical here too in stating that United "won't match the wages" being offered by Manchester City.
We think the word that he was seeking was "can't"...
###############################################################################
##############################################################################
############################################################################
################################################################################
And, of course, it was Gill, in his position on the FA Board, who was instrumental in getting Andy Burnham's 'Seven Points That Might Save The Game' squashed in procedure, taking the ScudamoreWorld line that excessive debt and creative self-regulation is the sectoral structure of choice.
Meanwhile, the Premier League is delighted to tell us that an agent is now able to represent both player and the buying/selling club in a transfer deal, so long as the player is aware of the agents' duplicity.
The ScudamoreWorld entity insisted on this accommodation in return for agents' fees being disclosed in future transfers.
These guys have got old age and treachery on their side...
###############################################################################
##########################################################################
#################################################################################
################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
##################################################################################
########################################################################
##################################################################################
#############################################################################
#####################################################
Dubious owners, dubious agents, dubious bookmakers and dubious institutions...
Mick Wallace, Irish agent: "If you look at the owners of any of the [English] clubs, you'd have nothing to do with them."
The Financial Action Task Force: "Many clubs are financially in bad shape and their financial trouble could urge football clubs to accept funds from dubious parties. Football clubs are indeed seen by criminals as the perfect vehicles for money laundering."
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 24 July 2009
"Fu Ze Ren Bu Zae" - A Flashback #
Once each month, we reprint something from long long ago...
The post below was first published in August 2008, at the very beginning of last season.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
"The Man With The Key Is Not Here".
Whenever you reach the termination of a cul-de-sac of investigative research in China, this is the statement that reveals the futility of any extra efforts on that particular line of enquiry.
Forget it.
The Key is not for the likes of you.
Today is a first for Football Is Fixed.
We are going to provide you with The Key to a few floor-level rooms.
We do not think that you will like what you see.
Subprime.
One of my colleagues has spent the last month in China and the Far East.
His task was a potent mixture of broker appraisal, debt recovery and the monitoring of the Olympic Games underground betting markets.
Additionally, our prime Asian broker, whom we have traded with for over a decade, agreed to give us an exclusive interview regarding the state of football...
...from the perspective of an Asian bookmaker.
Below are some selected sections of the original transcript together with some explanation of the subject matter covered (for readers not aware of how the global betting markets function).
Dietrological (our Football Information Provision Service) have a dichotomous relationship with the Far East - our very best contacts and the very best analysts are South-East Asians; our very major debtors are also dotted around the fringes of the global football gambling engine-room.
Yet, from the coverage of the English game in the media circus, you would not be aware that the Far East has any impact on the sport.
The media prefers the spectacle to reality.
The media peddles the illusion of the hyperreality.
So, my man started the conversation with focus on the power of the Far East betting markets.
FIF: "In Britain, there is no public knowledge of the importance of the betting markets in Asia. Does this surprise you?".
Mr. P: "Most people do not understand what they are seeing. They accept what they are told. ###############################################
FIF: "Okay, there is a betting market on a top English game that is liquid to the $2 billion level. #################################################################### #########################################################. Does this money influence match outcomes?".
Mr. P: "Yes, in most cases Premier League games are hit by the markets. The hit varies. ################################################################
#########################".
FIF: "So, for example, lets look at the big two matches that opened the English season - Chelsea versus Portsmouth and Manchester United versus Newcastle - I'm told by the office that both these matches were fixed. Is that true?".
Mr. P: "Yes".
FIF: "How were they fixed?".
Mr P: "############################ were for Chelsea. Very big money was down on Chelsea ############################. Clever money. ##########. The result was fixed".
FIF: "And the United game?".
Mr. P: "########### fixed it. ##################################. The big traders were changing their positions - one way, then the other team, then back again. ##### ########### stopped it".
FIF: "Stopped it?".
Mr. P: "Yes".
FIF: "How?".
Mr. P: "I only tell you something. ################################### - ##########
################################################################################
########################################
FIF: "In Asia, this is accepted. In Britain, they pretend that it does not happen. Why is that?".
Mr. P: "You complain about Chinese gymnasts being small, but do you complain about American and European gymnasts being big through doping? You see what you want to see".
FIF: "You have been involved in the Asian markets for a long time, what changes have you seen?".
Mr. P: "More money now. Money is more important now. In England, ##################
########################. The private markets are powerful. ################ is now the most important person in the game. ################### fighting to control it. In Italy too".
FIF: "When you started, Asia dominated the markets through superior analytical skills and clever trading techniques. It has become more difficult recently, hasn't it? ############################################################################# ################################################################################# #######################".
Mr. P: "Western traders are shit. They fight, they shake hands, they fight, they shake hands. They do not think about tomorrow, only today. ###################### #############. There is different mafia. ###################".
FIF: "######################?".
Mr. P: "##########################".
FIF: "In England, people are slowly accepting some of the things that have been knowledge in the trading community for a long time eg the use of performance enhancing substances (PESs), corrupt ####################, ############## involved in match outcomes, the regulators and authorities treating the game as a product with a defined outcome etc. Have you noticed this with your clients?".
Mr. P: "Yes, but it is black and white/ yin and yang. First, they say soccer is not corrupt. Never. It is clean. Then, they find the truth and, now, all soccer is corrupt. Every game is corrupt. Every game is different. It is a different market. Not black. Not white".
FIF: "English football is not popular in China as a sport but it is very popular as a gambling medium. Why is this?".
Mr. P: "The betting markets. This is the only reason. The games are in the night. But you can bet more money and the street knowledge is very good".
FIF: "Compared to Europe?".
Mr. P: "Yes".
FIF: "Over 60% of the readers of the Dietrological blog live here in the Far East, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, but the blog is banned in China. Why do you think that is?".
Mr. P: "I don't know. Lots of things are banned. ################################ #######################".
FIF: "I want to return to the subject of referees. The referee is big information now. The authorities understand this and this season has seen further delays in the release and the publicising of the match officials [for example, UEFA only publicised referees for the Champions League 3rd Qualifying Round at 11:00 GMT on the day of the match]. In the Premier League, things have changed too. I am told that referees are complaining as the weekend appointments are not being released until late on the Tuesday night, rather than a week earlier as used to be the case".
Mr. P: "The referee selection is changing the markets. I want to trade big on West Bromwich and Everton. How can I? If the referee is ########, ######## will probably win. If the referee is ########, ######## will probably win. There is lots of money and small wages. This is why Champions League selection is so late".
FIF: "What do you think about the impact of Thaksin Shinawatra on the English game?".
Mr.P: "##########################################################################".
FIF: "We understand that Thaksin has very close links to the Bangkok betting markets".
Mr.P: "##########################################################################
##########".
FIF: "Of course, the problem with these very liquid and very private markets is that they are only partially visible to outsiders. More importantly, these markets are not regulated by the game. By allowing anonymous trading of tens of millions of dollars on football matches, isn't the sport simply selling out to the markets?".
Mr. P: "Yes. Soccer sold out. ##########################################. Soccer is very big betting. The limits are higher and higher. They go up by ##% a season".
FIF: "Do people ever not pay you?".
Mr. P: "Only once [laughs]".
FIF: "What is the view over here about the Premier League plan to bring English games to Asia and to other parts of the world?".
Mr. P: "Big betting and big markets. Some people objected and said 'no' but the markets will be big enough. In China, the match is not important. Sunderland or Manchester, its the betting that counts. It is easier to bet when not at the match".
FIF: "So, ###########################################?".
Mr. P: "Yes".
FIF: "Which other European leagues have the most gambling activity? We trade on the big six tournaments [Premier League, Serie A, Champions League, La Primera Liga, Internationals (UEFA or FIFA) and Bundesliga] but which other leagues are big in the betting markets?".
Mr. P: "Russia, Israel, Beitar Jerusalem games are very big betting. The same people as Portsmouth. ################################################################# ########################### Most countries. ######## is getting very bad. So is ########. And #########".
FIF: "But England is the worst?".
Mr. P: "Yes".
FIF: "Okay, finally a fixed question! One of the reasons for this interview is because we share a common goal with regard to the football betting markets. At the moment, the people who control the betting markets, ############################## #################, are ######### in both their activities and intent. The organisations and individuals who are gaining financially are only gaining due to these corrupt practices. Dark pools of anonymous trading are destroying both the game and the possibility of a competitive and meritocratic marketplace. The global betting markets must be properly regulated to limit the amount of insider trading and market abuse that dominates the current set up. Is there any chance that an alternative market could be established soon with proper levels of liquidity and security of payment?".
Mr. P: "The problem is this. How do you regulate a global market? Who says 'yes'? The best is for markets on the bourses. There will always be the black market".
FIF: "So, the two in parallel. Regulated and non-regulated?".
Mr. P: "Like the bourse, yes".
Gary Imlach: "Conversations with friends revealed a sort of non-specific unease about the brave new world of the Premiership. They were reluctant to mourn the loss of a connection with the past for its own sake; a break with tradition may be no bad thing if that tradition consists of standing to watch the game ankle-deep in a stream of other people's piss. Still, how do you passionately support a PLC? How do you maintain the undying devotion that makes you a fan when the club is doing its damnedest to turn you into a customer? One answer is that you simply blank it all out and focus on the team, on what happens on the pitch. But what if the team is a rotating cast of millionaires with no more connection to your world than Tom Cruise...?".
And, what if you do blank it all out and focus on what is happening on the pitch?
What is it that you see when you watch Manchester United play Newcastle United?
You should be seeing a mixture of ############################################ determining outcome.
An uncertainty defined in a boiler room scam.
Blank it all out.
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The post below was first published in August 2008, at the very beginning of last season.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
"The Man With The Key Is Not Here".
Whenever you reach the termination of a cul-de-sac of investigative research in China, this is the statement that reveals the futility of any extra efforts on that particular line of enquiry.
Forget it.
The Key is not for the likes of you.
Today is a first for Football Is Fixed.
We are going to provide you with The Key to a few floor-level rooms.
We do not think that you will like what you see.
Subprime.
One of my colleagues has spent the last month in China and the Far East.
His task was a potent mixture of broker appraisal, debt recovery and the monitoring of the Olympic Games underground betting markets.
Additionally, our prime Asian broker, whom we have traded with for over a decade, agreed to give us an exclusive interview regarding the state of football...
...from the perspective of an Asian bookmaker.
Below are some selected sections of the original transcript together with some explanation of the subject matter covered (for readers not aware of how the global betting markets function).
Dietrological (our Football Information Provision Service) have a dichotomous relationship with the Far East - our very best contacts and the very best analysts are South-East Asians; our very major debtors are also dotted around the fringes of the global football gambling engine-room.
Yet, from the coverage of the English game in the media circus, you would not be aware that the Far East has any impact on the sport.
The media prefers the spectacle to reality.
The media peddles the illusion of the hyperreality.
So, my man started the conversation with focus on the power of the Far East betting markets.
FIF: "In Britain, there is no public knowledge of the importance of the betting markets in Asia. Does this surprise you?".
Mr. P: "Most people do not understand what they are seeing. They accept what they are told. ###############################################
FIF: "Okay, there is a betting market on a top English game that is liquid to the $2 billion level. #################################################################### #########################################################. Does this money influence match outcomes?".
Mr. P: "Yes, in most cases Premier League games are hit by the markets. The hit varies. ################################################################
#########################".
FIF: "So, for example, lets look at the big two matches that opened the English season - Chelsea versus Portsmouth and Manchester United versus Newcastle - I'm told by the office that both these matches were fixed. Is that true?".
Mr. P: "Yes".
FIF: "How were they fixed?".
Mr P: "############################ were for Chelsea. Very big money was down on Chelsea ############################. Clever money. ##########. The result was fixed".
FIF: "And the United game?".
Mr. P: "########### fixed it. ##################################. The big traders were changing their positions - one way, then the other team, then back again. ##### ########### stopped it".
FIF: "Stopped it?".
Mr. P: "Yes".
FIF: "How?".
Mr. P: "I only tell you something. ################################### - ##########
################################################################################
########################################
FIF: "In Asia, this is accepted. In Britain, they pretend that it does not happen. Why is that?".
Mr. P: "You complain about Chinese gymnasts being small, but do you complain about American and European gymnasts being big through doping? You see what you want to see".
FIF: "You have been involved in the Asian markets for a long time, what changes have you seen?".
Mr. P: "More money now. Money is more important now. In England, ##################
########################. The private markets are powerful. ################ is now the most important person in the game. ################### fighting to control it. In Italy too".
FIF: "When you started, Asia dominated the markets through superior analytical skills and clever trading techniques. It has become more difficult recently, hasn't it? ############################################################################# ################################################################################# #######################".
Mr. P: "Western traders are shit. They fight, they shake hands, they fight, they shake hands. They do not think about tomorrow, only today. ###################### #############. There is different mafia. ###################".
FIF: "######################?".
Mr. P: "##########################".
FIF: "In England, people are slowly accepting some of the things that have been knowledge in the trading community for a long time eg the use of performance enhancing substances (PESs), corrupt ####################, ############## involved in match outcomes, the regulators and authorities treating the game as a product with a defined outcome etc. Have you noticed this with your clients?".
Mr. P: "Yes, but it is black and white/ yin and yang. First, they say soccer is not corrupt. Never. It is clean. Then, they find the truth and, now, all soccer is corrupt. Every game is corrupt. Every game is different. It is a different market. Not black. Not white".
FIF: "English football is not popular in China as a sport but it is very popular as a gambling medium. Why is this?".
Mr. P: "The betting markets. This is the only reason. The games are in the night. But you can bet more money and the street knowledge is very good".
FIF: "Compared to Europe?".
Mr. P: "Yes".
FIF: "Over 60% of the readers of the Dietrological blog live here in the Far East, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, but the blog is banned in China. Why do you think that is?".
Mr. P: "I don't know. Lots of things are banned. ################################ #######################".
FIF: "I want to return to the subject of referees. The referee is big information now. The authorities understand this and this season has seen further delays in the release and the publicising of the match officials [for example, UEFA only publicised referees for the Champions League 3rd Qualifying Round at 11:00 GMT on the day of the match]. In the Premier League, things have changed too. I am told that referees are complaining as the weekend appointments are not being released until late on the Tuesday night, rather than a week earlier as used to be the case".
Mr. P: "The referee selection is changing the markets. I want to trade big on West Bromwich and Everton. How can I? If the referee is ########, ######## will probably win. If the referee is ########, ######## will probably win. There is lots of money and small wages. This is why Champions League selection is so late".
FIF: "What do you think about the impact of Thaksin Shinawatra on the English game?".
Mr.P: "##########################################################################".
FIF: "We understand that Thaksin has very close links to the Bangkok betting markets".
Mr.P: "##########################################################################
##########".
FIF: "Of course, the problem with these very liquid and very private markets is that they are only partially visible to outsiders. More importantly, these markets are not regulated by the game. By allowing anonymous trading of tens of millions of dollars on football matches, isn't the sport simply selling out to the markets?".
Mr. P: "Yes. Soccer sold out. ##########################################. Soccer is very big betting. The limits are higher and higher. They go up by ##% a season".
FIF: "Do people ever not pay you?".
Mr. P: "Only once [laughs]".
FIF: "What is the view over here about the Premier League plan to bring English games to Asia and to other parts of the world?".
Mr. P: "Big betting and big markets. Some people objected and said 'no' but the markets will be big enough. In China, the match is not important. Sunderland or Manchester, its the betting that counts. It is easier to bet when not at the match".
FIF: "So, ###########################################?".
Mr. P: "Yes".
FIF: "Which other European leagues have the most gambling activity? We trade on the big six tournaments [Premier League, Serie A, Champions League, La Primera Liga, Internationals (UEFA or FIFA) and Bundesliga] but which other leagues are big in the betting markets?".
Mr. P: "Russia, Israel, Beitar Jerusalem games are very big betting. The same people as Portsmouth. ################################################################# ########################### Most countries. ######## is getting very bad. So is ########. And #########".
FIF: "But England is the worst?".
Mr. P: "Yes".
FIF: "Okay, finally a fixed question! One of the reasons for this interview is because we share a common goal with regard to the football betting markets. At the moment, the people who control the betting markets, ############################## #################, are ######### in both their activities and intent. The organisations and individuals who are gaining financially are only gaining due to these corrupt practices. Dark pools of anonymous trading are destroying both the game and the possibility of a competitive and meritocratic marketplace. The global betting markets must be properly regulated to limit the amount of insider trading and market abuse that dominates the current set up. Is there any chance that an alternative market could be established soon with proper levels of liquidity and security of payment?".
Mr. P: "The problem is this. How do you regulate a global market? Who says 'yes'? The best is for markets on the bourses. There will always be the black market".
FIF: "So, the two in parallel. Regulated and non-regulated?".
Mr. P: "Like the bourse, yes".
Gary Imlach: "Conversations with friends revealed a sort of non-specific unease about the brave new world of the Premiership. They were reluctant to mourn the loss of a connection with the past for its own sake; a break with tradition may be no bad thing if that tradition consists of standing to watch the game ankle-deep in a stream of other people's piss. Still, how do you passionately support a PLC? How do you maintain the undying devotion that makes you a fan when the club is doing its damnedest to turn you into a customer? One answer is that you simply blank it all out and focus on the team, on what happens on the pitch. But what if the team is a rotating cast of millionaires with no more connection to your world than Tom Cruise...?".
And, what if you do blank it all out and focus on what is happening on the pitch?
What is it that you see when you watch Manchester United play Newcastle United?
You should be seeing a mixture of ############################################ determining outcome.
An uncertainty defined in a boiler room scam.
Blank it all out.
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
How The Rules Corrupt The Laws #
Jean Baudrillard: "Democracy is... based on equality before the law, but that is never as radical as equality before the rule."
The English Disease is what the Native Australians called it.
Well, not the Indigenous Australians actually but the right wing Murdochratic press.
The English Disease referred to active trades unionism by pommies who settled Down Under.
Nowadays, it applies rather more perfectly to how the Laws of the Game are warped and moulded by ########################################################
######################################################################
Laws and Rules - the difference is key in sporting events dominated by ##############
##############################################################################
#####################################################################
The Laws of the Game, whether football, cricket or whatever, remain largely unchanged.
Even with the creation of new formats eg Twenty20 Cricket, the fundamental Laws are set in stone - two x 3 stumps spaced 20.12 metres apart, bails, ball structure, materials allowed in bats, ground size, number of players blah blah blah.
The Rules are much more malleable though.
And the Rules dominate the Laws.
To the extent that the Laws become a simulacrum of their true meaning, contorted to suit the requirements of #######################################################
Yesterday, England completed their victory over Australia at Lords.
One of my colleagues traded the match and brought to my attention the fact that five of the 8 dismissals of the Top Four Australian Batsmen were fake and an incorrect projection of the Laws of the Game.
Cricket, which has moved much further than football in the use of video technology to aid the umpires, still has numerous regulatory loopholes that allow the Rules to destabilise and overcome the Laws.
These five wickets were proof of this superiority in hierarchy.
And cricket is about to get a whole lot worse.
In May, we posted about the change in leadership at the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) - see http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2009/05/who-to-replace-hackett.html - and we were correct in asserting that Mike "Kipper" Riley would get the post.
But Steve Bennett, one of the two unsuccessful candidates, has broken new ground by being elevated to sit as an independent director of the new Association of Cricket Officials Board (ACOB).
ACOB is cricket's PGMOB.
Both of these knickpoints are ###################################################
################################################################################
#########################################
Mike Gatting blurted that the appointment of Bennett was an "inspired choice - the right man to take this new association forward."
From the point of view of Real Cricket, this is a simple fallacy.
And why believe a racist right wing bigot on anything of consequence anyway?
And why not take a view of the Rule defeating the Law in football.
Rather than focus on any of the more obvious corrupting influences on match outcomes, we'll seek out the more obtuse ways in which the Rule gains control.
Paul Gardner: "How can it be justified having the game's rules decided by a somnolent clique that includes permanent representatives from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland [sic], but no guaranteed presence from other countries that really matter [!], like Brazil, Germany, Argentina, Italy or Spain?"
But this slumber is illusory.
Gardner has highlighted many of the issues included in the new rule book published by the International Football Association Board (IFAB).
As Gardner wrote: "... deletions from the rules are not identified."
Take Rule 12.
Rule 12 includes: "A direct free kick is also awarded to the opposing team if a player commits any of the following offences... when tackling, an opponent makes contact with the opponent before contact is made with the ball..."
This part of Rule 12 is akin to Clause Four - it now no longer exists.
It has been deleted from the Rules with no mention nor explanation.
This omission is a blatant Randomising Rule.
Skillful play differentiates the elite teams from the masses, and by allowing regulated obstruction in order to compress this differential, outcomes will be randomised or worse.
After all...
There are Random Realities and Fake Realities.
################################################################################
############################################################################
#############################################################################
#############################################################################
Because he is absolutely correct, we are going to quote Gardner more fully.
"... referees operate as though they live in the High Middle Ages and are some superior cabal of lawmakers... who do not feel obliged to explain their actions... Every game features calls that remain obscure because the referee is not obliged - as he should be - to clearly signal what he has called."
With Britain a primary base for the corruption of betting markets throughout Europe, it makes no sense for the Home Countries to have such a say in the imposition of Rules that usurp the Laws of the Game.
The Economist this week produces an article on organised crime in Britain.
As it is organised crime that is defiling our sports, some of the newspapers' points resonate with regard to football and cricket.
"Organised crime may do especially well in the downturn because it depends so heavily on the bribery of officials, reckons Michael Levi, a professor of criminology at Cardiff University. A poor border guard is easier to tempt than a rich one, and a struggling business may be persuaded to launder money."
And a poor referee or umpire (#####################################################) is easier to tempt than a rich one too...
Gardner calls for the establishment of a new body to democratically oversee the Laws of Football.
"The new body should do away, once and for all, with the secrecy and the hocus pocus that still surrounds referees and their activities. The IFAB needs a new approach, and one that should ring a few bells with Sepp Blatter - transparency."
Unfortunately in England even the chairman of the FA, Lord Triesman, believes that "transparency lies in an unmarked grave."
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The English Disease is what the Native Australians called it.
Well, not the Indigenous Australians actually but the right wing Murdochratic press.
The English Disease referred to active trades unionism by pommies who settled Down Under.
Nowadays, it applies rather more perfectly to how the Laws of the Game are warped and moulded by ########################################################
######################################################################
Laws and Rules - the difference is key in sporting events dominated by ##############
##############################################################################
#####################################################################
The Laws of the Game, whether football, cricket or whatever, remain largely unchanged.
Even with the creation of new formats eg Twenty20 Cricket, the fundamental Laws are set in stone - two x 3 stumps spaced 20.12 metres apart, bails, ball structure, materials allowed in bats, ground size, number of players blah blah blah.
The Rules are much more malleable though.
And the Rules dominate the Laws.
To the extent that the Laws become a simulacrum of their true meaning, contorted to suit the requirements of #######################################################
Yesterday, England completed their victory over Australia at Lords.
One of my colleagues traded the match and brought to my attention the fact that five of the 8 dismissals of the Top Four Australian Batsmen were fake and an incorrect projection of the Laws of the Game.
Cricket, which has moved much further than football in the use of video technology to aid the umpires, still has numerous regulatory loopholes that allow the Rules to destabilise and overcome the Laws.
These five wickets were proof of this superiority in hierarchy.
And cricket is about to get a whole lot worse.
In May, we posted about the change in leadership at the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) - see http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2009/05/who-to-replace-hackett.html - and we were correct in asserting that Mike "Kipper" Riley would get the post.
But Steve Bennett, one of the two unsuccessful candidates, has broken new ground by being elevated to sit as an independent director of the new Association of Cricket Officials Board (ACOB).
ACOB is cricket's PGMOB.
Both of these knickpoints are ###################################################
################################################################################
#########################################
Mike Gatting blurted that the appointment of Bennett was an "inspired choice - the right man to take this new association forward."
From the point of view of Real Cricket, this is a simple fallacy.
And why believe a racist right wing bigot on anything of consequence anyway?
And why not take a view of the Rule defeating the Law in football.
Rather than focus on any of the more obvious corrupting influences on match outcomes, we'll seek out the more obtuse ways in which the Rule gains control.
Paul Gardner: "How can it be justified having the game's rules decided by a somnolent clique that includes permanent representatives from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland [sic], but no guaranteed presence from other countries that really matter [!], like Brazil, Germany, Argentina, Italy or Spain?"
But this slumber is illusory.
Gardner has highlighted many of the issues included in the new rule book published by the International Football Association Board (IFAB).
As Gardner wrote: "... deletions from the rules are not identified."
Take Rule 12.
Rule 12 includes: "A direct free kick is also awarded to the opposing team if a player commits any of the following offences... when tackling, an opponent makes contact with the opponent before contact is made with the ball..."
This part of Rule 12 is akin to Clause Four - it now no longer exists.
It has been deleted from the Rules with no mention nor explanation.
This omission is a blatant Randomising Rule.
Skillful play differentiates the elite teams from the masses, and by allowing regulated obstruction in order to compress this differential, outcomes will be randomised or worse.
After all...
There are Random Realities and Fake Realities.
################################################################################
############################################################################
#############################################################################
#############################################################################
Because he is absolutely correct, we are going to quote Gardner more fully.
"... referees operate as though they live in the High Middle Ages and are some superior cabal of lawmakers... who do not feel obliged to explain their actions... Every game features calls that remain obscure because the referee is not obliged - as he should be - to clearly signal what he has called."
With Britain a primary base for the corruption of betting markets throughout Europe, it makes no sense for the Home Countries to have such a say in the imposition of Rules that usurp the Laws of the Game.
The Economist this week produces an article on organised crime in Britain.
As it is organised crime that is defiling our sports, some of the newspapers' points resonate with regard to football and cricket.
"Organised crime may do especially well in the downturn because it depends so heavily on the bribery of officials, reckons Michael Levi, a professor of criminology at Cardiff University. A poor border guard is easier to tempt than a rich one, and a struggling business may be persuaded to launder money."
And a poor referee or umpire (#####################################################) is easier to tempt than a rich one too...
Gardner calls for the establishment of a new body to democratically oversee the Laws of Football.
"The new body should do away, once and for all, with the secrecy and the hocus pocus that still surrounds referees and their activities. The IFAB needs a new approach, and one that should ring a few bells with Sepp Blatter - transparency."
Unfortunately in England even the chairman of the FA, Lord Triesman, believes that "transparency lies in an unmarked grave."
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 17 July 2009
Scot Scuppers Sassenachs #
Exactly How Conspiratorial Do You Wish To Be?
Okay, right...
What if, last year, Sir Ferguson and Michael Owen did a little deal while examining their racecards in the owners enclosure of some racecourse or other?
What if they penned a mutually beneficial win-win scenario?
In a parallel neohyperreality, is it feasible that the arrangement goes something like this...?
* Ferguson and Owen sign deal.
* Owen underperforms massively at Newcastle once Alan Shearer takes over as manager. Owen's duplicitous dichotomousness convinces 'Al that he is hyperreally trying on the pitch when data, statistics and betting market evidence suggests otherwise - check out the images and betting market patterns from the Stoke City away match, for example.
Anyway, Owen failed to score in the last four months of the season, Newcastle were relegated, Mr Minimum Wage took another few tens of millions hit and Sir Ferguson got revenge served cold on Mr Shearer.
* With his market value below zero, in steps Sir Ferguson in the aftermath of this debacle and signs the unsignable with a performance-related two year contract, snapping the little man up from beneath the collective noses of Hull City, managed by another horseracing devotee, Phil Brown. Brown showed what he thought of the 'quality' of Owen by signing Bobby Zamora in his stead - it was touch and go whether Owen or Zamora were the worst strikers in the Premier League last season.
While astute Manchester United fans are aware that they have purchased a non-trier, has Sir Ferguson trumped such concerns via his arrangement with Owen, which might continue thus...?
* ###############################################################################
###############################################################################
##################################################################################
################################################################################
############################################################################
###############################################################################
* #################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
################################################################################
#############################################################################
#################################################################################
##################################################
* ###############################################################################
##############################################################################
############################################################################
################################################################################
#############################################################################
#########################################################################
Scot scuppers Sassenachs.
The Balance Sheet
Sir Ferguson - Gets Shearer and Newcastle relegated; picks up talented non-trier on the very cheap with suitably placed performative inducements in place; gets the best out of a has-been for one season (the second year of the deal is guaranteed high risk); helps to prevent any chance of England winning the World Cup, particularly if there are also changes between the goalposts.
Michael Owen - Gets Shearer relegated; signs unlikely high profile deal with all the relevant merchandising options; ###############################################
###############################################################################
############################################################### option to continue the project for a second season.
Additionally, the number of occasions where both parties, either singularly or in collusion, might participate in market activities highly correlated with proprietary financial gain is significant.
John Colquhoun, the soon-to-be-disgraced football agent, once told me that Sir Ferguson had £20 million stashed with Goldman Sachs.
In order that we don't have to say anything further on the mechanics of this mammon, it does suggest that Sir Ferguson has been living very frugally over his tenure at Manchester United.
"If you are so smart, how come you ain't rich?"
"If you're so rich, how come you ain't smart?"
Nowadays, it seems like it is always April 1st.
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Okay, right...
What if, last year, Sir Ferguson and Michael Owen did a little deal while examining their racecards in the owners enclosure of some racecourse or other?
What if they penned a mutually beneficial win-win scenario?
In a parallel neohyperreality, is it feasible that the arrangement goes something like this...?
* Ferguson and Owen sign deal.
* Owen underperforms massively at Newcastle once Alan Shearer takes over as manager. Owen's duplicitous dichotomousness convinces 'Al that he is hyperreally trying on the pitch when data, statistics and betting market evidence suggests otherwise - check out the images and betting market patterns from the Stoke City away match, for example.
Anyway, Owen failed to score in the last four months of the season, Newcastle were relegated, Mr Minimum Wage took another few tens of millions hit and Sir Ferguson got revenge served cold on Mr Shearer.
* With his market value below zero, in steps Sir Ferguson in the aftermath of this debacle and signs the unsignable with a performance-related two year contract, snapping the little man up from beneath the collective noses of Hull City, managed by another horseracing devotee, Phil Brown. Brown showed what he thought of the 'quality' of Owen by signing Bobby Zamora in his stead - it was touch and go whether Owen or Zamora were the worst strikers in the Premier League last season.
While astute Manchester United fans are aware that they have purchased a non-trier, has Sir Ferguson trumped such concerns via his arrangement with Owen, which might continue thus...?
* ###############################################################################
###############################################################################
##################################################################################
################################################################################
############################################################################
###############################################################################
* #################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
################################################################################
#############################################################################
#################################################################################
##################################################
* ###############################################################################
##############################################################################
############################################################################
################################################################################
#############################################################################
#########################################################################
Scot scuppers Sassenachs.
The Balance Sheet
Sir Ferguson - Gets Shearer and Newcastle relegated; picks up talented non-trier on the very cheap with suitably placed performative inducements in place; gets the best out of a has-been for one season (the second year of the deal is guaranteed high risk); helps to prevent any chance of England winning the World Cup, particularly if there are also changes between the goalposts.
Michael Owen - Gets Shearer relegated; signs unlikely high profile deal with all the relevant merchandising options; ###############################################
###############################################################################
############################################################### option to continue the project for a second season.
Additionally, the number of occasions where both parties, either singularly or in collusion, might participate in market activities highly correlated with proprietary financial gain is significant.
John Colquhoun, the soon-to-be-disgraced football agent, once told me that Sir Ferguson had £20 million stashed with Goldman Sachs.
In order that we don't have to say anything further on the mechanics of this mammon, it does suggest that Sir Ferguson has been living very frugally over his tenure at Manchester United.
"If you are so smart, how come you ain't rich?"
"If you're so rich, how come you ain't smart?"
Nowadays, it seems like it is always April 1st.
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 14 July 2009
"Doubt Is Not A Pleasant Position..." #
"Doubt is not a pleasant position, but certainty is absurd" - Voltaire.
In other countries, when there is a crisis in a sport, the crisis is branded.
Symbolic actions are perpetrated that adjust thresholds, tweak regulations, punish the alleged miscreants as territory is lost and gained via strategic power plays.
Think calciopoli.
In England, we have enough miscreance to sink a battleship but there is no branding of the shenanigans, there is only self-regulation or, even better, no regulation at all; no loopholes are addressed, whistleblowers are beyond the pale and, above all, there is no fear of punishment.
BSkyB.
News Group.
The Murdochracy.
Forces of corporate darkness.
In cahoots with #################################################################
################################################################################
#########################################################################
We have come to terms with ###################################################
#############################################################################
################################################################################
##############################################################################
##############################################################################
###############################################################
But we do not expect to get our phones tapped, thank you very much.
And neither did PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor nor Sir Ferguson of Manchester.
The former received a nice £700,000 out of court settlement from News Group in order to keep quiet about it, as the Murdochracy did not wish for a public hearing.
This is serious stuff which makes it all the more strange that Dibble have decided that no criminalities have been undertaken here.
The tapping of phones of industry insiders by a business with betting market operations in-house is potentially the ultimate form of insider trading - being privy to primary level inside knowledge without the source being aware that the information has been leaked.
The advantage is marked - the surveillance results in a market edge on the source itself!
There are so many people within the English game, at all strata, with an active interest in the underground and private betting markets, that the monitoring of such individuals by an organisation such as BSkyB is systemically problematical.
BSkyB, like all other industry core operations, understand where the scallywaggery is taking place.
The proprietary market advantage of such courses of action are significant.
When they are not tapping phones, the Murdochracy spends its time developing a monopoly, with the active involvement of the ScudamoreWorld entity known as the Premier League.
When we posted about the demise of Setanta and the potential salvation offered by Len Blavatnik, we suggested that it was highly likely that the Premier League would put an inappropriate and impossible deadline on the negotiations.
And they did.
Having heard of the proposed takeover on the Monday, ScudamoreWorld gave all parties just four days to undertake the full negotiation process.
This is a squeeze.
Setanta was taken out of the game.
Everything was going to plan.
When BSkyB won the rights to five of the six packages for Premier League tv rights 2010-13, there was only one thorough evaluation of the auction process in the media.
This was to be found in the Financial Times (FT).
The Premier League, after taking into account inflation, actually received less bid money than on the last occasion.
The FT said at the time that BSkyB had still overpaid and that they had effectively thrown money at putting Setanta "in its place... The results of the auction throw into question how Setanta will reach breakeven point on its subscriber model."
It is always easier to spend someone else's money in the future in order to tie up a deal than it is to deal with Reality.
BSkyB were betting the business on demolishing Setanta because of one very key loophole built in to the BSkyB/Premier League self-regulatory concoction.
The Premier League had reserved the right to put the final year of Setanta's 2010-13 deal out to tender if necessary.
This is key.
A Premier League loophole allows for one media company to have exclusive rights to ALL Premier League games from season 2012/2013.
Total monopoly.
Alas for human villainy!
This was beginning to take on all the aspects of a neatly cornered market under absolute systemic control but, then, monopolistic domination was trumped by competitive markets, and regulatory bodies started to take an interest in developments.
It was Our Great Leader's response to the latter that was most revealing.
Scudamore slammed the decision by Ofcom, the regulators, to investigate the way BSkyB buys rights to screen matches in the Premier League.
Our Great Leader moaned that the regulatory body had "ignored the representations of content owners", like the only thing that matters in monopolistic territories is the desires of the monopolists themselves.
But both BSkyB/Premier League have problems here due to the Murdochracy's overpayment for the 2010-13 rights, the spiralling crescendo of the Depression and the full impact of the proposed Ofcom changes.
Which are, namely...
... that BSkyB sell on packages to competitors and that subscription rates are reduced and that the allocation of rights is a more open process with effective monitoring of the procedures.
As the Financial Times stated, BSkyB's status has "come under threat".
The other issue for BSkyB/Premier League is the nature of the 'new' competition, ESPN.
The US media company are a far more dangerous opposition than scanty Setanta and they already possess a huge portfolio of global sports with which to fatten their consumer packages.
ScudamoreWorld have, in Reality, scored a monopolistic own goal here - by antisocially destroying the competitiveness of the sector, they have unwittingly introduced a bigger beast onto the stage.
This has all the potential to be a global battle, as typified by the recent press release from Real Madrid highlighting the need for a European Super League, and the takeover of the Asian Champions League by Murdochracy/Premier League.
################################################################################
##############################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
##############################################################################
############################################################################
One might think that the combination of bung inquiries, money laundering investigations, rampant match fixing, bribery and coercion of match officials, the advancement of the private betting markets, the unsustainable debt, links to horseracing industry, extensive insider trading and cornering of markets, the creation of a systemic monopoly, the lack of role of government, the repeated takeover of clubs by criminal money, child trafficking, rogue agents fronting betting consortia, that sort of thing, might have resulted in a branded entity akin to calciopoli in Italy.
When does it become Follywood?
Give us our Hyperreal Brand.
Corruption in Follywood.
No more Scudamore clichés and deliberate untruths in the threads of dishonesty emanating from his hacks.
"This is the source of our profound boredom" - Jean Baudrillard.
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
In other countries, when there is a crisis in a sport, the crisis is branded.
Symbolic actions are perpetrated that adjust thresholds, tweak regulations, punish the alleged miscreants as territory is lost and gained via strategic power plays.
Think calciopoli.
In England, we have enough miscreance to sink a battleship but there is no branding of the shenanigans, there is only self-regulation or, even better, no regulation at all; no loopholes are addressed, whistleblowers are beyond the pale and, above all, there is no fear of punishment.
BSkyB.
News Group.
The Murdochracy.
Forces of corporate darkness.
In cahoots with #################################################################
################################################################################
#########################################################################
We have come to terms with ###################################################
#############################################################################
################################################################################
##############################################################################
##############################################################################
###############################################################
But we do not expect to get our phones tapped, thank you very much.
And neither did PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor nor Sir Ferguson of Manchester.
The former received a nice £700,000 out of court settlement from News Group in order to keep quiet about it, as the Murdochracy did not wish for a public hearing.
This is serious stuff which makes it all the more strange that Dibble have decided that no criminalities have been undertaken here.
The tapping of phones of industry insiders by a business with betting market operations in-house is potentially the ultimate form of insider trading - being privy to primary level inside knowledge without the source being aware that the information has been leaked.
The advantage is marked - the surveillance results in a market edge on the source itself!
There are so many people within the English game, at all strata, with an active interest in the underground and private betting markets, that the monitoring of such individuals by an organisation such as BSkyB is systemically problematical.
BSkyB, like all other industry core operations, understand where the scallywaggery is taking place.
The proprietary market advantage of such courses of action are significant.
When they are not tapping phones, the Murdochracy spends its time developing a monopoly, with the active involvement of the ScudamoreWorld entity known as the Premier League.
When we posted about the demise of Setanta and the potential salvation offered by Len Blavatnik, we suggested that it was highly likely that the Premier League would put an inappropriate and impossible deadline on the negotiations.
And they did.
Having heard of the proposed takeover on the Monday, ScudamoreWorld gave all parties just four days to undertake the full negotiation process.
This is a squeeze.
Setanta was taken out of the game.
Everything was going to plan.
When BSkyB won the rights to five of the six packages for Premier League tv rights 2010-13, there was only one thorough evaluation of the auction process in the media.
This was to be found in the Financial Times (FT).
The Premier League, after taking into account inflation, actually received less bid money than on the last occasion.
The FT said at the time that BSkyB had still overpaid and that they had effectively thrown money at putting Setanta "in its place... The results of the auction throw into question how Setanta will reach breakeven point on its subscriber model."
It is always easier to spend someone else's money in the future in order to tie up a deal than it is to deal with Reality.
BSkyB were betting the business on demolishing Setanta because of one very key loophole built in to the BSkyB/Premier League self-regulatory concoction.
The Premier League had reserved the right to put the final year of Setanta's 2010-13 deal out to tender if necessary.
This is key.
A Premier League loophole allows for one media company to have exclusive rights to ALL Premier League games from season 2012/2013.
Total monopoly.
Alas for human villainy!
This was beginning to take on all the aspects of a neatly cornered market under absolute systemic control but, then, monopolistic domination was trumped by competitive markets, and regulatory bodies started to take an interest in developments.
It was Our Great Leader's response to the latter that was most revealing.
Scudamore slammed the decision by Ofcom, the regulators, to investigate the way BSkyB buys rights to screen matches in the Premier League.
Our Great Leader moaned that the regulatory body had "ignored the representations of content owners", like the only thing that matters in monopolistic territories is the desires of the monopolists themselves.
But both BSkyB/Premier League have problems here due to the Murdochracy's overpayment for the 2010-13 rights, the spiralling crescendo of the Depression and the full impact of the proposed Ofcom changes.
Which are, namely...
... that BSkyB sell on packages to competitors and that subscription rates are reduced and that the allocation of rights is a more open process with effective monitoring of the procedures.
As the Financial Times stated, BSkyB's status has "come under threat".
The other issue for BSkyB/Premier League is the nature of the 'new' competition, ESPN.
The US media company are a far more dangerous opposition than scanty Setanta and they already possess a huge portfolio of global sports with which to fatten their consumer packages.
ScudamoreWorld have, in Reality, scored a monopolistic own goal here - by antisocially destroying the competitiveness of the sector, they have unwittingly introduced a bigger beast onto the stage.
This has all the potential to be a global battle, as typified by the recent press release from Real Madrid highlighting the need for a European Super League, and the takeover of the Asian Champions League by Murdochracy/Premier League.
################################################################################
##############################################################################
#################################################################################
#################################################################################
##############################################################################
############################################################################
One might think that the combination of bung inquiries, money laundering investigations, rampant match fixing, bribery and coercion of match officials, the advancement of the private betting markets, the unsustainable debt, links to horseracing industry, extensive insider trading and cornering of markets, the creation of a systemic monopoly, the lack of role of government, the repeated takeover of clubs by criminal money, child trafficking, rogue agents fronting betting consortia, that sort of thing, might have resulted in a branded entity akin to calciopoli in Italy.
When does it become Follywood?
Give us our Hyperreal Brand.
Corruption in Follywood.
No more Scudamore clichés and deliberate untruths in the threads of dishonesty emanating from his hacks.
"This is the source of our profound boredom" - Jean Baudrillard.
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 9 July 2009
Should Michael Owen Pay To Play? #
The player evaluations in the recent transfer market windows have been nothing if not a latter day Hurufist numerological contortion of Reality.
In this post, which is largely for subscribers only, we address the pseudo-market in both a macro- and a microeconomic fashion in order to discover not only the Real pricing mechanisms but also a true assessment from the market of what constitutes a superstar.
Let us start off with the concept of value...
What is value?
In the transfer market, value is determined by two primary factors - pricing and timing.
To establish a Real price on a footballer is an increasingly complex formulation and, furthermore, these formulations are opaque to virtually everyone involved in the market. We have held numerous conversations with club owners, managers and agents over the last two years and only one Premier League manager of our acquaintance has even the remotest idea of how to thoroughly price a player.
The rest are just bobbins...
Most rely on fake consultants, guesstimations from university 'intellectuals', an over-reliance on pseudo-stats from ProZone, Opta and the like. It appears that a cutting edge approach simply involves a selection of the type of operation that one wishes to establish (see below) and a few laterally thought angles to gain some 'extra' knowledge from the statistics packages on offer.
Of course, everybody is using the same software and plotting the same lines on the same charts and, consequently, are making the same evaluations of players.
There is no Alpha in the transfer market, only a highly retrograde and unsophisticated Beta.
The Real price is dependent, unsurprisingly, on Reality.
Yet, beyond the simplistic nature of the assessments outlined above, the only further additions to the pricing process are the players age and their brand, and hence the degree to which they are able to be marketed.
Among a panoply of parameters that are not included in player evaluations are the following...
#############################################################################
########################################################################
#########################################################################
###########################################################################
######################################################################
####################################################################################
#############################################################################
#########################################################################
##########################################################################
########################################################################
############################################################################
###########################################################################
########################################################################
We could go on.
And on and on...
And even if the full array of inputs were to be included in a player value, the pricing is set against a warped continuum of pricing where, although the free transfer is rooted at zero, the maximum transfer fee is a stratospheric point - there is no upper limit, the current price zenith being a function of a range of macro inputs and territory-specific configurations.
Timing is the second key intelligence.
Market timing is the major differential between your average market participant and the top analysts - it is critical to be neither too early nor too late.
Taking the Big Four in England, Wenger and Ferguson are value-aware in their timing (the latter only in recent seasons) whereas Ancelotti and Benitez are out of their depth and, consequently, destroy value with its obvious negative impact on the clubs' finances.
When clubs are stretched thinly by debt, these assessments matter as player transfers are the biggest expenditure in footballing Hollywood - FollyWood...
The financial pressure upon Liverpool is exaggerated by the idiocy of Benitez in the market while United are just about treading water due to the combination of excessive success and carefully timed market activities.
And, for an assessment of what happens when wide-ranging dodginess surrounds a club, check out the states of Southampton and Portsmouth following their respective experiences of Redknappery - the ultimate destruction of value for proprietary gain.
Of course, the astuteness of management may be undermined by the stupidity of executives as is the case at Arsenal, where the debts related to the white elephant property development at Highbury were a very short-sighted strategy in the teeth of the Depression.
Although unusually constituted teams distort the transfer pricing continuum, their impact is usually short-term as their structures are unsustainable in the longer term - think Manchester City and the oil market, Chelsea and the fetishes of one oligarch or Real Madrid and the repeat of the Galacticos strategy.
And while we are on the subject of the transfer continuum, we can use the historical data to determine who were the Real Historical Greats.
In the last half century, the record transfer fee has spiralled from the £152,000 that Internazionale paid Barcelona for Luis Suarez in 1961 to the £80,000,000 that Real Madrid paid for Ronaldo this summer.
The psychology of the record transfer is a very interesting impact on the overall transfer market. Record transfers are made by Big Men who are keen to display their financial power through the showcase of the ultimate transfer fee. So, it is a given, for such antisocials, that the desire for a record transfer is part of the ego state.
It is the amount above the current record that determines the Real quality players, and the behavioural assessments that create this template affect other participants in the deal too - players, managers, agents etc.
Applying a simplistic formulation to the last 40 years demonstrates that the ratio of the current record transfer to the previous record is indicative of the Real quality of the player.
Here is your QED as we provide you with the hierarchy:
1. Johan Cruyff (Ajax - Barcelona) 1.84
2. Diego Maradona (Boca Juniors - Barcelona) 1.71
3. Diego Maradona (Barcelona - Napoli) 1.67
4. Christian Vieri (Lazio - Internazionale) 1.49
5. Paolo Rossi (Juventus - Vicenza) 1.46
6. Ronaldo (Manchester United - Real Madrid) 1.43
7. Roberto Baggio (Fiorentina - Juventus) 1.33
8. Giuseppe Savoldi (Bologna - Napoli) 1.30
9. Ronaldo (Barcelona - Internazionale) 1.30
10. Zinedine Zidane (Juventus - Real Madrid) 1.28
11. Jean-Pierre Papin (Marseille - Milan) 1.25
12. Ruud Gullit (PSV Eindhoven - Milan) 1.20
12. Gianluca Vialli (Sampdoria - Juventus) 1.20
14. Kaká (Milan - Real Madrid) 1.19
15. Alan Shearer (Blackburn - Newcastle) 1.15
16. Hernan Crespo (Parma - Lazio) 1.11
17. Denilson (Sao Paulo - Real Betis) 1.10
18. Gianluigi Lentini (Torino - Milan) 1.09
19. Luis Figo (Barcelona - Real Madrid) 1.04
There are, in effect, three templates for transfer activity and all clubs/agents must choose one of these options.
One might choose to nurture a youth policy and sell on the unwanted products in return for some external inputs.
Or, one might choose to go for the Galacticos-strategy where youth policy is sidelined so that marketable entities might be purchased at a price to provide benefits across the balance sheet.
Or, one might select the most creative option - a combination of the first two scenarios as currently being implemented by Manchester United.
Some hyperrealities are impossible to price using conventional evaluation methods as the players involved are so warped by their inappropriate associations that any attempt at establishing a Real price is complicated by murky inputs.
How on earth does Sir Ferguson go about putting a price on our heroic helicopter pilot, Michael Owen?
We suggested when Owen moved to Newcastle that there should be no transfer fee nor wages and that he should, in fact, be paying the club in order to play.
Sir Ferguson has only travelled a part of this route in that the club will be paying Owen whenever he steps onto the pitch.
History shows that this produces a footballing version of negative equity as the combination of market hyperrealities do not allow for players like Owen to be pleasing all of their stakeholders at any one time.
This is ScudamoreWorld after all.
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
In this post, which is largely for subscribers only, we address the pseudo-market in both a macro- and a microeconomic fashion in order to discover not only the Real pricing mechanisms but also a true assessment from the market of what constitutes a superstar.
Let us start off with the concept of value...
What is value?
In the transfer market, value is determined by two primary factors - pricing and timing.
To establish a Real price on a footballer is an increasingly complex formulation and, furthermore, these formulations are opaque to virtually everyone involved in the market. We have held numerous conversations with club owners, managers and agents over the last two years and only one Premier League manager of our acquaintance has even the remotest idea of how to thoroughly price a player.
The rest are just bobbins...
Most rely on fake consultants, guesstimations from university 'intellectuals', an over-reliance on pseudo-stats from ProZone, Opta and the like. It appears that a cutting edge approach simply involves a selection of the type of operation that one wishes to establish (see below) and a few laterally thought angles to gain some 'extra' knowledge from the statistics packages on offer.
Of course, everybody is using the same software and plotting the same lines on the same charts and, consequently, are making the same evaluations of players.
There is no Alpha in the transfer market, only a highly retrograde and unsophisticated Beta.
The Real price is dependent, unsurprisingly, on Reality.
Yet, beyond the simplistic nature of the assessments outlined above, the only further additions to the pricing process are the players age and their brand, and hence the degree to which they are able to be marketed.
Among a panoply of parameters that are not included in player evaluations are the following...
#############################################################################
########################################################################
#########################################################################
###########################################################################
######################################################################
####################################################################################
#############################################################################
#########################################################################
##########################################################################
########################################################################
############################################################################
###########################################################################
########################################################################
We could go on.
And on and on...
And even if the full array of inputs were to be included in a player value, the pricing is set against a warped continuum of pricing where, although the free transfer is rooted at zero, the maximum transfer fee is a stratospheric point - there is no upper limit, the current price zenith being a function of a range of macro inputs and territory-specific configurations.
Timing is the second key intelligence.
Market timing is the major differential between your average market participant and the top analysts - it is critical to be neither too early nor too late.
Taking the Big Four in England, Wenger and Ferguson are value-aware in their timing (the latter only in recent seasons) whereas Ancelotti and Benitez are out of their depth and, consequently, destroy value with its obvious negative impact on the clubs' finances.
When clubs are stretched thinly by debt, these assessments matter as player transfers are the biggest expenditure in footballing Hollywood - FollyWood...
The financial pressure upon Liverpool is exaggerated by the idiocy of Benitez in the market while United are just about treading water due to the combination of excessive success and carefully timed market activities.
And, for an assessment of what happens when wide-ranging dodginess surrounds a club, check out the states of Southampton and Portsmouth following their respective experiences of Redknappery - the ultimate destruction of value for proprietary gain.
Of course, the astuteness of management may be undermined by the stupidity of executives as is the case at Arsenal, where the debts related to the white elephant property development at Highbury were a very short-sighted strategy in the teeth of the Depression.
Although unusually constituted teams distort the transfer pricing continuum, their impact is usually short-term as their structures are unsustainable in the longer term - think Manchester City and the oil market, Chelsea and the fetishes of one oligarch or Real Madrid and the repeat of the Galacticos strategy.
And while we are on the subject of the transfer continuum, we can use the historical data to determine who were the Real Historical Greats.
In the last half century, the record transfer fee has spiralled from the £152,000 that Internazionale paid Barcelona for Luis Suarez in 1961 to the £80,000,000 that Real Madrid paid for Ronaldo this summer.
The psychology of the record transfer is a very interesting impact on the overall transfer market. Record transfers are made by Big Men who are keen to display their financial power through the showcase of the ultimate transfer fee. So, it is a given, for such antisocials, that the desire for a record transfer is part of the ego state.
It is the amount above the current record that determines the Real quality players, and the behavioural assessments that create this template affect other participants in the deal too - players, managers, agents etc.
Applying a simplistic formulation to the last 40 years demonstrates that the ratio of the current record transfer to the previous record is indicative of the Real quality of the player.
Here is your QED as we provide you with the hierarchy:
1. Johan Cruyff (Ajax - Barcelona) 1.84
2. Diego Maradona (Boca Juniors - Barcelona) 1.71
3. Diego Maradona (Barcelona - Napoli) 1.67
4. Christian Vieri (Lazio - Internazionale) 1.49
5. Paolo Rossi (Juventus - Vicenza) 1.46
6. Ronaldo (Manchester United - Real Madrid) 1.43
7. Roberto Baggio (Fiorentina - Juventus) 1.33
8. Giuseppe Savoldi (Bologna - Napoli) 1.30
9. Ronaldo (Barcelona - Internazionale) 1.30
10. Zinedine Zidane (Juventus - Real Madrid) 1.28
11. Jean-Pierre Papin (Marseille - Milan) 1.25
12. Ruud Gullit (PSV Eindhoven - Milan) 1.20
12. Gianluca Vialli (Sampdoria - Juventus) 1.20
14. Kaká (Milan - Real Madrid) 1.19
15. Alan Shearer (Blackburn - Newcastle) 1.15
16. Hernan Crespo (Parma - Lazio) 1.11
17. Denilson (Sao Paulo - Real Betis) 1.10
18. Gianluigi Lentini (Torino - Milan) 1.09
19. Luis Figo (Barcelona - Real Madrid) 1.04
There are, in effect, three templates for transfer activity and all clubs/agents must choose one of these options.
One might choose to nurture a youth policy and sell on the unwanted products in return for some external inputs.
Or, one might choose to go for the Galacticos-strategy where youth policy is sidelined so that marketable entities might be purchased at a price to provide benefits across the balance sheet.
Or, one might select the most creative option - a combination of the first two scenarios as currently being implemented by Manchester United.
Some hyperrealities are impossible to price using conventional evaluation methods as the players involved are so warped by their inappropriate associations that any attempt at establishing a Real price is complicated by murky inputs.
How on earth does Sir Ferguson go about putting a price on our heroic helicopter pilot, Michael Owen?
We suggested when Owen moved to Newcastle that there should be no transfer fee nor wages and that he should, in fact, be paying the club in order to play.
Sir Ferguson has only travelled a part of this route in that the club will be paying Owen whenever he steps onto the pitch.
History shows that this produces a footballing version of negative equity as the combination of market hyperrealities do not allow for players like Owen to be pleasing all of their stakeholders at any one time.
This is ScudamoreWorld after all.
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
Blackpool Is The Only Valid Dark Pool
Dark Pools and many other forms of "Shadow Markets" are entirely non-regulated.
Utilised for the trading of huge blocks of institutional, and often inside, knowledge, Dark Pools allow an array of benefits for big investors.
As if being able to trade inside information in a private non-regulated environment were not enough of an advantage, market participants are assured of no price scalping, anonymity, and the ability to trade on the 'highest platform' - always the dominant level in any market structure.
The whole Dark Pool edifice is self-supporting in its self-generated protective bubble.
The broker-dealers and exchanges offering Dark Poolery are in a privileged position, which is why they are able to offer such generous terms to institutional investors in the first place.
They are first in the line for highly influential market information - primary level cloned trading is a good place to be.
This knowledge is very valuable and is immediately traded around the Dark Pool network - there are currently 40 operators in the US and 9% of market activity is located in these private environments.
By 2010, it is projected that there will be around one hundred Dark Pools worldwide which is not a sustainable number. The Dark Pool sector will consolidate and mature. Due to the nature of this sector, players will disappear apace when the chips are down.
The dynamic to evolve to maturity at speed is also paramount for this sector due to the Depression. The market cannot sustain 100 platforms. Primary level advantage in a mature market sector in a Depression era is an ultimate market locus.
Securing advantage in route to market and, crucially, a temporal edge in order to jump-start the next wave of the Depression to proprietary advantage, this sector exists simply to optimise the trading environment and performance of a 'financial elite'.
These constructs are the future of financial markets.
These structures are highly regressive.
Non-regulated private markets allow a Pandora's box of market abuse away from the glare of oversight. Co-ordinated market strategies may be orchestrated to corner a particular market to the detriment of the selected victims, entirely controlled market entities may be developed, fake market momentum generated etc etc.
There are so many loopholes in Dark Pools that the fabric of regulation crumbles to pieces - there is not enough 'solidity' to allow the holes to be looped!
But, insider trading opportunities are surely the most pernicious.
Company officers are being allowed a massive perk here - the ability to privately back or lay their company (or other companies in which they hold directorships or primary level inside information) without such positioning being reported to any regulatory body nor, obviously, any public place.
This creates a very tilted marketplace to the benefit of the elite and the disadvantage of everybody else, including the lower tiers of financial capitalism.
By taking advantage of private markets to trade their information, insiders are severely hampering price transparency.
Without price transparency, free market capitalism works even less well than is already the case.
So, the global economic well-being deteriorates just to allow the Chosen Few to trade yet another poker table of our existences.
Of course, eventually, the private trading reaches the public space, but only after it has visited numerous other private spaces on the way.
Repeated cloned trading by brokers announces the neohyperreality to the public markets so that the massed middle classes are able to add such data to their software and charts.
In a Depression, the temporal edge is the most important.
Markets are volatile in Depressions.
Trading the volatility is easy money.
Gaining solid price enhances these profits.
But the main advantage bestowed by the temporal edge is when significant breakpoint news is known to the elite. In the most serious state - market paralysis, think Iceland - this temporal edge allows massive market advantage.
You should think through the other potential trading templates that offer structural advantage to these market architects - there are many of them.
As we have said once before, the Dark Pools offer temporal advantage in the current Depression in a parallel manner to which the Ticker-Tape did in the Great Depression.
The only question remaining is surely this.
Will this Depression be the Even Greater Depression or the Permanent Depression?
Still we should be grateful for one thing, at least the financial elite look like they will come through with their assets suitably bolstered when judged comparatively.
This is very pleasing...
Speculators are always blamed for the crises of capitalism.
But this is too simple a view.
Insider traders and primary level clone traders are the Dark Pool and their leeches, and the catastrophes that define this system are generated by the market activities of these participants.
But your average speculator is not in these elevated circles.
Your average speculator is riding the surf rather than generating the wave in the first place.
So blame NYFix and Turquoise and, soon, Baikal.
And blame the state-based economic systems that allow this chicanery to take place while the world goes to pot, rack and ruin.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Utilised for the trading of huge blocks of institutional, and often inside, knowledge, Dark Pools allow an array of benefits for big investors.
As if being able to trade inside information in a private non-regulated environment were not enough of an advantage, market participants are assured of no price scalping, anonymity, and the ability to trade on the 'highest platform' - always the dominant level in any market structure.
The whole Dark Pool edifice is self-supporting in its self-generated protective bubble.
The broker-dealers and exchanges offering Dark Poolery are in a privileged position, which is why they are able to offer such generous terms to institutional investors in the first place.
They are first in the line for highly influential market information - primary level cloned trading is a good place to be.
This knowledge is very valuable and is immediately traded around the Dark Pool network - there are currently 40 operators in the US and 9% of market activity is located in these private environments.
By 2010, it is projected that there will be around one hundred Dark Pools worldwide which is not a sustainable number. The Dark Pool sector will consolidate and mature. Due to the nature of this sector, players will disappear apace when the chips are down.
The dynamic to evolve to maturity at speed is also paramount for this sector due to the Depression. The market cannot sustain 100 platforms. Primary level advantage in a mature market sector in a Depression era is an ultimate market locus.
Securing advantage in route to market and, crucially, a temporal edge in order to jump-start the next wave of the Depression to proprietary advantage, this sector exists simply to optimise the trading environment and performance of a 'financial elite'.
These constructs are the future of financial markets.
These structures are highly regressive.
Non-regulated private markets allow a Pandora's box of market abuse away from the glare of oversight. Co-ordinated market strategies may be orchestrated to corner a particular market to the detriment of the selected victims, entirely controlled market entities may be developed, fake market momentum generated etc etc.
There are so many loopholes in Dark Pools that the fabric of regulation crumbles to pieces - there is not enough 'solidity' to allow the holes to be looped!
But, insider trading opportunities are surely the most pernicious.
Company officers are being allowed a massive perk here - the ability to privately back or lay their company (or other companies in which they hold directorships or primary level inside information) without such positioning being reported to any regulatory body nor, obviously, any public place.
This creates a very tilted marketplace to the benefit of the elite and the disadvantage of everybody else, including the lower tiers of financial capitalism.
By taking advantage of private markets to trade their information, insiders are severely hampering price transparency.
Without price transparency, free market capitalism works even less well than is already the case.
So, the global economic well-being deteriorates just to allow the Chosen Few to trade yet another poker table of our existences.
Of course, eventually, the private trading reaches the public space, but only after it has visited numerous other private spaces on the way.
Repeated cloned trading by brokers announces the neohyperreality to the public markets so that the massed middle classes are able to add such data to their software and charts.
In a Depression, the temporal edge is the most important.
Markets are volatile in Depressions.
Trading the volatility is easy money.
Gaining solid price enhances these profits.
But the main advantage bestowed by the temporal edge is when significant breakpoint news is known to the elite. In the most serious state - market paralysis, think Iceland - this temporal edge allows massive market advantage.
You should think through the other potential trading templates that offer structural advantage to these market architects - there are many of them.
As we have said once before, the Dark Pools offer temporal advantage in the current Depression in a parallel manner to which the Ticker-Tape did in the Great Depression.
The only question remaining is surely this.
Will this Depression be the Even Greater Depression or the Permanent Depression?
Still we should be grateful for one thing, at least the financial elite look like they will come through with their assets suitably bolstered when judged comparatively.
This is very pleasing...
Speculators are always blamed for the crises of capitalism.
But this is too simple a view.
Insider traders and primary level clone traders are the Dark Pool and their leeches, and the catastrophes that define this system are generated by the market activities of these participants.
But your average speculator is not in these elevated circles.
Your average speculator is riding the surf rather than generating the wave in the first place.
So blame NYFix and Turquoise and, soon, Baikal.
And blame the state-based economic systems that allow this chicanery to take place while the world goes to pot, rack and ruin.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Saturday, 4 July 2009
Too Illegit To Quit #
"Until the eighteenth century, we hanged guilty animals, after a formal condemnation, for causing a man's death. We even hanged horses" - Michel Foucault.
Some things are simply too surreal - the duck-billed platypus, a cap-and-trade scheme alongside a protectionist carbon tax on imports as a cure-all for climate change, your average Werner Herzog movie, the concept of 'new-men', and the mainstream media obsession with Michael Owen/ mainstream media obsession with Goldchip Bookmakers (one or the other...).
Michael Owen to lead the Manchester United attack is self-harming enough for Sir Ferguson but his new business venture with Sir Frost, aAim Capital Finance, is taking his current wave of self-destructiveness to new levels - commercial property is not a good bet as we approach the worst phase of the Depression.
Indeed, oversight bodies on both sides of the Atlantic have stated that bank stress tests should be repeated as the full current risk of commercial property has been excluded from the projections.
Buying in at a perceived bottom is only a good idea if a) you are not buying a toxic asset, and b) there is no longer term macro-systemic risk related to the purchase.
Michael Owen represents the former and any venture into commercial property the latter, so what is to be done?
Sir Ferguson started one of his periodic windows of losing-the-plot in the lead up to the Champions League Final window.
We strongly suspected from the match performance that team spirit had been punctured pre-match but it was only after the match that an array of contacts have filled us in on the hyperreality of the Barcelona match.
################################################################################
#############################################################################
#################################################################################
####################################################################
################################################################################
##########################################################################
What was Sir Ferguson thinking?
Was he thinking commercial property?
The aAim venture with Sir David Frost is set up with £1 billion of Middle East investment. Buying at a perceived but fake market bottom is only practical if one is able to take a seriously long term perspective (think Berkshire Hathaway) AND there are no holistic matrices that suggest serious supersystemic risk.
aAim fails to take aim at either of these targets.
#################################################################################
###############################################################################
###############################################################################
There is no market to compete in and the external investment is fluid.
The Michael Owen gamble is more entertaining still.
Owen was on the verge of joining Hull City...
Longer term Football Is Fixed readers will know that Owen has a little bit of form when the word 'gambling' is in the vicinity.
To put it in a nut-shell, Owen's business partner is Steve Smith, who runs Goldchip Bookmakers - a private bookmaking firm that has historically focused heavily on England international matches.
##############################################################################
###############################################################################
#################################################################################
As Owen is being rewarded by performance rather than by basic salary, we have a neat little hierarchy of incentives here.
As professionally (as a footballer, at least), Owen is past his sell-by date by some distance, the overperformance-for-financial-reward incentive is not on the table.
But little Michael has to pay for his helicopter somehow, so what other options does our ################################################## have up his sleeve?
##################################################################################
#################################################################################
###################################################################################
##################################################################################
###################################################################################
###############################################################################
Perhaps what is happening is that Sir Ferguson is trying to rundown his legacy before taking over the United Kingdom Disunited team for the 2012 Olympics nonsense?
By leaving United in a parlous state, whoever takes over after him will be left with a dysfunctional business with ropy finances.
Sir Ferguson understands better than most that winning the Champions League and Premier League every year in order to breakeven financially is not a viable business model.
###########################################################################
Peter Taylor: "United create so many chances it wouldn't surprise me if Michael is the Premier League's top scorer next year. And I'm sure he'll be on the plane to South Africa [for the World Cup] next summer."
And, if he is on the plane, we guarantee that England will not win the World Cup.
Rob Lee: "It's a piece of genius management... It's no gamble."
By Steve Smith, the management has undoubtedly been slick - ###############
#############################################################################
##############################################################################
###############################################################
As for it not being a gamble.
It is.
And in every sense of the word...
When not amassing a private fortune, Sir Ferguson has found the time to tell us that the Premier League is "a league with the best integrity in the world."
Sir Ferguson, with his horseracing and property interests and longevity in the game, must understand the hyperreality of the signing of Michael Owen, with his horseracing and property interests and longevity in the game.
#################################################################################
##############################################################################
################################################################################
################################################################################
###########################################################################
The Owen Affair also reveals the role of PR companies in dictating the 'news' that we view.
Owen hasn't been out of the papers since the 32 page PR brochure was produced at the conclusion of the season.
Mainstream football journalists are either gutter or inept and Michael Owen sells papers. Truth has nothing to do with anything, of course, just random variations on the hyperreality with a fine sprinkling of rampant disinformation serves the cause nicely.
A few weeks ago, John Barnes said, after accepting the Tranmere Rovers job: "I think there is still a race barrier in this country."
But being a variation on apartheid-era South Africa is apparently not worthy of further consideration in the press.
After all, there was the Owen PR document to promote.
In the Infantile Solipsis of ScudamoreWorld, stuck in the excruciating slap-stick of the summer transfer window, this is no longer football.
There is nothing left to be done in this place.
Vladimir Voinovich: "Something has been clarified here, but something remains obscure."
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Some things are simply too surreal - the duck-billed platypus, a cap-and-trade scheme alongside a protectionist carbon tax on imports as a cure-all for climate change, your average Werner Herzog movie, the concept of 'new-men', and the mainstream media obsession with Michael Owen/ mainstream media obsession with Goldchip Bookmakers (one or the other...).
Michael Owen to lead the Manchester United attack is self-harming enough for Sir Ferguson but his new business venture with Sir Frost, aAim Capital Finance, is taking his current wave of self-destructiveness to new levels - commercial property is not a good bet as we approach the worst phase of the Depression.
Indeed, oversight bodies on both sides of the Atlantic have stated that bank stress tests should be repeated as the full current risk of commercial property has been excluded from the projections.
Buying in at a perceived bottom is only a good idea if a) you are not buying a toxic asset, and b) there is no longer term macro-systemic risk related to the purchase.
Michael Owen represents the former and any venture into commercial property the latter, so what is to be done?
Sir Ferguson started one of his periodic windows of losing-the-plot in the lead up to the Champions League Final window.
We strongly suspected from the match performance that team spirit had been punctured pre-match but it was only after the match that an array of contacts have filled us in on the hyperreality of the Barcelona match.
################################################################################
#############################################################################
#################################################################################
####################################################################
################################################################################
##########################################################################
What was Sir Ferguson thinking?
Was he thinking commercial property?
The aAim venture with Sir David Frost is set up with £1 billion of Middle East investment. Buying at a perceived but fake market bottom is only practical if one is able to take a seriously long term perspective (think Berkshire Hathaway) AND there are no holistic matrices that suggest serious supersystemic risk.
aAim fails to take aim at either of these targets.
#################################################################################
###############################################################################
###############################################################################
There is no market to compete in and the external investment is fluid.
The Michael Owen gamble is more entertaining still.
Owen was on the verge of joining Hull City...
Longer term Football Is Fixed readers will know that Owen has a little bit of form when the word 'gambling' is in the vicinity.
To put it in a nut-shell, Owen's business partner is Steve Smith, who runs Goldchip Bookmakers - a private bookmaking firm that has historically focused heavily on England international matches.
##############################################################################
###############################################################################
#################################################################################
As Owen is being rewarded by performance rather than by basic salary, we have a neat little hierarchy of incentives here.
As professionally (as a footballer, at least), Owen is past his sell-by date by some distance, the overperformance-for-financial-reward incentive is not on the table.
But little Michael has to pay for his helicopter somehow, so what other options does our ################################################## have up his sleeve?
##################################################################################
#################################################################################
###################################################################################
##################################################################################
###################################################################################
###############################################################################
Perhaps what is happening is that Sir Ferguson is trying to rundown his legacy before taking over the United Kingdom Disunited team for the 2012 Olympics nonsense?
By leaving United in a parlous state, whoever takes over after him will be left with a dysfunctional business with ropy finances.
Sir Ferguson understands better than most that winning the Champions League and Premier League every year in order to breakeven financially is not a viable business model.
###########################################################################
Peter Taylor: "United create so many chances it wouldn't surprise me if Michael is the Premier League's top scorer next year. And I'm sure he'll be on the plane to South Africa [for the World Cup] next summer."
And, if he is on the plane, we guarantee that England will not win the World Cup.
Rob Lee: "It's a piece of genius management... It's no gamble."
By Steve Smith, the management has undoubtedly been slick - ###############
#############################################################################
##############################################################################
###############################################################
As for it not being a gamble.
It is.
And in every sense of the word...
When not amassing a private fortune, Sir Ferguson has found the time to tell us that the Premier League is "a league with the best integrity in the world."
Sir Ferguson, with his horseracing and property interests and longevity in the game, must understand the hyperreality of the signing of Michael Owen, with his horseracing and property interests and longevity in the game.
#################################################################################
##############################################################################
################################################################################
################################################################################
###########################################################################
The Owen Affair also reveals the role of PR companies in dictating the 'news' that we view.
Owen hasn't been out of the papers since the 32 page PR brochure was produced at the conclusion of the season.
Mainstream football journalists are either gutter or inept and Michael Owen sells papers. Truth has nothing to do with anything, of course, just random variations on the hyperreality with a fine sprinkling of rampant disinformation serves the cause nicely.
A few weeks ago, John Barnes said, after accepting the Tranmere Rovers job: "I think there is still a race barrier in this country."
But being a variation on apartheid-era South Africa is apparently not worthy of further consideration in the press.
After all, there was the Owen PR document to promote.
In the Infantile Solipsis of ScudamoreWorld, stuck in the excruciating slap-stick of the summer transfer window, this is no longer football.
There is nothing left to be done in this place.
Vladimir Voinovich: "Something has been clarified here, but something remains obscure."
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Wilting Away Playing Musical Chairs #
Green Shoots Of Recovery Genetically Modified
The total of the Plain People of England in gainful, non-Black Market employment is currently 29.11 million according to National Statistics Online (NSO), the people who keep giving us fictitious figures for our models.
2.26 million are on the Dole.
NSO have form, but we'll take them at their word here.
The most recent fake, by the way, was the hiding of the economic contraction in the 1st Quarter by pretending UK Plc shrank by 1.9% when, in Reality, it shrivelled by 2.4%.
Foucault: "'Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A 'regime' of truth."
Anyway.
Our rather pithy point is simply this.
As more and more workers are 'persuaded' to take gardening leave and other Orwellian ruptures of the employment contract like wage freezes, wage cuts and loopholed varieties of unpaid leave, the Real impact of the Depression is being shrouded in NSO Blind Spots - areas of the economic hyperreality that are part of the spectacle, and consequently are not to be told.
Just some back of the envelope stuff.
If 50% of UK employees take an average of one month unpaid toil this year, then the Real impact, all things considered, is an 'extra' 1 million unemployed.
Obviously, for various reasons, this is highly approximated.
################################################################################
##############################################################################
################################################################################
###############################################################################
If we so desired, we could provide you with such weightings for the territories in which we take a trading interest, but we're not going to, so there...
Following The Intellectual Black Hole Of Globalisation, Solar Systemisation Needs To Be Considered
Paul Krugman, last years' Nobel economist: "A big lesson from past bubbles is that recovery is export-led which is not helpful unless we can find another planet to export to."
Leaves Beginning To Brown On Green Shoots Of Recovery Nonsense
The Financial Times this morning gave us two headlines:
"Markets Head For Best Quarter In 20 Years"
and
"UK economy shrinks most in 50 years"
Indeed, the FTSE All World rose fully 21% in the last quarter.
During the worst Bear Market in history from 1930 to 1932, there were FIVE rallies of 20% or more.
Oh, and if you hyperreally wish to be taken in by the mainstream media calm, consider this from The Economist: "It must be admitted that, while economists think they have learned the lessons of the 1930s about how to avoid a Depression, stimulus packages on this scale have simply not been tried before. We don't know how they'll work, or what the side-effects will be."
The Tightrope - Financial Funambulism - A Reprise
On March 11th 2009, we gave you the following truly wonderful stuff...
"Stretched between the two great edifices of Friedmanism and its, as yet, unnamed offspring is The Tightrope.
Our Global Financial System (OGFS) is walking across The Tightrope at this very moment.
On the left of our intrepid anti-hero is the Abyss of Deflation.
On the right, the Hyperreality of Hyperinflation.
OGFS is desperate to avoid the Abyss of Deflation and is printing money to prevent any risk of Stagflation as the populace cannot be repeatedly fleeced within a stagflated environment.
Unfortunately, each spin of the printing press adds weight to the balancing rod held by OGFS, making the likelihood of the Hyperreality of Hyperinflation more Real.
Oh, and just to make the whole process more entertaining in a Gladiators-stylee, The Tightrope gradually narrows as OGFS approaches the goal AND the Monster from the Deep occasionally violently twists The Tightrope itself in an attempt to send OGFS into the Hyperreality of Hyperinflation.
Martin Wolf of the Financial Times: "Liberalisation contained the seeds of its own downfall.""
Still spot on.
On June 26th, John Authers, the Financial Times Investment Editor put it all in grown-up speak in his article entitled "John Authers On A Daredevil Balancing Act For The World Economy" (see: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f3ffc5fc-62b1-11de-b1c9-00144feabdc0.html).
He has even coined a name for the predicament - the Blondin Effect, after legendary French funambulist Charles Blondin.
Top one...
Grey Hairs Trample On Green Shoots Of Recovery Just As Leaves Begin Falling
The Economist: "According to the IMF's calculations, the present value of the fiscal cost of the ageing of the population is ten times that of the financial crisis."
A Depression.
A Demographic Time-Bomb.
A Destruction of the Ecology.
We will all be out there licking road clean wit' tongue...
'New' Insecticide, Moral Hazard, Helping To Sustain The Friedmanist Weed
As elastoplast continues to be applied to the 19 financial institutions deemed "too big to fail", 10 of the 19 have repaid their TARP bailout to allow a more eager participation in the marketplace.
The upper tier immediately publicised their 'achievement' as competitive play resurfaced eloquently.
Just a point about this charade...
American banks can choose between keeping the toxic assets on their balance sheets at a value of their choosing or selling them to the government written down to a fair price.
As The Economist revealed: "... it is not difficult to imagine which they'll pick."
Skewed Incentives Expose Idiocy Of Free Market Innovation
"By purchasing a material amount of a firms' debt in conjunction with a disproportionately large number of credit default swap contracts, rapacious lenders (usually hedge funds) can render bankruptcy more attractive than solvency" - The Economist.
To make the rich work harder, you pay them more.
To make the poor work harder, you pay them less.
Jean Baudrillard: "When there is no longer any internal reference system within which exchange can take place..., you get into an exponential phase, a phase of speculative disorder."
First Intemperate Ray Of 'Gold-Curled Phoebus' Seen Under Western Skies
$2.5-3.0 trillion of emerging market debt falls due during 2009.
As the main sport is monitoring the major nations lining up at the Competitive Devaluation Of Currency Stakes, in order to make their particular exports more attractive to the customers on Hyperion, we should remember that this is exactly what occurred in the 1930s.
Additionally, the World Bank believe that seventeen of the G20 countries have undertaken protectionist measures since Slack Jaw saved the World.
The IMF is taking a central role in this intellectually incoherent venture.
The creation of IMF bonds is attracting people away from the dollar - this quasi-currency is catchily termed Special Drawing Rights.
Now, 85% is needed to carry any IMF motion and the US has 16.7% of the voting rights.
Effectively, a veto on salvation...
That the IMF has been rebranded to save the bottom of the pyramid is truly a contrarian neohyperreality.
Chomsky's model is worth repeating here...
The IMF reaches a 'deal' with a Third World dictator; if the debt defaults, the lenders make plenty of money because it was a risky loan at high interest rate etc; the loanees are protected in their profit; the population of the indebted country are targeted for harsh structural adjustments to pay back the debt.
The IMF is, at heart, the credit community's enforcer, driven with a US veto.
Incidentally, the 'medicine' prescribed to the Emerging Nations is exactly the opposite of that apportioned to the Grievously Indebted Rich Nations.
Jean-François Lyotard: "Of course, decision makers reject the performance criteria themselves."
Slavoj Žižek: "... if people no longer treat this piece of metal as money, if they no longer believe in it as money, it no longer is money."
Baudrillard, referring to the "Great Game of Exchange": "... all current strategies boil down to this: passing around the debt, the credit, the unreal, the unnameable thing that you cannot get rid of."
Musical chairs...
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The total of the Plain People of England in gainful, non-Black Market employment is currently 29.11 million according to National Statistics Online (NSO), the people who keep giving us fictitious figures for our models.
2.26 million are on the Dole.
NSO have form, but we'll take them at their word here.
The most recent fake, by the way, was the hiding of the economic contraction in the 1st Quarter by pretending UK Plc shrank by 1.9% when, in Reality, it shrivelled by 2.4%.
Foucault: "'Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A 'regime' of truth."
Anyway.
Our rather pithy point is simply this.
As more and more workers are 'persuaded' to take gardening leave and other Orwellian ruptures of the employment contract like wage freezes, wage cuts and loopholed varieties of unpaid leave, the Real impact of the Depression is being shrouded in NSO Blind Spots - areas of the economic hyperreality that are part of the spectacle, and consequently are not to be told.
Just some back of the envelope stuff.
If 50% of UK employees take an average of one month unpaid toil this year, then the Real impact, all things considered, is an 'extra' 1 million unemployed.
Obviously, for various reasons, this is highly approximated.
################################################################################
##############################################################################
################################################################################
###############################################################################
If we so desired, we could provide you with such weightings for the territories in which we take a trading interest, but we're not going to, so there...
Following The Intellectual Black Hole Of Globalisation, Solar Systemisation Needs To Be Considered
Paul Krugman, last years' Nobel economist: "A big lesson from past bubbles is that recovery is export-led which is not helpful unless we can find another planet to export to."
Leaves Beginning To Brown On Green Shoots Of Recovery Nonsense
The Financial Times this morning gave us two headlines:
"Markets Head For Best Quarter In 20 Years"
and
"UK economy shrinks most in 50 years"
Indeed, the FTSE All World rose fully 21% in the last quarter.
During the worst Bear Market in history from 1930 to 1932, there were FIVE rallies of 20% or more.
Oh, and if you hyperreally wish to be taken in by the mainstream media calm, consider this from The Economist: "It must be admitted that, while economists think they have learned the lessons of the 1930s about how to avoid a Depression, stimulus packages on this scale have simply not been tried before. We don't know how they'll work, or what the side-effects will be."
The Tightrope - Financial Funambulism - A Reprise
On March 11th 2009, we gave you the following truly wonderful stuff...
"Stretched between the two great edifices of Friedmanism and its, as yet, unnamed offspring is The Tightrope.
Our Global Financial System (OGFS) is walking across The Tightrope at this very moment.
On the left of our intrepid anti-hero is the Abyss of Deflation.
On the right, the Hyperreality of Hyperinflation.
OGFS is desperate to avoid the Abyss of Deflation and is printing money to prevent any risk of Stagflation as the populace cannot be repeatedly fleeced within a stagflated environment.
Unfortunately, each spin of the printing press adds weight to the balancing rod held by OGFS, making the likelihood of the Hyperreality of Hyperinflation more Real.
Oh, and just to make the whole process more entertaining in a Gladiators-stylee, The Tightrope gradually narrows as OGFS approaches the goal AND the Monster from the Deep occasionally violently twists The Tightrope itself in an attempt to send OGFS into the Hyperreality of Hyperinflation.
Martin Wolf of the Financial Times: "Liberalisation contained the seeds of its own downfall.""
Still spot on.
On June 26th, John Authers, the Financial Times Investment Editor put it all in grown-up speak in his article entitled "John Authers On A Daredevil Balancing Act For The World Economy" (see: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f3ffc5fc-62b1-11de-b1c9-00144feabdc0.html).
He has even coined a name for the predicament - the Blondin Effect, after legendary French funambulist Charles Blondin.
Top one...
Grey Hairs Trample On Green Shoots Of Recovery Just As Leaves Begin Falling
The Economist: "According to the IMF's calculations, the present value of the fiscal cost of the ageing of the population is ten times that of the financial crisis."
A Depression.
A Demographic Time-Bomb.
A Destruction of the Ecology.
We will all be out there licking road clean wit' tongue...
'New' Insecticide, Moral Hazard, Helping To Sustain The Friedmanist Weed
As elastoplast continues to be applied to the 19 financial institutions deemed "too big to fail", 10 of the 19 have repaid their TARP bailout to allow a more eager participation in the marketplace.
The upper tier immediately publicised their 'achievement' as competitive play resurfaced eloquently.
Just a point about this charade...
American banks can choose between keeping the toxic assets on their balance sheets at a value of their choosing or selling them to the government written down to a fair price.
As The Economist revealed: "... it is not difficult to imagine which they'll pick."
Skewed Incentives Expose Idiocy Of Free Market Innovation
"By purchasing a material amount of a firms' debt in conjunction with a disproportionately large number of credit default swap contracts, rapacious lenders (usually hedge funds) can render bankruptcy more attractive than solvency" - The Economist.
To make the rich work harder, you pay them more.
To make the poor work harder, you pay them less.
Jean Baudrillard: "When there is no longer any internal reference system within which exchange can take place..., you get into an exponential phase, a phase of speculative disorder."
First Intemperate Ray Of 'Gold-Curled Phoebus' Seen Under Western Skies
$2.5-3.0 trillion of emerging market debt falls due during 2009.
As the main sport is monitoring the major nations lining up at the Competitive Devaluation Of Currency Stakes, in order to make their particular exports more attractive to the customers on Hyperion, we should remember that this is exactly what occurred in the 1930s.
Additionally, the World Bank believe that seventeen of the G20 countries have undertaken protectionist measures since Slack Jaw saved the World.
The IMF is taking a central role in this intellectually incoherent venture.
The creation of IMF bonds is attracting people away from the dollar - this quasi-currency is catchily termed Special Drawing Rights.
Now, 85% is needed to carry any IMF motion and the US has 16.7% of the voting rights.
Effectively, a veto on salvation...
That the IMF has been rebranded to save the bottom of the pyramid is truly a contrarian neohyperreality.
Chomsky's model is worth repeating here...
The IMF reaches a 'deal' with a Third World dictator; if the debt defaults, the lenders make plenty of money because it was a risky loan at high interest rate etc; the loanees are protected in their profit; the population of the indebted country are targeted for harsh structural adjustments to pay back the debt.
The IMF is, at heart, the credit community's enforcer, driven with a US veto.
Incidentally, the 'medicine' prescribed to the Emerging Nations is exactly the opposite of that apportioned to the Grievously Indebted Rich Nations.
Jean-François Lyotard: "Of course, decision makers reject the performance criteria themselves."
Slavoj Žižek: "... if people no longer treat this piece of metal as money, if they no longer believe in it as money, it no longer is money."
Baudrillard, referring to the "Great Game of Exchange": "... all current strategies boil down to this: passing around the debt, the credit, the unreal, the unnameable thing that you cannot get rid of."
Musical chairs...
* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)