When The Two Sevens Clash #

The bookmakers were dreading the match at Portsmouth yesterday.

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The way the BSkyB narrative was concocted, this was a Portsmouth on the up, bolstered by new signings and financial security against the richest team in the world - a perfect representation of all that Our Great Leader is told is good about the English Premier League.

It didn't turn out that way.

After their first two matches, it was obvious that Portsmouth were very poor.
It was also obvious that Abu Dhabi United are gelling well.

Following the "ultimate betrayal" that Alexandre Gaydamak performed on behalf of his father with regard to Peter Storrie and his Arab consortium, the atmosphere in the boardroom was combative.
Will Storrie get a role?
Will they pay him a fortune for club-harming?
Will the club continue to be a gambling stable?
What happens if the police bust him?

Meanwhile, as John Colquhoun desperately searches around for a club to take David James, as without his England place, he is a much less useful asset to the whole Colquhoun Experience, the club has been leaking players with regularity.
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The match was a potential one way market with an inevitable winner.
And the market was indicative of the problem.
Without the uproar that has butterflied from Redknapp's financial incompetence, the opening price should have been Portsmouth about 0.25 of a goal favourite.
The market actually opened with Abu Dhabi United having a 1.1 goal supremacy!

Even paying over the odds at such a short price, the global gamble on City was marked.
Despite standard BSkyB decelerators eg making Manchester City travel to London for a Mickey Mouse Cup game two and a half days before the trip to Pompey, and making the match the earliest offering to reduce the Sunday-morning-hangover mug money while also limiting the gap since City's previous outing, the money kept lumping on the better of the two Abu Dhabi teams.

By Saturday morning, we were at, in military terms, "bikini black".
Serious action was needed to limit the financial drubbing at what turned out to be the biggest betting match of the weekend in England - bigger than the Big 4 Man Utd versus Arsenal nonsense even.

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Many betting professionals are threatened when the Premier League occasions to change the refereeing appointments for no publicly disclosed reason.
The last three seasons have seen 16, 12 and 20 alterations in match referee and many more for the junior official posts.
This season is proving even more volatile with four referee changes already.
Three of them at the weekend...

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All the referees that were to referee did so, they were just moved around for maximum effect.
So, Howard Webb was moved from Stoke City v Sunderland to the Abu Dhabi derby.
The incompetent Jones was moved from Tottenham to Stoke, while Peter Walton, who was on the Portsmouth match, ended up at Tottenham.

The releasing of this information coincided with a whispering campaign that the Pompey match was being fixed.
Throughout Asia, the rumour spread like one of those fires near Athens deliberately started by property investors - the policeman was on duty.
The markets reacted.
On Sunday morning, there was a very extensive one-way gamble on Portsmouth in all market types.
Sunday was also characterised by numerous denial of service attacks on certain Asian and European bookmakers which further complicated the stance-taking and hedging.

Which, of course, was very good news for all insiders and professionals as we were able to fill our boots some more at an advantageous price leading up to the kick off.

The rest is history

As Portsmouth trundled out with two loan players, a reserve goalkeeper and three players who had to be rushed squad numbers ahead of the game, with a strange man-child wearing the legend 'Sulaiman 77' across his branded body in charge, it was totally clear that the appointment of Webb could not alter the hyperreality.
But it did balance the books somewhat and reduced liabilities, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is where we are at in ScudamoreWorld.

The image of Arsène Wenger at the Theatre of Dreams, after his team had been kicked off the park by Manchester United (United committed more fouls than any other Premier League side this season in any one game, and yet received three bookings to Arsenal's six), having been sent to the stands by Harry Redknapp's chum, Mike Dean, will stick long in the memory.

Wenger stood there, arms outstretched, both pleading but also offering a damning indictment on the 'sport' in body language alone.
It offered the perfect image of the Real state of the Premier League brand.

They should use it alongside Sulaiman 77 for future BSkyB marketing messages.

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© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

A Betting Baron Buys Birmingham - A Flashback #

Time for a Flashback...

Timeline: 27/07/07

When the Billionaire Barber was first considering a low flat-top for Birmingham City over two years ago, we took the clippers and gave the man a No 1 all over.

And now, the sequel.
Most of what we said about the Barber still stands and all that we stated regarding ScudamoreWorld remains a plague today.
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As the takeover of the Premiership by individuals, partnerships or consortia with either previous or strategic betting market plans continues apace, today we take a look at "mysterious" Carson Yeung who this week increased his stake in Birmingham City to just under 30%.
Okay lets look at a few of the known facts about Hong Kong-based businessman Yeung.
Firstly, he allegedly made his money trading penny stocks which is simply not a feasible route to billionaire status.
Secondly, until he bought a 16.67% stake in Grandtop International Holdings, he was never on the records of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Indeed, Mr Invisible only really burst on to the scene in 2004 when he co-founded Greek Mythology, a Macau based casino ####################################################################
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Fourthly, how does a hairdresser create assets of over a billion pounds? Are perms particularly expensive in Hong Kong?
Fifthly, Steve Bruce is urgently seeking a meeting with Yeung and the absence of his inclusion in the takeover process to date would suggest that his days at Brum are numbered.
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Seventhly, Yeung's previous foray into ownership of a footie club was disastrous. He took over Hong Kong Rangers but his control lasted merely three games as he insisted on interfering in team selection matters.
Eighthly, the man has form even when one just chooses to judge his business activities away from the black market. In 2004, Yeung ran into trouble with the Hong Kong authorities and was prosecuted by the local financial regulator for failing to disclose his holdings in a company but was only ordered to pay a small fine.
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Mainstream media comment? Forget it. History is only written by the victors and contemporary press is only written by the acquiescent and edited by the corrupt.
I'll leave the final word to the billionaire barber: "I don't have any politics and I only want to buy for interest because I love football". If one were to exchange the word "football" for "money", this whole sorry episode would be more logical.

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

A Chief Executive Who Swings Both Ways, A Slave And A Sensational Piece Of News #

You have to feel for Peter Storrie.

His second face was ecstatic as Pompey sunk to their latest defeat at the Emirates last Saturday. For, despite the defeat, our sneaky CEO had only gone and done the dirty on the man who was sitting next to him, US college kid lookalike, Sulaiman al-Fahim.
By going behind the back of Fahim to reach agreement with Alexandre Gaydamak, the son of the owner of Portsmouth FC, Storrie had that poker smirk on his face as he studiously avoided eye contact with Fahim.

This was a strategic error but one that was easy to have made as the Premier League and the entire mainstream media persisted with the fallacy that Alexandre was in control at Pompey, when numerous disclosures, comments, newspaper articles and interviews in Israel revealed Alexandre's father, Arkady, to be the Real owner of the club.
This is a nailed-on Reality, for chrissake!

Now we understand that Richard Scudamore, up there in his private eyrie, wished to suppress the fact that one of his brands was owned by a fly-by-night with a French arrest warrant on his head for illegal arms trafficking, but why the non-Murdochratic press should follow blindly is indicative of something rather more unpleasant.

By closing the coup with a party whose closer was away from the table, so to speak, Storrie was shaking hands with a mirage.
When he phoned Alexandre to cement the deal, he was told that there would be a delay and that he would be contacted four hours later.

But four hours later, Alexandre had sold the club to al-Fahim and whichever Ponzi scheme he had decided to attach to his good fake-doctored self as an allegedly stable business entity.

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Of interest to ScudamoreWorld might be the fact that al-Fahim did not buyout Portsmouth with his own money as he virtually hasn't got any. Premier League rules state that any brand ownership greater than 10% must be disclosed, so we look forward to a listing of the secretive individuals behind this deal.

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The initial response of Storrie was silence, although cats were heard to scream.
A through-gritted-teeth acceptance of the hyperreality was soon blathered.

Then it dawned on our cuddly CEO - not only had he lost in his bid for control, with all the revenue streams which such a position entails, but also his £1.4 million per year salary that he draws from the heavily indebted club.

In a rare sentence of sense from the Telegraph: "Having tried to outflank Fahim by finding an alternative buyer, he now faces the uncomfortable prospect of working for him."
Not that fucking uncomfortable on twenty seven grand per week, though.

Storrie himself rose out of the gutter to utter: "I don't want to quit [!!]. To be quite frank, I have put seven years' hard work into this club."

Ah yes...
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Storrie, whether directly involved in such shenanigans or not, presided over a club that was, in effect, a poker outfit - Pokermouth.

Now, with no players as all the decent ones have been tapped up by Redknapp, a relegation seems all but certain this season.

And look at the players that the club have been linked with or who they are allegedly purchasing - two average entities from Watford (now part of the extended Redknapp/Lampardochracy) and two slightly better individuals from Tottenham, now managed, of course, by the man who financially ruined Portsmouth, Harry Redknapp.

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And when we glance at the broadsheets for any exposure of this criminality, we get yet another column by or on David James in the Guardian, ghost-written by an agent of change.
Having lost his England place for the recent Dutch friendly as it appears that Fabio Capello has finally realised that James is as problematical as Owen, the ghost-writer suggested that James was back to full fitness and form and would be ready to take his rightful place between the posts for the Croatia match.
Anyway he wasn't dropped, claims the agent, he was injured, which explains his ever-presence in the Premier League this season.
But how many pointless penalties will Salvador have given away in the meantime and how many times will he be picking the ball out of the net?

Obviously, it should be mentioned that Storrie and Redknapp are two of the three defendants still sweating over the City of London inquiry into bungs in football.

One of this weeks transfers looks like it is taking the piss...

Pascal Chimbonda, signed by Harry Redknapp from Sunderland, via agent Willie McKay [the one who trains a racehorse called 'Harry Redknapp'], was sold, via McKay once again, to Blackburn Rovers, managed by Sam Allardyce who, remarkably, is off-the-hook despite the statements made by his motormouth offspring during the BBC Panorama programme at the root of the problem.

This is Chimbonda's fifth transfer in four seasons.
Wonder where he'll be in January?

And, finally...

Marcelo Lippi claims that in forty years in football, he has never met a homosexual and, furthermore, that there are no gay players.
Gosh, Really?

"This is not a question of culture but is more related to the fact that such a relation would create conflicts contrary to the interests of the dynamics of the group. Imagine how a homosexual couple in football would be perceived" - he homophobed.

As a loving couple, I would have thought, Mr Lippi.
Imagine.

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

An Innovative Way To Trade The Football Markets, And Create Profit #

This post, which is in the main for subscribers only, suggests a new manner by which to increase your trading bank in the most efficient manner over the football season.

We all start the season with a kitty, a bank put aside for trading the markets.
The fundamental trading strategy is to optimise returns over a series of truncated events, to use the compound nature of successful trading, to reinvest one's profits, in order to generate the maximal end of season kitty.

One of the primary reasons that it is preferable to trade the football betting markets, so long as you possess an edge on the competition, is this compound nature of the trading reality.

Take last season.
Overall it was a miserable experience and yet our trading bank still increased fivefold.
And we have already increased this year's kitty by 50% in the first month of the season.

Of course, the downside to this outcome volatility is that a patsy exists for every winning trade. But, as with any experience of the free market model, we all just hold our noses and get on with earning our living, oblivious to GamCare and the like and the misery inflicted.
But everything we do trickles down to the refugee camps and the hordes of people globally scraping a living from the piles of refuse piled on the edges of all our 5 million metropoli.
Refugee and Refuse - the bottom of the Friedman Pyramid.

Anyway, we're not beating ourselves up about being the slickest trading team on the planet but, according to our primary Asian broker, that is what we are.

So, now, for subscribers only, we create a structure to maximise your gambling earnings.

We ARE good to you.

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* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Manipulated Markets And Mashing It Up In The Moss #

Forked Tongue Talking Heads Speak The Manipulators Language

Those in the pay of bookmakers and other internal sections of the Premier League turn up with alarming regularity in the world of television punditry.

The inversion of the disinformation is hardly rocket science.

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Some of these individuals keep sloshing up again and again and again - for example, as far as we are aware, #########################################################
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But, generally, this is harmless media fraud.
The norm.

At the start of the season, it would seem that another agenda is being hidden upon us.
As the managers have been told that they must not speak about the match officials either before, during or after the match (the only available interaction window is the 'Respect' face-to-face in the referees dressing room pre-match), and as the number of mistakes multiply in the early phase of the season, the terms of engagement are being defined by these talking heads.

There were two very revealing instances, among several others, at the weekend.

Firstly the incident where Rodallega, having already been booked, pushed PC Howard Webb out of the way and, as Webb tried to restrain him without the use of a taser, the Wigan player swung an elbow at the referee and stormed off to confront Nemanja Vidic. The Colombian continued to push against our good constable before the situation settled down.

Hansen opined: "That's what you want to see from the ref."

No it isn't.

This is the blurring of the lines that allows the corruption to spread.

The Laws of the Game are not open to interpretation in this way.
The Laws of the Game are there to be implemented.
The raising of the arms against Webb's chest and the intent to elbow Webb were both second yellow offences.
He should have been sent off.

After Dowd had given a fictitious penalty to Everton at Burnley, Owen Coyle, the Burnley manager, unable under the Rules of the Game to comment on a clearly incorrect decision, suggested that the pundits do the job for him.

Now, it was evident that this hadn't been included on Dixon's crib sheet as he inanely blurted out: "... well, video cameras wouldn't help...".

His point apparently being that, as Dowd was just 5 metres away and failed to get the decision right, that video cameras would be equally invalid.

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Of course the penalty would have been rescinded with the use of video replay - in case it still hasn't sunk in Lee, the fact that you were able to see that Dowd had got it wrong through the use of tv images is hardly indicative of such technology not working!

While it matters more when there's money on it, this is what we'll continue to get.

Another Wunch Of Bankers

As banking executives share around the fruits of your labour in a regressive heist of some significant magnitude, Ivobank have elevated psychopathy to new levels by teaming up with not one, not two, not three, but, yes, you've guessed it, 4 bookmakers in a promotional frenzy of addiction.

The advertisement schmoozes: "The only bank that adds betting value", as clients and potential clients are tempted by a free 20 euros for opening betting accounts with one of Betsson, Unibet, Expect or Nordic Bet.

The latter firm are regarded as problematical according to Sportsbook Review with "some risk to players funds" if you deposit your cash there.

A London bank regulated by the FSA enticing the gullible to open both banking and betting accounts.

Our Great Leader would no doubt approve.

Irish Moss, Down The Moss

And does Noel Gallagher miss anything about Maine Road?

"I miss cockneys trembling trying to get a taxi in Moss Side. That's all I miss."

Massive Market Manipulation Rewarded By Key Posts All Over The Shop

Sergey Aleynikov was arrested because he is said to have stolen some trading software from Goldman Sachs, the architects of the Depression.
The US attorney dealing with the case has stated that: "The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways."

As J.S. Kim of Seeking Alpha says: "Nobody in the mainstream media has questioned whether Goldman Sachs was and is using its proprietary trading platform to manipulate markets in unfair ways."

As Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were wiped out by the actions of former Goldman Sachs chief executive Hank Paulson while he was misruling the Fed last year, Goldman Sachs, under the protection of the new Fed man Tim Geithner (another Goldman Sachs for-lifer), currently covers 10% of ALL trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Mmmmmm .....
Software for manipulating markets.

With such market control and with their people in so many influential positions of state and media power, the creation of proprietary software to exploit this massive competitive advantage is pretty much child's play.

As Elliot Spitzer says: "The Fed is a Ponzi scheme, an inside job, it is outrageous, its time for Congress to say enough of this."

The Real skill, of course, is develop proprietary software that creates profit from below.
From above, you have infinitesimal abusive templates of choice.
From below, you have sousveillance.

It is the standard army/guerrilla split - muscle against incremental intelligence.

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

The Changeover To Kipper - The State Of Refereeing In Week One Of The Season #

Two-faced, slippery and he stinks.
The new man at the top of the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) is readying himself for the January takeover from a man who carries huge responsibility for the destruction of the English game at its highest tier.

Whether willingly or not, Keith Hackett has presided over this ruination without any obstruction from within the game, all those smiling faces with their little puns are more than aware of the generality of the hyperreality, if not the specifics.
Or worse, a particular financial stake in the corruption.

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The degree of control afforded over the Premier League will be significant.
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The changeover period is when the hiccups are likely to happen and the PGMOB kicked off as it no doubt means to go on with an utter charade of a midweek in terms of the appointment of match officials.

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So last season we had 20 referees but then Clattenburg was banned for threats of violence in his business life and Uriah Rennie had a season-long injury.
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Anyway, 18 was the active number of officials in hyperreality but, for the start of this season, the situation has become farcical.
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Rob Styles has run off in a huff after a row with his uncle. The strutting fool never even gained a match on the last day of the season to say "goodbye", despite him making it clear to all and sundry since January that he had had enough.

So we're at 17.

Halsey isn't able to officiate currently.
16.

The Kipper has retired to PGMOB.
15.

The PGMOB have promoted Friend to the Select Group of referees but he isn't considered safe yet so he is just contemplating the occasional 4th Official slot.
Both Walton and Bennett were to have retired after having been defeated by the Kipper for the PGMOB Top Slot.
Bennett is overseeing the development of umpiring in cricket, which would be comical if it were not so tragic, but the PGMOB are in such a mess that they were forced to keep both on for this season.
Otherwise with only 13 Select Group referees, the PGMOB would have been forced to promote more junior officials with the obvious complications for certain interested parties.

This midweek, it all blew up in their faces.
The selections for the midweek Premier League matches were delayed until just 29 hours before Kick Off as, out of our intrepid fifteen, no less than 7 were dotted around Europe carrying out their UEFA missions - Atkinson, Clattenburg, Dean, Marriner, Attwell, Friend and Tanner.

So, run that through the ol' black box, and that leaves us with 8 officials for the midweek matches.
Barely enough if you add in the 4th Official slots.

Ah! But then Dowd had to be taken off the Burnley v Man Utd game as he was being disciplined for denying Liverpool two penalties or Sir Ferguson had demanded his removal over the Fulham affair last year - take your pick.
Dowd reappeared as 4th Official at Sunderland v Chelsea on the Tuesday before rushing off to do yet more professional duties at Newcastle v Sheffield Wednesday, appropriately on the Wednesday.
Cool!

Other changes saw the incompetent Jones giving 4th Official slot at Turf Moor as Alan Wiley presided over the shock in the hills.

None of this would really matter if we were simply talking about the Glossop Amateur Sunday League.
But we're not.

There are billion pound betting markets on the most liquid Premier League events and announcing officials less than 30 hours to Kick Off only to subsequently alter those officials repeatedly until "a fit" could be found has major impacts on the markets.
We are not bleating about ourselves or other trading professionals - we are all able to model the changes of referee.
But we are bleating about the control of this information.
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Additionally, both for the efficacy of the markets and any remnants of integrity that still exist within ScudamoreWorld, making Mr Dowd referee the opening weekend of the seasons' biggest event - Tottenham v Liverpool on Sunday, before keeping him hanging around until Monday afternoon when he was told to head to Hillbilly land in Lancashire. Then the little man was redirected instead to spend two days in the north-east, taking in his two games in the process.
Presumably he managed to nip in to his Staffordshire home for laundry and picking up the messages and post at some point.

By Wednesday, Dowd would have been both mentally and physically tired.

Still, this very odd set up is obviously preferable to opening up the Premier League to a larger pool of referees to stop such shenanigans being such an integral part of the game.

However.

Control of the markets is more critical than professional officiating of the game.
Like this should come as any surprise in the circus that is ScudamoreWorld.

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

ScudamoreWorld - Unique Corruption Action #

Trust.

All successful human interactions must be based on trust.
Without it there can be no foundation, no security, no options for development.
No Nothing.

Which brings us to Turf Moor and the match between the Burnley Hillbillies and Manchester United and ########################################################
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Illegal.
Underground.
If this had been Asia, we would have been referring to criminalised betting on match outcomes.
But this is England.

Back to trust.
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The performance of Owen last night was pitiful.
A couple of easy chances carefully crafted wide, an airshot when unmarked on the edge of the six yard area, the giving away of the needless free kick that led to the Hillbillies goal, never following up nor breaking with Rooney and, the pièce de résistance, the refusal to take the penalty kick.

Those optimists who surmised that Owen would be up for it throughout the season are looking pretty forlorn this morning.
Fabio Capello was in Burnley last night and it is highly unlikely that Mr Owen is going to be featuring again in the Three Lions product.

Especially after Jermaine Defoe's stunning hat-trick at Hull.

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Still, at least it is evident that United don't miss Ronaldo or Tevez.
Nor the soon-to-depart Vidic.

The midweek matches were revealing as to where we find ourselves in ScudamoreWorld 2009/10 Brand.
Some of these pointers are for our traders only, in fact, most of them are, but a couple of little snippets for your delectation.

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Bookmakers paying Top Clubs for Alliances.
Ah ScudamoreWorld.

Elsewhere the heavily marketed City of London Fraud Unit Trophy match between Birmingham City (Sullivan/Brady) and Portsmouth (Storrie/Redknapp/Mandaric/Gaydamak/Kim Sung-Il) was won with an injury time penalty after Salvador James did the calamity thing again.
James had commented earlier in the week about the skulduggery in the upper echelons of Portsmouth FC: "You can't help but start wondering whose fault this is. Why is it happening?"

Well, Salvador...
We suggest you ask your agent while the rest of us glance at the footage of Pompey's infamous 0-6 arrangement at Manchester City last season.

What a League!
What a Farce!!

And like the first swallow of the spring/summer (dependent, of course, on your latitude), the Hillbilly Affair had another one of ScudamoreWorld's little extras - a change of referee.

Without any reference to the alteration, Mr Dowd was quietly moved aside so that Alan Wiley could take over.
That will teach him to deny Liverpool two penalties.

Is this stand down a punishment?
Are we going to be told?
Or is this all part of the Fucking-Shut-Up-About-The-Referees-Even-If-You-Totally-Know-That-They-Are-Criminals campaign being run by ScudamoreWorld.

I mean.
I know it must be obvious.
But exactly why are people in the game not allowed to comment on officialdom?

It's like Pakistan.
If one were send a SMS in Karachi saying anything detrimental about Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president, one may be imprisoned for 14 years.
14 years!
And the name of the charge?
Ill-Motivated Messages!

Now why hasn't Our Great Leader thought of that one?

Symbolic authority has to remain virtual.

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Hasta La Vista Don Quixote #

The Fat Man who made his fortune selling sub-standard sportswear in giant warehouse spaces peopled by the occasional minimum wage slave - no training, no hope - and who then lost it all again after steering Newcastle United to relegation, should step aside.

Now, we understand that there are requirements for businesses to be able to ride out a Depression.
This is the Friedman market after all.
Jobs must go, wages must be cut, factories and stores closed, the occasional corner may even be cut and, sometimes, a little illegality must be entered into.

Or, you can produce a t-shirt mocking the 96 Liverpool fans who were killed by South Yorkshire police at Hillsborough.

For that is what the Don has done.

Well, you gotta earn a penny, haven't you, guv?

Margaret Aspinall whose son died at the match said: "Printing that message is like inciting trouble, it is an absolute disgrace and Sports Direct should be ashamed."

In retort, a member of the self-styled London mafia who hang around Quixote blubbered: "Sports Direct has been notified that an extremely offensive and wholly inappropriate football shirt was printed at one of its stores."

He went on.

"Sports Direct has also been notified that an extremely offensive and wholly inappropriate football club owner bears responsibility for that which happens under his autocratic control."

What is it with Quixote?
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Of course, as the Premier League's fit-and-proper-persons test allows state criminals, arms dealers, oligarchs, Ponzi capitalists, private equity houses, ##### importers, monopolists and the like to have control or major says in the strategies of the ScudamoreWorld clubs, it would be expecting too much for the line to be drawn at Don Quixote.

But it should be.

At the very least, Quixote should be concerned as to the fate of any Sports Direct stores that happen to fall within the Merseyside postal code.

We absolutely must not repeat the ancient Animal Liberation Front maxim here - "Vivisection laboratories do not burn down by themselves - Learn To Burn" because it would be inappropriate.

But only just.

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Schadenfreude Cubed #

When the mundaneness of a derivative language fails to provide a suitable word for an occasion, one may always rely on the French, Italian, Irish, Jewish or Germans to save the day.

Whether it is jouissance, dietrologia, shenanigans, chutzpah or schadenfreude, our European (strictly in the UEFA sense of the word) family add reason to our blunt linguistics.

And schadenfreude is one of my favourites.
It suits my psychology.
And one of the better bases of establishing a blog is that one may bad-mouth those who deserve bad-mouthing at a time to suit oneself.
Which is generally not a time of the victims' choosing.

So who are our troika of tricksters?
Well, regular readers will not be too surprised to learn that Messrs Harry Redknapp, John Colquhoun and Tony Bloom are about to be extraordinarily renditioned in the nicest possible way.

Redknapp is worried.
The Pompey Nine has become the Pompey Three and, unlike the Guildford Four, ##################################################################################
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Redknapp's biggest mistake (apart from the hair dye) was taking out a private action against the police following a dawn raid on his palatial mansion on the south coast.
This is not the done thing and Redknapp was both out of his depth and poorly advised.
His confusion over what constituted an arrest merely exacerbated the sense of him being above the law.

Now, when the police explore hyperrealities outside of the law, this should be regarded as a bargaining tool, and not as a reason to lash out.

You do a deal.
We thought that this was Mr Redknapp's forte, after all.
So, the police drop part of the charge in return for the victim not pressing charges over police violence or irregularities of procedure.

Simple.

Now, as the web tightens around Redknapp, Portsmouth chief executive Peter Storrie and former owner Milan Mandaric, their united front is fracturing.
Redknapp left both Southampton and Portsmouth in non-sustainable messes (Southampton are bottom of League One) while Pompey are leaking squad members, points and cash with equal efficiency.
Being #######################################, Redknapp returns to exploit those who once were colleagues and partners and the sale of Peter Crouch from Portsmouth to Tottenham Hotspur, following the shenanigans behind the Jermain Defoe deal, proved the final straws for Storrie.

Redknapp tapped up Crouch according to Storrie.
Both Sunderland and Bolton Wanderers were offering £3 million more for Crouch than Spurs. But the man went to north London anyway.
Storrie understands that his £4,000 per day salary is threatened by police action so, at the weekend, he announced that illegal approaches to transfer targets are rife in football and that "all managers tap up" in direct contravention of Premier League legislation.
In that any such meaningful legislation exists - third party transfers, betting by players and management, ownership of operators by bookmaking organisations etc etc etc.

Rattled, Redknapp has responded that it is "agents that do the tapping up".
He continued: "Every club lets a player know that they're interested and anyone who says they don't is telling lies, it's absolute rubbish. It's not a case of tapping a player up, it's a case of the agent ringing up and asking if you're interested."

Ah yes, but dietrologia suggests that one should question the flow of information and, more importantly, money in such arrangements.
Especially now that the said Premier League rules allow an agent to represent one (or both) clubs as well as the player in a particular transfer deal.

There may be trouble ahead.

And, talking of agents peripheralising the rule of law brings us neatly to Fulham and Glasgow Celtic club agent, John Colquhoun.
West Bromwich Albion should have finished last season 12 points adrift at the bottom of the table. They were also the second least fit team in the league.

Over the summer, Colquhoun engineered the appointment of Tony Mowbray as the new Celtic boss.
A good earner but a dire strategy.

Mowbray is simply not up to the task.
Two consecutive European home defeats after only Barcelona had been victorious at Parkhead since time immemorial is the result.

And fitness was the key again.
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So there goes another £10 million but, at least, Mowbray and Colquhoun may focus now on St Johnstone and finishing second to Rangers again.
The fact that one of the few decent players at Celtic, Scott Brown, is about to join Redknapp at Tottenham neatly circles the round.

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If Southampton hadn't entered administration last season, Brighton and Hove Albion would be occupying bottom spot in League One this morning following their 7-1 reversal at Huddersfield last night.
Since failed bookmaker, failed poker player and failed human being, Tony Bloom, 'bought out' the club, the outfit have managed one point and one pointless goal in four matches, while conceding 11 and departing the League Cup to boot.

The takeover of the club which, in the main, is a property development project and Bloom's short-sightedness in instigating such a nonsense when the bottom has fallen out of the commercial property market and when the only house purchases are made by people converting their cash into more solid assets as an inflation hedge, is typical of the man.

Will the Anthony Grant Bloom Stand ever be built?

This isn't chutzpah.
This is bluff.
And if Mr Bloom is anything at all, he is one bum bluffer.

These three individuals, in their own little ways, represent a solid cross-section of the ills of the sport today.
Without the likes of Redknapp, Colquhoun and Bloom, the black and grey markets would not dominate football.

And there is a further interesting aspect to their combined chicanery - the nepotistic link.
In football, one frequently comes across familial power bases - entities where, over generations, an inappropriate template of operation is established.
The Redknapp/Lampard Family is an obvious one but both Colquhoun and Bloom also have football in the blood, in a manner of speaking - Colquhoun's father was also a professional player while Bloom's uncle and father have been active on the Brighton board for decades.

Football should be jouissance.
These types of people have made it something hyperreal instead.

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Premier League Team Sponsored By "Risky" Bookmaker #

Andreas Ullmann, head of market intelligence at Sport+Markt, reckons that shirt sponsorship for Premier League clubs will increase slightly this year thanks to new deals emanating from the betting industry.

“Without them many clubs would have serious problems,” he says.

ScudamoreWorld clubs dependent on betting sector cash to survive?
Surely not!

An incidental aside - this quote above was from the Financial Times.
We bet you couldn't find it anywhere in the mainstream sporting media.

It is the link between ScudamoreWorld and gambling, you see.
Tends to be suppressed in the circus...

Anyway.

Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Great to see them back in the Top League.
Tradition, Black Country, Old Gold shirts, Industry and Manufacturing, peculiar intonation in the old voice...
A Top Team.

But sponsored by Sportingbet, a bookmaker that Sportsbook Review (http://www.sportsbookreview.com) ranks as "poor", and that provides "some risk to players' funds".
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Who are the Wanderers to suggest to their hard-pressed fans that not only should they be stupid enough to bet with their hard-earned cash, but also that they should deposit such cash with a bookie who might, if the mood takes them, do a runner?

It builds bridges with the fans and the community, does that...

And, anyway, who are we to speak?
We have now a link on our homepage linking directly to Partybets bookmakers, a Gibraltar-based market-making organisation.

Football Is Fixed dependent on betting sector cash to survive?
Surely not!!

So why do we do these things and who are Partybets anyway?

Well we do these things for financial necessity.
We have to 'earn' a certain amount per annum through the Football Is Fixed blog.

Partybets are in the top 10% of market-makers as assessed by SBR.
SBR reckon that Partybets offer minimal risk to bettors' funds and are categorised as 'good'.
Any companies below the top 10% would not be considered.

But there are issues even with the top 10% too, he said biting the hand that is feeding him.
Many firms do not accept bets from winning clients unless you are providing the firm with primary or secondary level inside information, for example.
And as we have said before, this makes all amateur gambling a form of voluntary extortion.

For ScudamoreWorld 2009/2010 Brand - The Drone Returns.
Six teams have now shirt sponsorship from the bookmaking sector.
Bolton and Wigan have each gone with 188Bet, an Asian firm that pretends to be based in the Isle Of Man; Tottenham and West Ham have links to Mansion88 and SBOBet - two firms from the Philippines; Sunderland are with the slickmicks of Boylesports; and Wolves are in bed with the sharks.

We are not able to comment about some Asian outfits as they are too litigious, as the Daily Telegraph found out with SBOBet and Roy Carroll and that sort of thing.
Some Asian outfits are too heavy too.
And some are both litigious and heavy.
So there we go...

And Liverpool's shirt sponsorship is up for grabs after Carlsberg announced that they were not renewing their deal which runs out at the end of the season.
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By the start of the 2010/2011 season, we may well see half the Premier League being sponsored by market-making companies with a financial interest in the match outcomes.

Portsmouth must be rife for the bookies' wallet as they are financially fucked and are rather aptly sponsored by Jobsite.co.uk.
There are several other outfits who will also have a price in the current climate.

It will soon be like snooker.
Clubs will become a part of the Mansion88 or Ladbrokes Stable.

Further down the leagues, there are already numerous indications of the betting money moving further into the game.
Take for example the 'takeover' of Brighton and Hove Albion by Napoleonic Antisocial, Tony Bloom, presumably using some of the reinvested winnings of former clients who were never paid, and the fruits of illegal gambling on the underground Asian betting markets - Bloom's former bookmaking operation, Premierbet, went belly-up owing customers oodles of cash, after being trailed by SBR for years.

The coming years will see further and further incursions into the sport of football by betting money.

Bookmakers freeload onto football and it is about time the timid and toady suits at FIFA and the Premier League realised this and began discussions about a proper royalty payment being made to the sport by those who are abusing it for proprietary gain.

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* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Is That A Vuvuzela In Your Pocket (Or Are You Just Pleased To See Me) ? #

Tomorrow it all begins all over again.

What is needed is a Sectoral Vuvuzela, a monotone lepatatatic drone, to drown out the latest brand of ScudamoreWorld.

But there is salvation.
We have terminated our BSkyB subscription entirely.
There are no longer Sky feeds to either our trading room or other communication environments.

We were going to get rid of the Murdochratic media last summer but there was the nagging doubt that, as Sky output is so corrupted, we might be missing something if we voluntarily imposed a media blackout on Gray, Keys and Redknapp.

No problem.

And we are not bothering with ESPN either.
The free-to-air Championship and lower English leagues on the BBC offer a far less corrupted version of the sport if we really feel the need to watch something.

And if you must have your fix of The Fix, there is an issue with the ScudamoreWorld Security Template.
Unlike with Napster et al, where the prehistoric music sector targeted individual users for having the audacity to wish to listen to music, ScudamoreWorld targets the providers themselves.
So, with a few minutes creative googling, one is able to find ample free-to-air offerings of ScudamoreWorld fare.
Often even with the added advantage of a random South East Asian language which, remarkably, still seems to make more sense than Keys and the gang.

And, the chase is not one which ScudamoreWorld is likely to win.
As with the underground Asian bookmakers, particularly in the nineties, when they were interpolled out of one country, they would slightly rearrange the company name prior to setting up shop somewhere else in the Far East.

The Black Market can be very awkward when not working in your favour, Mr Scudamore.

So, to the second of our little polls which we'll leave up over the first month of the season.
If it wasn't a rigged event, who would Really win the Premier League?

United have lost two of their best four players and brought in a serial non-trier.
Will Chelsea be stronger under Ancelotti?
Perhaps you think we are wrong about Liverpool and Abu Dhabi United?
Who cares?
Register your opinion on the blog homepage below.

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And that is as exciting as it is going to get in ScudamoreWorld.

Richard keeps telling us that all is well with the game but we look at the unsustainable and highly leveraged financial structures underpinning Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United.
We look at Portsmouth, entering the season halfway between two ############ owners, desperately selling off players to pay off the banks while trying to reach arrangements with other Premier League clubs over the crazy transfer policy while Redknapp was manager.
We look at West Ham who could cease to exist if Icelandic court decisions go against them.
We look at Manchester City trying to buy success out of a barrel, with owners who have shown a capacity for short-termism in numerous other ventures.
We look at Birmingham City who look, yet again, to be on the verge of being taken over by the Billionaire Barber, despite the fact that he was prosecuted by the SFC because he failed to declare an interest in a company on five separate occasions.
Gold, Sullivan and Brady or a Billionaire Barber.
What sort of choice is that?
We look at a leading agent attached to one London club who ######################
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We look at the Fat Man from Uzbekistan with the glove puppet that is David Dein.
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We look at Allardyce at Blackburn and, for the moment, Redknapp still at Tottenham despite the allegations in the BBC Panorama Bungs Thingymijig.
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We look at the still-to-be-explained targeting of Sunderland, Newcastle and Middlesbrough.
We look at the fact that the vast majority of ScudamoreWorld clubs have been forced to freeze or reduce season ticket prices to address the Recession and the decline of the brand.

Duncan Drasdo, chief executive of the Manchester United Supporters Trust: "I've been amazed. Some of the people that I thought would never give their season ticket up have done so this year."

Oh, and guess which is the first country to ban the Vuvuzela?
Austria.

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Footballing Deities Not Knowing What Day It Is #

I am unable to listen to the rambling moroseness that is "God Save Your Gracious Queen" without wincing, since the astonishing episode at the recent celebration of thirty years of direct elections to the EU, when the UKIP Party sang the anthem, poorly, over a children's choir who were singing the EU ditty "Ode To Joy".

The UKIP ploy was apparently based on the part of the movie 'Casablanca' where Victor Lazlo led a rendition of "the Marseillaise" as a counterpoint to "Die Wacht am Rhein."

The rather obvious difference being that attempting to drown out a bunch of schoolkids is slightly more odious than trying to outsing a bunch of drunken Nazi stormtroopers.

Unfortunately, last night, I tuned in to the xenophobic bit so that I might witness the memorial to Bobby Robson.
Having experienced the anthems, I was then transported to this strange twilight zone where, instead of applause for a proper professional, there were numerous thirty second cameos exposing the alleged values of various consumerist items.
Where BSkyB trails, ITV follows...

The match between Neverland and Engerland was hardly a Thriller.

We were shaken out of our lethargy by the first decent move of the game...
Lampard played the ball square to Ferdinand on the left hand side of the area.
Ferdinand slid the ball in beautifully to the unmarked Kuyt, who slotted home.
At least our fearless twosome had the decency not to celebrate the goal.

Ferdinand is obviously suffering from Chaos Theory again.
He spends so much time planning his lifestyle around ####################, and producing his free "#5 Magazine", that we cannot blame Rio for still being on the beach from time to time.
After his fruitful period of turmoil and anarchy in the first ten minutes, one might have thought that #5 might up his game.

Not.

#5 failed to make any attempt to block the second Dutch goal having played Barry into trouble in the first place, his distribution was laughable, and he repeatedly kept getting caught in possession.

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But the really really really exciting development last night was the end of the international career of the property developing, horserace training, helicopter flying, casino attending, #########################, ghost-written sporting life that is Michael Owen.

The queue ahead of little Michael continues to expand - Rooney, Crouch, Heskey, Cole, Defoe, Agbonlahor, Bent...
If the situation does not alter soon, there are going to be issues.
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As the match between two nations representing xenophobic Roma-free zones petered out to a close prior to the inevitable street violence in Amsterdam centre (probably caused by schoolchildren singing nursery rhymes), we were left with a Real-world image emblazoned across these two former imperia.

Within five years each nation will be entirely dependent on Russia for energy.
"Not that I suppose your men will have laid off scrapping by then."

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Butcher And Burley - A Footballing Bradford And Bingley #

"Whatever could have gone wrong tonight went wrong" - Craig Burley, the Scotland manager.

What?
Like having Burley as a manager?
Appointing Butcher as his assistant?
Being the representative of the entirely dysfunctional Scottish FA?
Leaving out players when the squad is wafer-thin anyway?
Failing to plan strategically once the match started to go pear-shaped?

What?
Those sort of things, Mr Burley?

Like Bradford And Bingley Building Society, the Scottish football team represents a rotten entity in a rotten framework.

Scottish football is a collective mess.

The Scottish Premier League (SPL) mimics the lack of strategy which is the fundamental feature of ScudamoreWorld south of the border.
The debacle relating to Setanta and the reselling of rights to BSkyB at just 60% of the price that the Murdochracy had offered just 12 months earlier sets the scene.
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The impacts and the trickle-down effect are evident with Aberdeen securing a 5-1 home reverse to a very moderate Czech outfit while Falkirk actually managed to lose to a team from Leichtenstein in the Europa Cup.
Liechtenstein???
Livingstone are refusing to play and Rangers are refusing to pay, as their transfer fund is entirely frozen in the fossilised Reality that is Sir Murray's property empire.
Meanwhile at the club that used to be worthy of support, aside from all the other shenanigans outlined in recent posts, Celtic have ended up with a sub-standard manager and, through the idiocy of John Colquhoun, overpaid in the process.
Colquhoun 'leaked' the news of Mowbray's appointment to his chums on the Guardian staff with the result that the newspaper, in the words of the rapidly deteriorating Daily Telegraph, "jumped the gun overnight and declared that Mowbray would be unveiled as the new manager... the leak revealed Celtic's hand and ensured that Peace [the West Brom chairperson] could up the ante."

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The SFA failed a nations' fans on several levels last night.
The timing of such a critical qualifying match while the majority of Scottish players were still out of season was bizarre, to say the least.
With the banning of your best player and your only stable goalkeeper, the SFA further undermined chances of qualification and undermined team spirit to boot.

As for the match, what planet do Burley and Butcher reside on?
Their reaction to the sending off of Gary Caldwell and falling behind to the resultant free kick was extremely self-harming.
An incorrect substitution.
An unbalanced formation.
A second goal on the interval.

The lack of strategic thinking relating to the bigger picture was also evident.
Group 9 is very tight.
Goal difference/goals scored are likely to be called into action at the conclusion of the group - now Scotland must beat both Macedonia and the Netherlands to qualify whereas, for example, if they had lost by 2-1 last night, it would have been very likely that the Scots could have reached the Play-Offs with a win and a draw.
Those four goals may come back to haunt Scotland.

The appalling officiating from Alain Hamer was merely the icing on a pretty ropey cake.

Our hierarchies enforce one very firm judicial hyperreality - that the buck stops as near to the bottom of the pyramid as feasible.
So, much the better to discipline a woman soldier for torture at Abu Ghraib than indicting Rumsfeld, for example.

If Scotland fail to reach November's Play-Offs, no doubt B&B will be jettisoned.

And Gordon Smith, the SFA's chief executive, who is ultimately responsible for the state of the national team and the national game, will retain his place in the Adhocracy that limps along in the shadow of the Murdochracy.

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

15 Reasons Why Liverpool FC Will Not Win The Title In 2009/2010 #

Andy Gray: "For the first time in the last ten years, I think this is the best opportunity Liverpool have of winning it [the Premier League title]. I really mean that."

So that is Reason Number 1...

When a shady talking head with links to a bookmaking organisation tells you to Buy A, contrarian Reality suggests that a Sell of A might be more in your interest.

And I really mean that too...

Continuing in Grayspeak, to be honest, we lied to you the other day.

We told you that the early Xmas Freebie Bet opposing Liverpool's chances in this years' title race would feature 10 solid reasons.
Hyperreal inflation has resulted in an absolute minimum of fifteen reasons.

Moving on...

Reason Number 2, inevitably, is Laurel and Hardy, the strange comedians who are involved in leeching a living off their highly leveraged and grossly indebted financial vehicle, formerly known as Liverpool FC.
In the world of private equity, our twosome's financial chicanery is seen as gaining a slick slice of the action - excessive personal aggrandisement at the expense of what was once a viable organisation prior to the rigours of asset stripping being imposed.
There is no higher executive hands-on management.

And these are just not the sort of people that should be involved in our game - loan officers at Wachovia, one of the banks involved in this scam, have recently been exposed as referring to Black customers as "Mud People".

Management issues bring us onto Reason Number 3 - Rafa With the Strange Satanic Beard.
His team selection is ropey, his transfer policy is totally disastrous, his public pronouncements are counter-productive, his squad size is unmanageable, he is unable to judge a goalkeeper and he allows cliques to develop in his squad, even siding with one against the other.

As Robbie Keane pointedly said when joining Tottenham after Rafa With The Strange Satanic Beard had managed to lose £10.3 million on the striker in six months: "It is always good when you have got a manager you can understand."
£55,000 per day...

Reason Number 4 is ##############################################################
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Whatever.
Liverpool are by some distance not as good as Chelsea, Man Utd or Arsenal.

Reason Number 5 is the ousting of Rick Parry.
Liverpool will not be Liverpool without Parry, a reasonably decent man in a criminalised world.

Reason Number 6 relates to ###################################################
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Reason Number 7 was the reaction to Charles Itandje and his laughter during the Hillsbrough Memorial.
After being initially threatened with instant dismissal, Liverpool backtracked and merely fined the man two weeks wages.
This respect to Itandje showed no respect whatsoever to the 96 victims.

Reason Number 8 is the formation of AFC Liverpool. When disillusionment reaches the level where supporters are breaking away to form their own entity, something smells.
And, unlike Manchester United, Liverpool cannot pack 75,000 into Anfield to offset this drift.

Reason Number 9 is that Pepe Reina simply isn't up to it.

Reason Number 10 concerns the Spanish players and staff at the club. Not only are these individuals paying twice as much tax as they would back in Spain, but also they are suffering from the deliberate devaluation of the pound against the euro.
As stories come though about the feelgood factor as Spain takes over the Premier League after the latters' brief stay at the summit, players will judge their strategies and incentives accordingly.

Liverpool are very heavily laden with Spaniards.

Reason Number 11 is the World Cup. Having won Euro 2008 and in possession of their first trophy since the era when bookmakers used to allow England to occasionally win things, Spain have their best chance ever of winning the World Cup next summer in South Africa.
If Liverpool think that they are going to get 100% out of their Spanish players this season, they are in Cloud Cuckoo Land, otherwise known as Barnsley.

Reason Number 12 is the lack of quality at the top or in depth in the squad.
The entire Liverpool transfer policy studiously avoids the bits of science in the pseudoscience that is Sabermetrics.

Reason Number 13 are the burglaries.
Organisations have their culture demolished by leaks.
Insider knowledge leading to burglaries of one's personal possessions doesn't rank too highly on the old motivation chart...

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Reason Number 15 is that the summer transfers leave Liverpool weaker than before the window opened.

So who is to win the title then?
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Incidentally, an indication of the recent financial losses in the Murdochracy is that you can get a better price with William Hill than SkyBet on ALL of the Top Four!

And is it about to become the Big 5?
Or, as Über-Idiotic-Hack, Paul Wilson reckons, are Abu Dhabi United to replace Chelsea in the Top Four?

Despite no European distractions, the City squad is largely devoid of anybody who has won anything of consequence anywhere.
How will they react when they are put under?
Or what if the oil price were to plummet?

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In ScudamoreWorld, it will be whatever they wish for it to be.

Even so, Liverpool will not finish top.

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Bobby Robson Inspires Thousands To Finish Second To Cancer - One Of Our Pre-Season Guides To ScudamoreWorld #

NEUROTIC DESPOTIC SCUDAMOREWORLD PRE-SEASON SPECIAL - THE STATE OF PLAY

Don Quixote To Sell Newcastle To Secretive Consortium With Links To America And England And Business

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"Newcastle United comes with a lot of baggage..."
As somebody said.

Illegal Owner Selling Portsmouth To Another Illegal Owner, Peter Storrie continues To Get Richer And Richer

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When asked if the sale of the south coast club from the arms-dealer-with-arrest-warrant-on-his-head to a Ponzi-fronted-consortium-covering-for-an-excellency-with-a-corruption-charge-on-his-head, Peter 'Doom And Gloom' Storrie said: "I have heard all the doom and gloom stories about us being loaded with a mountain of debt which will mean we have to have a fire-sale of players in the summer. But I am telling you that's absolute rubbish."

Said Storrie before selling Crouch, Johnson and, now, James.

West Ham Owners Stage Fake Armed Insurrection In Iceland In Brave Attempt To Delay Court Hearing

August 6th was always the date when the future of one of ScudamoreWorld's favourites, West Ham United, would be decided.
For today's the day that Straumur will find out if they, like the others above, are unfit-and-improper-persons to own a ScudamoreWorld entity.
Straumur is trying to turn itself into an asset management company, but creditors must agree.
If Straumur is wound up today then this would have a very serious impact on another of ScudamoreWorld's franchise owners just ahead of the start of the season.

Last Iberian Player To Leave ScudamoreWorld Denies That He Is A Mercenary

The Premier League is past its summit.
It is all downhill from now on.

Shirt sponsorship deals are down 30% over the last twelve months.
Attendances, or lack of them, are ignored by the media with focus entirely on the Big 4 and their sold-out-stadia, until Arsenal started struggling to fill the ground and Manchester United no longer had a waiting list for season tickets.
Then Slack Jaw's Lot decided to make British exports competitive by a deliberate devaluation of sterling.
Then Slack Jaw's Lot put the top rate of tax up to 50%, which is only 45% below where it Really should be, as it happens.
This leads to the exit of top players and a barrier to drafting other overseas players into ScudamoreWorld, hence a devaluation of the product.
More gambling money and more under-the-table transfer arrangements with operators representing more than one party in the former and agents representing more than one party in the latter.

Exit the mercenaries...
Enter the crooks...

Wenger: "The new taxation system, and the collapse of sterling, means the domination of the Premier League will go."

England is virtually, an excellent choice of word even though I say so myself, the only territory in the world where football is not governed at its highest levels by the national association.
Instead it is governed by ScudamoreWorld - a private theme park that creates spectacles within the constraints enforced by #####################################
The tentacles of ScudamoreWorld slither into locations that should be of no interest to a Real national association.

Unless to investigate criminality and corruption, that would be...

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

"They Use Our Fixtures To Profit" #

Okay so...

Why are bookmakers allowed to leech onto the sport of football without offering anything financial at all in return?

Okay so, I lie...

Bookmakers do make a 'contribution' to the game both in the form of #########
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Unsurprisingly, the exact same template is used in horseracing which, of course, is where the mode of destruction of football was exported from in the first place.

But, if I own a restaurant and I wish to play a song by The Terror Trap, then I pay royalties to the Performing Rights Society (PRS).
And, if I wish to use a photographic image of a bombed wedding party in Helmand province, then I must pay a copyright fee to the owner of the image.
And, if I wish to incorporate a discovery or innovation from elsewhere into my trading model, then the patent owner must be recompensed.

But the bookmaking industry across the planet not only is making huge profits from the demise of the sport whose blood they are sucking, but they do not even make any gestures to support the Real infrastructures of that sport.

And we are in the area of gestures here...
There is no pressure from FIFA, UEFA or any of the leading domestic leagues to 'tax' the muscle.
And the manner in which New Labour turned a blind eye to the raking in of punters' money via illicit online poker platforms suggests that there will be no deceleration from that particular source.

The bookmakers, in effect, create the rules and, via the selective parcelling out of favours and influence, they maintain an efficient and highly performative grip on the game.

But this is no longer a game.
It is a market.

In Argentina, the market has ground to a halt in the midst of a row over gambling and television money.

As the excellent Marcela Mora y Araujo says: "Gambling laws in Argentina are not a federal government issue – laws vary from province to province. In the more restrictive provinces, gambling still takes place, of course. But whereas according to current law each province can assign gambling permits, the main sport betting activity in the country, Prode (sport forecasting), operates under a law which grants the monopoly of sport bets to National Lotteries.

This is now a source of tension among jurisdictions, mostly because with the advent of online betting territoriality is becoming harder to implement. Put simply, you can have a permit to run a website in the province of Misiones, for example, but people from all over the country can take part. In addition, most of the domestic gambling websites are run by foreign companies, so any income derived from the activity leaves the country altogether."

The president of the Argentine FA (AFA), Julio Grondona, is lobbying for the Prode bancado. This is a payment to the sport by those that use and abuse it for gambling markets - the carcinogenic development leading to the gambling becoming too big for the game.

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And Grondona goes much further than his European counterparts in addressing the impact of this criminalisation of the sport.
The final match to decide the winner of the 2008/09 Clausura in Argentina was a heavily rigged event which resulted in, Gabriel Brazenas, the match referee being demoted to take charge of future games in lower divisions.
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The match itself was between Velez Sarsfield and Huracan, and the dodgy decision making existed throughout the refereeing team, resulting in three key decisions going in favour of the eventual 1-0 winners, Velez.
Firstly, Huracan's Eduardo Dominguez had a goal clearly incorrectly disallowed for offside.
Then Velez were given a penalty which they proceeded to miss.
Eight minutes from full time, the winning goal resulted from Gaston Monzon, the Huracan keeper, being bundled over unfairly, an action that Brazenas could not help but see.

Grondona said: "I felt sick when I saw that goal allowed, especially as it decided the title."

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There are some signs of reaction to the destruction of the game by bookmakers within the UEFA Family, but these signs are big on doublespeak.

So, for instance, the Netherlands has entirely banned online gambling in a fit of regulatory zeal, only to enforce a state monopoly on the sector in the form of De Lotto.
As they are with people of different colours and creeds, the Dutch are serious in their fundamentalism with regard to gambling, for banks can be prosecuted for transferring money from the accounts of Dutch residents to online gambling firms abroad.
Which, considering the complete lack of prosecutions for the banks that have demolished the global financial system, means that gambling is evidently far more of a danger than untamed psychopathic capitalism.

The general European response at governmental level to online gambling has been to try and grab the turf.
Last year Germany banned online gambling and the state of North Rhein Westfalia has, according to the Financial Times "ordered Betfair... to block access to its residents."
The Greeks have booted out Stanleybet (a good move), while Estonia, Hungary, France and Sweden have also imposed bans, the latter also opting for the state monopoly route.

Governments, like bookmakers, mould monopolies.

But the bookmakers are the worse of the two options.
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Football is most unfortunate to have both bookmakers and agents disrupting its sport.

These organisations not only do not pay for their abuse of football but the vast majority of them will not accept bets from winning clients.
This makes betting a form of voluntary taxation.
Which, with the menaces and corruption sides of the business, pretty much explains the bookmaking model, really.

Bookmakers want to leech onto the game in a non-reciprocal open source manner - football is entirely open to gambling but the reverse is not true.

Still the FA in England, as ever, has its finger on the pulse: "Clubs are being advised that any media comments by managers, players or any other club officials related to appointed match officials prior to a fixture will no longer be tolerated."

Criticism will not be tolerated.
Think freely but obey.

Or as Julio Grondona puts it: "They Use Our Fixtures To Profit."

Gilles Deleuze: "Men's only hope lies in a revolutionary becoming: the only way of casting off their shame or responding to what is intolerable."

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© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Manipulated Markets - A Flashback #

Football Is Fixed was initiated on November 11th 2006 and our first post is reproduced below as August's Flashback post.

When we began, the Football Is Fixed title was envisaged as both an entrance and an exit route to the project.
By providing evidence and examples of football being 'fixed' through the externalised influence of #################################################, we naively hoped that things might improve.
And, then, at a particular point in the future, we would have been able to announce that football had indeed been 'fixed' and repaired.
And got on with something altogether more interesting.

We thought that government departments, the footballing institutions and the media would be interested in clear proof of how betting money influences match results.
This was optimistic in the extreme on our behalf.

Football undoubtedly remains fixed but the externalised presence of the bookmakers has now become internalised to a much greater extent.
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No sign of improvement, only deterioration with the few individuals who might have been willing to continue to push against the corruption eg government minister Andy Burnham or Telegraph journalist Patrick Barclay having disappeared from the stage of Reality.
The former was moved sideways in a government reshuffle when just on the verge of confronting the Murdochracy while the latter, after experiencing a dressing down from Richard Scudamore over hints about a lack of integrity in the Premier League that Barclay had disclosed in his paper, suddenly lost all interest in the subject of criminalised outcomes and became the chief football correspondent of the Murdochracy's very own The Times newspaper instead in an exalted demonstration of lily-livery.

Football Is Fixed in the original sense.
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English Football is currently reeling from the impacts of the Stevens inquiry into the bung culture, ######################################## and the revelation that Victor Chandler International #############################################
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The words “tip” and “iceberg” spring to mind.
I have traded professionally on global football betting markets for the past 15 years. In my experience, all the brokers, market makers and bookmakers that I have traded with take bets from insiders in the game. It is regarded as buying information. Undoubtedly, some of this exchange of information borders on the corrupt. The recent betting scandal in Germany and the uproar in Italy’s Serie A show that this isn’t merely a British problem.
Asian Market Makers regularly accept bets of greater than £1million without blinking (Gianluigi Buffon – the Juventus goalkeeper – was found with betting slips for several million euros in his possession during the Moggiopoli scandal). Inevitably, the liquidity of the Asian markets persuades some football people to enhance their earning capacities. To my knowledge, such individuals include players, managers, referees, bookmakers, agents and the criminal fringe. It isn’t just the Italian mafia centres of Napoli, Palermo and Reggio di Calabria that are actively involved in football markets!
To date, all attempts to clean up the game have been peripheral. In Germany, some selective sweeping under the carpet and wrist slapping went on in response to the referee Robert Hoyzer admitting that he took money to alter football match outcomes. But, I believe that there are other match officials in the Bundesliga who were merely demoted or, indeed, allowed to continue to officiate. In Italy, in the aftermath of calciocaos, two referees were suspended but the other six that were under investigation are still involved in Serie A.
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However, until football cleans up its act, corruption will persist. Falling attendances in Italy and England are partially related to deficiencies in the sport on offer. Although the prawn sandwich brigade remain oblivious to anything, the true fans know when they are being short changed. The recent assertion by Graeme Souness that British football is “the most honest in Europe” is simply laughable.
Tessa Jowell, the Minister for Culture, is aiming to make Britain a clean and well regulated gambling environment. I fully support her and her Department’s efforts but such efforts must extend beyond the protection of the vulnerable and the targeting of company directors with criminal links.
The football authorities also need to take a lead in this area and not just in the betting arena. In the lead up to the last World Cup, there was a real concern within FIFA that Uzbekistan were going to make it to the finals. This would have been politically unacceptable. In the first leg of the Asian Play Off with Bahrain, the Uzbeks won 1-0 and had a penalty denied them by the Japanese official. FIFA ludicrously ordered the game to be replayed and a 1-1 draw resulted. Bahrain won through in the Second Leg on away goals – the official for that second game (obviously by chance in the light of recent occurrences) was a certain Mr Graham Poll!

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