Manchester United, Premier League Champions... Really?

                                                            The Magic Statue

The last 24 key match-changing decisions in Manchester United's Premier League games have ALL been in favour of the Red Devils.

Since the statue of Sir Ferguson was unveiled and the stand named after the man, nothing has been given against the Reds - the last decision was the sending off of Jonny Evans in the 6-1 defeat to Manchester City on October 23rd 2011 - 554 days ago.

This is the longest run of one way decisions EVER in English football.

United fans must be grateful to hear that the new Premier League chairman, Anthony Fry, is a United fan.

Thank goodness...

Apr 28 2013: Arsenal v MAN UTD (Penalty) - Dowd

Apr 14 2013: Stoke v MAN UTD (Penalty) - Moss

Dec 01 2012: Norwich v MAN UTD (Penalty) - Halsey

Nov 03 2012: MAN UTD v Arsenal (Penalty and Sending Off) - Dean

Oct 28 2012: Chelsea v MAN UTD (2 x Sendings Off) - Clattenburg

Sep 23 2012: Liverpool v MAN UTD (Penalty and Sending Off) - Halsey

Sep 15 2012: MAN UTD v Wigan (Penalty) - Oliver

Sep 02 2012: Southampton v MAN UTD (Penalty) - Dean

Apr 15 2012: MAN UTD v Aston Villa (Penalty) - Halsey

Apr 08 2012: MAN UTD v QPR (Penalty and Sending Off) - Mason

Mar 18 2012: Wolves v MAN UTD (Sending Off) - Taylor

Mar 11 2012: MAN UTD v West Brom (Penalty and Sending Off) - Probert

Feb 05 2012: Chelsea v MAN UTD (2 x Penalties) - Webb

Jan 31 2012: MAN UTD v Stoke (2 x Penalties) - Jones

Dec 26 2011: MAN UTD v Wigan (Penalty and Sending Off) - Dowd

Nov 26 2011: MAN UTD v Newcastle (Sending Off) - Jones

For comparison, in the same window, Manchester City have had 3 sendings off in favour and 8 against together with 11 pens for and 3 against. 

Sir Alex Ferguson...
... bringing the game into disrepute.

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

Leading Bookmaker Chooses New Premier League Chairman

"Just because a tile falls off a roof, there is not necessarily someone underneath it at the right moment: that would be too good to be true" - Jean Baudrillard.

Yesterday, it was announced that the new Premier League (EPL) chairman is to be investment banker and Dairy Crest chairman, Anthony Fry.

He replaces Sir Dave Richards, who acted as Richard Scudamore's rottweiler at the FA and repeatedly humiliated himself and the EPL around the world.
He also was a serial failure of a businessman who nearly destroyed Sheffield Wednesday and presumably received a knighthood for his refusal to put up a memorial at Hillsborough in memory of the 96 Liverpool fans who were manslaughtered by South Yorkshire police in 1989.

The appointment of Fry is controversial.
As well as being chairman of a company that sells the abusive products of the dairy industry, Fry represents Portuguese investment bank Espirito Santo having formerly worked at Rothschild and the immensely successful Lehman Brothers (on whom he did a runner in 2007 just prior to the crash). He also helped to establish that source of voluntary taxation known as the National Lottery.

But the fact that an animal abusing investment banker who encourages the poor to gamble is taking over from a heartless and hapless fool with a tendency to drink too much is peripheral to the main problem with his appointment.

The selection panel who appojnted Fry was composed of Manchester United's David Gill, Chelsea's Bruce Buck, Manchester City's John Williams and...
... Bet 365 supremo Peter Coates who also owns the insider gambling outfit known as Stoke City.

Some questions of integrity.

* Why is the owner of one of Europe's biggest bookmakers involved in the selection of the EPL chairman?
Are there not conflicts of interests here?

* And while we're at it, why does the EPL allow leading bookmakers/professional gamblers to own clubs? When Brighton and Hove Albion are eventually promoted, two EPL clubs will be directly under such ownership while others have similar arrangements at arm's length.
Are there not conflicts of interest here?

* Fry supports Manchester United (because he is not from Manchester). In that Man Utd have not had a penalty or sending off against them but 24 such decisions in favour of them in the last season and three-quarters in the EPL, the fact that the United CEO Gill has appointed a United fan as chairman is problematical.
Are there not conflicts of interest here?

* Manchester United and Stoke City enjoy a very close relationship on a range of inappropriate levels. The fact is that 50% of the selection committee was, in effect, a duopoly.
Are there not conflicts of interest here?

If this structure existed in any other sector, there would be questions being asked in high places.

As it is just the fragmented cartel known as the Premier League, it is instead seen as just another shoddy decision made by the people who have allowed for the criminalisation of the sport of football in England.

Footballers aren't allowed to bet.
But bookmakers are allowed to own EPL clubs.
And bookmakers are allowed to appoint those who make the EPL rules.
Something stinks here...
... and its not rancid sour fermenting curdling clotting cows' milk.



Cows Have Rights...

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

El Espinazo Del Diablo

Being a true scoundrel, the framing of an argument is Richard Scudamore's last defence of his gross mismanagement of what is known to him as "My League" and, to the rest of us, as the English Premier League (EPL).

Following the 'revelation' that Portsmouth's Real debts stood at £122 million, Our Great Leader was caught between defending the EPL brand while ensuring that the deserved total meltdown did not occur at Pompey - not because of any concern for that particular club but due to the contagion of the EPL brand.

Once the FA Cup Final Parachute Payment had been secured, Scudamore was free to frame - his favourite frivolity.

Our Great Leader decided that the key charge being laid at his door was the misallocation of television monies around the EPL clubs.
Not only is this not an area of particular concern, nobody actually believes it to be of particular concern.
And, on top of that, his maths were murky even so...

The key charge relates rather to the imposition of a no-holds-barred version of psychopathic free market capitalism that has not only destroyed the integrity of the game through allowing and indeed encouraging the colossal influence of bookmaking money but also the turning of a blind eye to a steady stream of inappropriate owners and sponsorship deals.

Media distortion and the selective release/leaking of information form the bedrock of the ScudamoreWorld Illusion.
Take the recent legal action taken by the Premier League against Ofcom.
Not only has this story been carefully airbrushed in the media controlled by either the Murdochracy or the EPL, additionally any public utterances on the matter have been hidden away with apparent good news and positive spin mixed in.

So, throughout the media window covering Ofcom's enforcement of a more Realistic market price on the BSkyB packages, any mention of Scudamore's legal challenge was always adjacent to the sweetener that, finally, the Premier League were going to take some action against the conveyor belt of charlatans that have recently been invited to the top table as owners - in future, state terrorists, banned lawyers, illegal arms dealers, casino owners, underground bookmaking organisations, sovereign wealth funds, leveraged buyout scams and other strata of ScudamoreWorld's Great And Good will have to operate behind the secrecy of a suitably locationed shell company in a new reinforced fit-and-proper-persons-test-plus.

Leaks are always an active ingredient of Scudamore's smoke and mirrors.
Selected journalists are given their coups in return for complacent imitations of journalism; whether it is the holistic strategy to destabilise the FA or the ongoing battle for power with UEFA, there are those who will always oblige.

Below we list what we feel are some of the major charges regarding the abuse of English football by Scudamore and those behind him.
It is not complete.
When dealing with such rampant and systemic murkiness, nothing can ever be complete...
But, in any balanced area of concern, such a damning list of indictments would be enough for a man to the honourable thing.

We break the charge list down as, like landlady's cake, the more it is divided, the easier it is to get through.

* The 39th Step - The ludicrous idea for a round of EPL games to be played in various gambling locations around the world - imperial corruption at its finest.

* The List of Inappropriate, Illegal and Criminal Owners - Thaksin Shinawatra, Carston Yeung, the Glazers, Abramovich, Gaydamek Snr and all others involved in Ponzimouth FC, Hicks and Gillett, Usmanov and Kroenke, Ashley, the Icelandic nonsense at West Ham etc etc.

* Shirt Sponsorship/Club Sponsorship by Bookmakers - Next season, SBOBET, the Far East betting firm that were involved in a legal battle with the Telegraph Group over allegedly rigged markets, will have their name on two, possibly three, EPL teams - West Ham, West Brom and Cardiff City. 188Bet, another Asian concern, have sponsorship arrangements with five EPL clubs. Elsewhere, Wolves, Sunderland, Tottenham are all similarly sponsored.

* Debt - 60% of ALL the European club football debt is below the line of EPL clubs. Portsmouth are on the verge and Hull City may soon be joining them in ScudamoreWorld Chapter 11 - Parachute Payments for Psychopaths.

* The Falling Attendances - No matter how ScudamoreWorld or the individual clubs doctor their figures, attendances are falling in England's top flight. Virgin Money reckon that 25% of season ticket holders are considering not renewing for the next round of spectacles.

* Suspect Structures Relating to the PGMOB - Referee selection, bias, linkage of certain officials to certain bookmaking organisations, the opaqueness of all matters relating to this key area of the 'sport', the refusal to introduce video technologies that would limit the institutional and bookmaking abuse of match outcomes, the promotion of a lackey, Kipper Riley, to replace Wart Face.

* Destabilisation of the FA - the Real governing body of football in England - Targeting independent voices on the FA Committee. Attempting to gain control of the England team and all the betting opportunities thereby associated. Creating momentum to make the FA Cup a midweek competition as the bookmakers would prefer.

* Murkiness Not Meritocracy - The shit always rises to the top as Sir Dave Richards amply and repeatedly proves. Everything that this man has ever done has failed, yet he is still allowed to rottweiler away on behalf of the powers that be.

* Inability to Assess the Real Financial Template - Our Great Leader: "... and now we're out of the other end of the cycle"; Scudamore thinks that the Recession/Depression is over and that easy money times are just around the corner. How unstrategic is that?

* Fake Integrity Campaigns - The Daily Telegraph and the Premier League teamed up, as is their wont, to target those evil Asian bookmakers who were accepting bets on Premier League Reserve matches. The markets were briefly dropped but are now returned in all their murky glory. You could even bet on Buxton versus Kendal Town the other week. Ah, but the publicity machine has moved on...

* Introduction of Champions League Play-Offs - Described as "hare-brained" by Sir Ferguson. Dead in the water.

* Biting the hand that feeds it - ScudamoreWorld are taking action against the government to try to prevent any reduction to their top line while, at the same time, defending the hierarchy which allows the HMRC to come considerably behind more deserving creditors like arms dealers and the underworld when clubs evolve to their corrupt maturity.

In summation, the Murdochracy and ScudamoreWorld are directly or indirectly responsible for the conversion of our national sport into an international betting medium - a hyperreality only marginally linked to the original game.

Of course, although these people would claim otherwise, all of the above is accepted and regarded as imaginative business practices within ScudamoreWorld itself.
They are more concerned about the expansion of their power base.

In this arena, there are three big opponents to be encountered - the government, the State, Ofcom, the public, us, and UEFA and the nascent European Super League, and FIFA and the control of the game in Asia.

The first area is problematical as there are those who are having their sport stolen off them who are aware, miffed and attitudinal.
In the big scheme of things, this is an irrelevant lobbying group though.
Horseracing, which the football betting model is based on, survives with half a dozen bewildered souls at Uttoxeter and a £20 million off-course market for each race.
It is of no consequence that nobody is there to witness it.
Indeed, in very fixed markets, this is a positive advantage!

The second area is perceived as the prime battleground within ScudamoreWorld.
Platini is working hard to both eliminate the unsustainable financial structure of the leading English clubs and utilising some very imaginative real-time tactics to trim short-term incomings to those clubs.
Many of the leading clubs themselves are moving towards the Reality of the European Super League as it makes financial sense in every way to play Barcelona rather than Burnley.
This demolishes the ScudamoreWorld model and hence the war.
Sometimes the individual skirmishes take on a positively Old Etonian air of silliness. For example, the EPL is the only European league that programmes matches to clash directly with Champions League events.
Wilful posturing...
...but ultimately impotent.

The tertiary area is dependent on other matters to be discussed at another time.

If one instance of late sums up ScudamoreWorld, it was the initial fracas following the announcement by Ofcom that the Murdochracy's railroading of the lumpen proletariat was to be ended.

Scudamore produced his figures.
If punters pay less for Sky, grassroots funding for the sport will be compromised.

Some figures to chew on...

Amount spent by Premier League annually on grassroots funding for the game £12 million.
Amount the Premier League gives to EPL clubs £790 million.
Amount handed over the table (rather than under) to agents £71 million.
Amount paid to Our Great Leader, once again above rather than below, £1.535 million.

Scudamore has fronted this massive campaign to Spectacularise our Sport into the Arena of Casino.
The conclusion of the Premier League title race is as neohyperreal as Britain's Got the Pop Factor and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice.

Picture Scudamore, playing with his pilliwinkies in his bath tub, strumming to himself...
"I started with nothing, but now I got something..."

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from Football Is Fixed and redistribute by email or post to the web.

Football Is Fecked

* UEFA are an Orwellian construct.

* Champions League football is corrupted and fixed both institutionally and within the supposedly disbanded G14 circle of power clubs.

* The Premier League (EPL) actively work against the success of English clubs in the Champions League.

* The FA are a racist body.

Homage To Catalonia

It is our belief that UEFA actively worked against Barcelona reaching the Champions League Final at Wembley.
On April 1st, the trial of cycling/tennis/football doping doctor Eufemania Fuentes reached its conclusion in Madrid - the good doctor had worked with both Real Madrid and Barcelona.
On April 2nd, Barca reported the performance of Wolfgang Stark, the German referee, to UEFA after the First Leg of the Quarter Final between Paris SG and Barcelona.
The referee for the 2nd Leg was Dutchman Björn Kuipers who also was given the Dortmund v Real Madrid game last night.
In a triumph of meritocracy, Viktor Kassai was given both Barca v Milan and the FC Bayern v Barcelona matches.
We reported on the suspicions underpinning the FC Bayern/Barcelona match yesterday.

Down and Out in Manchester and London

Michel Platini focuses his premiership of UEFA on Financial Fair Play (FFP)...
... the exception to this belief mechanism is when such finance has anything to do with Paris St Germain or Qatar.
English teams have been targeted on the field of play as warnings as to what might be expected when the FFP properly kicks in - Manchester United were mugged against Madrid, Manchester City were mugged against Ajax and Chelsea were mugged by an agreed result between Shakhtar Donetsk and Juventus.
Meanwhile Arsenal met a speedy FC Bayern in the midst of a seven game run that saw the Bavarians beat Dortmund, Stuttgart, Arsenal, Bremen, Schalke, Mainz and Wolfsburg with a goal difference of 21-2.

Nineteen Eighty Four

UEFA back up their commercial strategies with doublespeak so that any manipulations and/or injustices are simply airbrushed from history.
An example is Pique's handball for Barca in Munich.



Reality - Pique blocks a shot with his arms. The referee and his two nearby assistants fail to spot it and a corner is given instead of a penalty.
UEFA 1st Draft - Pique gets body in the way of Lahm's shot to deflect the ball away for a corner.
UEFA Final Draft - Pique blocks a shot.

Animal Farm

In 2008, UEFA created the ECA to replace the G14 group of powerful clubs (the G14, in true Orwellian style actually represent 18 clubs!).
The G14 was allegedly disbanded.
In the 21 years of the Champions League, every winner except Chelsea and all losing finalists aside from Chelsea, Monaco and Sampdoria (on one occasion each) have been from this power lobby.
21 finals, 20 winners, 38 finalists!
Looks like an anti-democratic mafiosi to me!!

Keep The Premier League Flying

The EPL and UEFA battle over turf in the same manner as all mafiosi groups of inappropriate power.
The FFP and match manipulation emanates from Geneva and Richard Scudamore and his hidden backers respond by scheduling EPL, Championship and Scottish Premier League games to coincide with the UEFA Champions League events.
No other European league confronts UEFA in this manner...
... even if matches are scheduled on the same date, the kick off times in other territories are brought forward to late afternoon to prevent any clashes of interests.
This is purely commercial power play and represents the early phases of the battle over the inevitable European Super League that Ladbrokes Ambassador and Scotland football manager Gordon Strachan thinks will exist within the decade.
If the EPL co-operated (a difficult word for a psychopath like Scudamore to get his head around) then English teams would compete on a level playing field in the Champions League but there are many British-based bookmakers who do not wish for this to be the case as English success demolishes their bottom line.

The Road To Wigan Pier

Wheeler Dealer Whelan - A Self-Made Millionaire Who Made His Millions By Treading On People

And it is not just the EPL that are a bunch of rogues...
... the FA is an institution that thinks that nibbling is worse than racist abuse, who will be able to celebrate their 150 year anniversary with 100,000 Germans at Wembley, who support an England team qualifying for Brazil under a manager who broke the anti-apartheid sanctions against South Africa for cash, shows bias in selection in favour of a grouping of four firms of agents and supported John Terry in the racism row, and the FA have enabled an FA Cup Final between the FFP-challenged Manchester City and Wigan Athletic under the ownership of homo sapiens-challenged Dave Whelan - a man who believes that English football should be grateful to Thatcher!

George Orwell stood up against injustice, totalitarianism and authoritarianism.
UEFA, the EPL and the FA stand for injustice, totalitarianism and authoritarianism.

Big Brother wanted Bayern vs Borussia and Bayern vs Borussia is what you have got.

This article probably represents a thoughtcrime...

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

A Massive Insider Gamble On FC Bayern München Vs Barcelona

Not The 2013/14 Barcelona Away Kit But Erythropoietin (EPO) Which Makes Footballers Run Faster          

Throughout yesterday, there was a one-way betting market emanating from the Asian underground supportive of FC Bayern defeating Barcelona.

Some of the largest individual trades seen this season were on such an outcome.
An ex-broker who exists on the periphery of the illegal Asian betting markets tells me that he has never seen such one-directional volume on such a competitive match (a Champions League semi final).

Before assessing the "public" data on the match, let us consider why this latter point is so key.

Two horse races - one a 3:15 at Catterick on a Tuesday afternoon with prize money for the winner of £3,000, a well backed favourite and a total betting market on and off course of £1 million. The dominant money is in the betting market not the prize money and a fixed race may be established with all connections making more money than would otherwise have been the case. The bookies are happy and the mugs have been mugged.
The favourite that has been bought off will go off at a longer price in its next race due to the underperformance and the insiders (bookies and connections) will all make money on this race too at the expense of the bewildered.
The second race is the Derby. The winner will receive £750,000 and kudos and breeding rights and a place in history - this is much harder (although not impossible) to buy off utilising the betting volume as a lubricant.
Only in these Group 1 events is racing integrity virtually assured.

So it is with football.

Champions League Second Phase events have entirely different betting patterns than a Bet365/Stoke City match or a late season agreed draw in Serie A.
The matches are truly competitive as agents and clubs insist that their players perform on the big stage for future profit in the former case and "club loyalty" in the latter.

So when a Champions League match becomes an insider betting event, it stands out like a sore thumb.
And FC Bayern v Barca was an insider betting event.

So, what was behind this Asian underground money?
The options are...

1) Match Referee Viktor Kassai - FC Bayern's second goal was offside and the third was preceded by a Thomas Muller foul but he also denied the Germans a first half penalty in a performance of considerable ineptitude. Verdict: Useless rather than corrupt although UEFA solicited complaints from Barca over the refereeing of their 1st Leg in Paris in the previous round..

2) The Decision to play Lionel Messi - Covered less yardage than any other starter. The maestro was unfit and should not have been playing. Verdict: Messi's injury was public information and not the reason for the insider trading.

3) Jordi Roura - The Barcelona assistant coach is not Tito Vilanova and Tito's fight against cancer is a severe disadvantage. Verdict: Public knowledge and historical and therefore not relevant.

4) Pep Guardiola - The future FC Bayern manager helped his new employers with a dossier on his former team which will have been a major benefit. Verdict: Will have improved FC Bayern's chances and similar structures historically have seen insider betting on manipulated outcomes eg Man Utd v Real Madrid earlier in the year. But not at this degree of volume nor with such marked dynamics.

5) Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs) - As a team FC Bayern covered over 70 metres per minute more than Barcelona - an extra 6.5 km over the whole match. Verdict: Both these teams appear to have utilised PESs in the past - Barca have been linked with disgraced Spanish cycling doper Dr Eufemiano Fuentes and FC Bayern have windows where their fitness increases beyond what is achievable via legitimate means. So Barca cannot really complain about Bayern's Little Helpers.

A combination of Guardiola's input and the possible use of PESs and a UEFA-inspired inept referee cumulatively might offer some explanation for this massive and succesful insider gamble in the Asian underground.
But the sheer volume and one-sidedness of the professional trading suggests certainty rather than probability.
For reasons of libel, we'll allow you to make your own assessment of the dominant input(s) to the outcome of this fixed match.

But where is the explanation as to why UEFA, Europol, Early Warning, legitimate bookmakers etc all failed to spot a potentially fixed event when independent traders, brokers and market makers were all aware that something fishy was going on?
Were any FC Bayern players drug tested after the match?
Why was Kassai chosen when he and his team serially underperform - it was they that missed the Ukrainian "goal" against England in Euro 2012?
And why is the issue of PESs usage by major G14 clubs never on the agenda - Guardiola was banned for 4 months as a player for use of a banned substance, Guardiola/Barcelona/Fuentes is a drug-related PR disaster waiting to happen and Guardiola is, next year, to be the manager of a team that shows all the patterns that we would generally associate with the illegal use of an Erythropoietin (EPO)-type substance?

What do WADA do?

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

Criminalising The Integrity Of Football

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Manchester United on their Premier League (EPL) title success...
... we would particularly extend our felicitations to Sir Ferguson, all of the pseudo-supporters from Swansea, Somerset and Singapore, Mark Clattenburg and all of the Whistling Cheer Leaders as well as the future United keeper, Joe Hart.

Since the mid-season uproar last season, Manchester United league matches have witnessed 12 penalties and 7 sendings off...
... ALL of these decisions have been in favour of Man Utd resulting in a fakely close title race last season and a runaway success this.

In comparison, when City won the league there were 5 penalties for/ 2 against and 2 sendings off for/ 5 against the Blues.

The EPL is a Handicap Race!

And an insider gambling one too as Manchester United are very active in the betting markets that underpin the EPL - the match outcomes are generally in the market pre-match.
Somebody high up at Old Trafford must be aware of this structure due to the sheer amounts of money involved.

The EPL is an Insider Gambling Handicap Race!!

              Laughing All The Way To The Wealth Management Section At Goldman Sachs

In parallel, Juventus have undertaken a similar takeover of the integrity of Serie A, coincidentally initiated at the same mid-season breakpoint in season 2011/12.
Since then the Old Lady have seen 21 out of 24 penalties/sendings off in their favour in the league (ALL 14 sendings off have been to Juve's advantage!).

Serie A is a Handicap Race!!!

This year's success came despite Antonio Conte initially being banned for 10 months (later reduced to four) for knowledge of two fixed matches involving players/officials when he was coach at Siena.

Serie A is an Insider Gambling Handicap Race!!!!

    Antonio Conte Doing The Synchronised Mussolini Dance For Which He Is So Rightly Famed

Why do we spend our time celebrating multi-millionaires fixing the sport we love and then watching them gamble on the rigged outcomes for financial gain while season ticket prices and television subscriptions go through the roof?

The Premier League and Serie A are criminalised Ponzi schemes...
... and like all such schemes, a-tumbling down they will come.

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

Goal-Line Technology Is Not Enough

On Friday, Dutch referee Serdar Gozubuyuk called for the introduction of video technology to help officials make the correct decisions after he denied Ajax Amsterdam two certain penalties in their home draw against Heerenveen.
The Amsterdam giants felt they should have been awarded a spot kick after Ramon Zomer handled the ball early in the first half, while they also called for a penalty after a foul on Christian Eriksen just inside the area.

"This seems pretty clear. I cannot see the incident properly because I'm looking at (Lasse) Schone's back," Gozubuyuk told Eredivisie Live after reviewing Zomer's handball.

"If it's up to me we would introduce video technology as soon as possible. That will prevent this kind of situation where I have to explain decisions that I could not see properly.

"We are all ready for the introduction of video technology. It's starting to become annoying to be criticised for decisions we have to take in a split second. Everybody else gets the chance to see an incident five or six times before judging."

Meanwhile, in England, the probable FA Cup winners and the teams able to avoid relegation from the Premier League continue to be decided by erroneous and questionable decisions by referees and their assistants.
And, although Hawk-Eye will be introduced for goal-line decisions from next season, there is no desire among the powers-that-be to introduce further transparency into the game.
Keith Hackett, the former head of the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB), publicised the fact that Hawk-Eye has been ready for implementation for six years but foot dragging by these same powers-that-be prevented numerous travesties of justice from being prevented.

Why?

Harry Redknapp Questioning The Marital Status Of Chris Foy's Parents After Fake Penalty Decision Relegates Asian Club

Chris Foy should have sent off two Manchester City players and given Chelsea a penalty in the FA Cup Semi Final at Wembley last week...
... video technology would have prevented these errors.
Yesterday, Foy gave Bet365/Stoke City a fake penalty for the sort of shirt holding that occurs in multiple at every corner.
Meanwhile, Sunderland survived two penalty appeals against Danny Rose courtesy of Phil Dowd after being helped on their way to victory over Newcastle last week by Howard Webb (who was demoted to the League One game between Colchester and Shrewsbury as punishment)...
... Newcastle were given their own survival fillip when Mike Jones failed to give West Brom a stonewall penalty yesterday deciding that the infringement had happened two metres to the right and hence outside the box.

In a tight relegation struggle, these points for Sunderland, Bet365/Stoke City and Newcastle might prove critical.

With so much money riding on Premier League survival, the sooner that referees are forced to face the amateurish nature of some of their key decision making, the better for the integrity of the game.

Video technology would make the game cleaner as it would be difficult for a crooked official to maintain a patently incorrect decision in the face of repeated video evidence.
Errors are too frequently the result of corruption.

Still, Sir Ferguson will be relieved if Bet365/Stoke City survive.

And, in that Man Utd still await the first penalty or sending off against their interests in the Premier League this season, one must presume that he most certainly would not welcome video technology and the meritocracy that would come in its wake.

Yet another good reason for introducing it then...

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

Gideon Osborne, Carmen Reinhart And Ken Rogoff Are Charlatans

On the day that UK unemployment jumped 70,000 and one of the architects of that steady stream of unemployment and minimum wage slavery was buried, something else was buried too...
... the revelation that the academic paper that all austerity policies are based on - "Growth in a Time of Debt" by Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart - is based on a fallacious and malicious analysis of the data.

         
                     Carmen Reinhart Contemplating The Children She Will Eat For Breakfast

"Sloppy statistics" according to Robert Harding in Wednesday's Financial Times.

Rogoff and Reinhart found that growth falls to a mean average of minus 0.1 per cent when public debt is greater than 90% of output.
But researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst find a figure of plus 2.2% when repeating the analysis.

"Coding errors, selective exclusion of available data, and unconventional weighting of summary statistics led to serious errors that inaccurately represent the data between public debt and GDP growth."

"Unsupportable statistical techniques..."

Financial Times: "The Amherst researchers said that Ms Reinhart and Mr Rogoff had made an error in their spreadsheet, missed several years of data and then averaged their results in a way that put unusual weight on short episodes in particular countries."

Robert Pollin and Michael Ash: "The main policy plank is riddled with faults."

The original paper and the arbitrary nature both of the 90% threshold and the general manner that economic/econometric "science" is addressed show the ludicrous nature of depending on the dismal science to produce anything other than dismal science.

Although the pseudo-case for austerity doesn't solely depend on Rogoff and Reinhart, other supportive sources have also recently been discredited.

And Rogoff and Reinhart produced their propaganda in 2010...
... why has it taken three years for anyone to check the figures when global economic policy has been based on the austerity that the paper proposes?
Because Rogoff and Reinhart refused to release the data, that's why!
They were that confident of their analyses!!

Paul Krugman: "For the truth is that Reinhart-Rogoff faced substantial criticism from the start, and the controversy grew over time... many economists pointed out that a negative correlation between debt and economic performance need not mean that high debt causes low growth. It could be the other way around... (T)he Reinhart-Rogoff fiasco needs to be seen in the broader context of austerity mania: the obviously intense desire of policy makers, politicians and pundits across the Western world to turn their backs on the unemployed and instead use the economic crisis as an excuse to slash social programs."

We're either being run by entirely incompetent fools or by malicious psychopaths.

Incompetent Fool Or Malicious Psychopath? Too Busy Selling His Cheshire Estate Two Days Before High Speed Rail Route Announced To Notice That The "Intellectual" Authority Underpinning His Class War Perversion Was Of No Merit

A former professor of mine, Neville Topham, told me about a high level consultancy document that he had written showing that house prices increase more than average for properties directly under the flight paths at Heathrow Airport.

"You can show anything with data in economics" was the justification for his fee.
 
© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

Neither Society Nor Football Should Mourn The Passing Of The Psychopathic Class Warmonger Thatcher

           
                                            Why Are We Commemorating That?


As psychopathic personality disorder might be based on nature and/or nurture, whoever passed on the genes, and/or sexually and/or physically and/or psychologically abused Thatcher when she was a child has one hell of a lot to answer for.

But she took no responsibility for her actions against the social in her adult life.

Class war was underpinned by an entirely fake economic system - Friedmanian free market capitalism - a Ponzi scheme, a Pyramid Selling System of limited duration of robustness.
Britain's decline was a result of two World Wars and the end of Imperial Slave-Based privileges, Friedmanian free market capitalism merely imposed a series of bubbles on this deteriorating situation but these bubbles were manufactured and resulted, along with supportive government policies, in a regressive flow of assets and freedoms from poor to rich producing income inequalities that are unsustainable in the opinion of Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

Revolutions happen when people have nothing left to lose and, at the same time, they are being mocked by a psychopathic "elite".

Friedmanian free market capitalism has all the features of a standard Ponzi scheme scaled up to global level - its like Albania and then some!
It is entirely unstable and non-viable strategically.
It is doomed to implode.
The simple ignorance of the costs of the externalities, the impacts of this psycho-system that are not factored into price (particularly climate change and environmental impact), make the Ponzi scheme unsustainable...
... and the externalities are only one problem of many.

The "Financial Crisis" was inevitable due to behaviouralism not being seen as a primary input into economic analysis.
And the very same people who had no idea of how to deal with this planned-for-crisis when it eventually occurred are still at the wheel now steering us through the choppy waters of austerity.

Friedmanian free market capitalism is simple...
... it is simply systemic psychopathic greed at the expense of the social.
Extreme wage slavery or extreme austerity for all...
... and thanks for the yacht by the way!

Thatcher was a conduit.

The destruction of industries and communities are documented better elsewhere - the selective state subsidies for a vastly underperforming nuclear industry which was closely linked on a variety of levels to ministers in her cabinets and the wilful destruction of a vast array of more economically viable industry in an act of pyschopathic class warmongery.

Her impact on football too was negative.
Think Hillsbrough.
The free market free enterprise fixed football of the Premier League is a direct result of her Milton Friedman/Ayn Randian fascism.
Cowboy capitalism.

Her attitude to Ireland was beyond forgiveness...
...Joe McDonnell would have been a happy man today. 

And why are we paying for this nonsense today when we've already paid for it over and over and over again.
All of us.
Friedmanian free market capitalism has ruined the last 34 years of life - over a third of a century of state-imposed misery.
A burial isn't enough.
Only when the system that spawned her is buried can the party really begin.

But even being generous, surely a quiet private affair in the manner of Harold Shipman would have been more appropriate...

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

Police and Thieves - How the Premier League Demolishes Rogue Foreign Owners

In the mid-nineties and beyond, the Asian underground betting markets entirely dominated match outcomes in the English Premier League (EPL).
These markets were/are very liquid and very illegal with brokers moving from country to country and firms changing names with the police/Interpol in hot pursuit.

One of the first Europeans to move in on these markets was Tony Bloom (then working for Gibraltar-based bookmaker Victor Chandler and now the owner of Brighton and Hove Albion).
He once informed me that £1 million bets on any EPL match didn't even solicit a blink from the underground market makers which gives some indication of the degree of liquidity that existed in such markets nearly 20 years ago.
And turnover has increased markedly in the intervening period.

                                      Anthony Grant Bloom pretending to be a reptile

As ever in the world of monied corruption, the murkier areas of the police soon became a part of the issue and if you wish to piece together a narrative of the structures involved in these collaborations then we would point you in the direction of Birmingham City chairman Peter Pannu.

                                        Peter Pannu pretending to be a policeman

Corruptions, like species, evolve.

The sheer mass of money produced in the Asian betting markets produced a whole spectrum of mafiosi (from Carsten Yeung, the billionaire former barber and Birmingham City owner currently on trial for money laundering to Thaksin Shinawatra and his chum, the QPR chairman Tony Fernandes).

As crime moves effortlessly across borders, the monies yielded from control of betting markets was surpassed by the desire to have direct control over EPL clubs to enable trading strategies to be totally watertight.

So the EPL has seen a progression of Asian "businessmen" move into the English game and the East Europeans soon followed.

The chief executive of the EPL, Richard Scudamore, and his backers were simply not willing to countenance this takeover of their turf and, like any individuals exhibiting psychopathic personality disorder traits, moves have been made to offset these influences.

To the EPL, ownership of English clubs by Americans who have made their money from pathological capitalism is fine and dandy. This generosity even extends to similar individuals of other nationalities so long as they slot seemlessly into the English establishment (think Abramovich or Al Fayed or Al Fahim at Chelsea, Fulham and Man City, for example).

But lower down the feeding chain, the EPL took non-meritocratic actions to remove the offending teams from the cash cow known as the EPL.

Check the recent relevant relegations...

This year, Reading (Anton Zingarevich) and QPR (Fernandes) have slipped through the trap door.
Previously, we have seen the removal of Birmingham (Pannu/Yeung), Portsmouth (Gaydamek), Blackburn (Venky brothers) and Blackpool (Belokon).

Meanwhile, recent match decisions in games involving Watford (the Pozzo family), Nottingham Forest (Fawaz Al Hasawi) and Leicester (Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha) make it quite clear that such outfits are not welcome in the EPL.

It will be interesting to see what happens to Cardiff City with their owner Tan Sri Dato' Seri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun when they arrive in Scudamoreworld.
Despite having made his money on the Malaysian gambling markets via his company, the Berjaya group, Tan is on the global Forbes Billionaire Rich List which might mean that he is allowed to stay in the Greed is Good League.

An external and parallel example of murkiness is at FIFA where the Secretary General of Interpol, Ronald Noble, supported the appointment of  Michael Garcia as FIFA chief investigator of corruption when Garcia's review of the FIFA/ISL scandal is seen as a cover up by Reform consultant Mark Pieth and FIFA judge Joachim Eckert.
Why would a global policeman wish to appoint an individual who is surrounded by doubts over his integrity?

And when there are a number of policemen refereeing in the EPL, the holistic structure becomes rather more murky as, from our data, each of these match officials are problematical.

A key question is where the threshold of allowed corruption occurs.
Are Stoke City (owner Bet 365 supremo Peter Coates) and Brighton (under Tony Bloom) above this threshold?

The policing of corruption would appear to be a dichotomous structure.
Corruption is to be applauded at the top tiers of the game but lower down the pecking order the EPL will not allow such abuses of match results and league realities.

So, there you go...
Forbes billionaires doing corruption is hunky dory but woe betide lesser beings lining their pockets illegally.

Just like free market capitalism!

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

Harlem Globetrotters Reach Champions League Semi Finals

The UEFA Champions League, like the English Premier League (EPL), is largely a marketing exercise where our realities are determined by the specific financial and theatrical requirements of UEFA and the EPL.

Consequently, neither competition is meritocratic although the EPL trumps the Champions League by being an insider gambling paradise as well as a fake tournament.

This post is intended to highlight the dreadful array of manipulations and inappropriate structures that have been demonstrated in the Second Phase of the 2012/13 UEFA Champions League.
Most of the ties have been controversial and the source of this controversy has always been the match officials.

Let us itemise this murk...

                             
         Undiano Mallenco attempting to do the look of innocence thing


Celtic/Juventus - The performance of Spanish referee Undiano Mallenco was both unprofessional and murky. His refusal to impose the rules of the game decided the tie on a non-meritocratic basis. Mallenco has demonstrated a pro-Italian bias throughout his career. Mallenco has refereed Italian clubs in Champions League on 7 occasions (5 wins and 2 draws... Inter 4 Bremen 0; Roma 3 Bayern 2; Fiorentina 3 Bayern 2; Bordeaux 1 Roma 3; Fiorentina 1 Bayern 1; Juve 2 Chelsea 2; Celtic 0 Juve 3).

Man Utd/Real Madrid - The controversial sending off of Nani, the links at football agent level between representatives of both clubs and the role of UEFA Match Observer, Pierluigi Collina, in the dismissal of the Portuguese player made this match a fixed event.

Round of 16 First Leg Referee Selection - A structure that is primed for corruption is when referees from countries officiate at one another's games. So, Celtic v Juventus (Spanish ref)/ Valencia v PSG (Italian ref); Real Madrid v Man Utd (German ref)/ Shakhtar Donetsk v Dortmund (English ref).
The 1st Leg match outcomes were directly related to this matrix (although Valencia lost, Tagliavento sent off Ibrahimovic).

Dortmund/Malaga - Controversial winning goal with a whole collection of offsides in the final minute of injury time saw the Germans through. Manager Mauricio Pellegrino and the owner Sheikh Abdullah Al-Thani have both made complaints to UEFA over referee Craig Thomson's performance and the fact that, in the 1st Leg, Malaga committed 9 fouls, got three bookings and two bans while Dortmund fouled on 14 occasions with just one booking.

Real Madrid/Galatasaray - Fatih Terim made an official complaint to UEFA after the refereeing of the 1st Leg in Madrid by Norwegian ref Svein Moen was seemingly very biased in favour of the Madrileños.

PSG/Barcelona - The Catalans reported Wolfgang Stark to the UEFA authorities after an astonishingly inept performance in the 2-2 draw. The man also needs to do work on his body language as forensic psychology of his performances are very revealing.

Entertainingly, the UEFA website presents us with a parallel universe where none of the above ever occured.
Post-match statements are edited and doctored to focus solely on the inane rather than the potentially corrupt.
And, yet again, we are presented with four members of the G14 clubs in the semi finals with only one winner since the Champions League was formed coming from outside this select group.
Allegedly, so we have been told, the G14 has been disbanded...

The selection of the referees is the primary problem here.

All UEFA match officials for key games in the latter stages of the Champions League are from western Europe and many are regarded as problematical in their host country - for example, exactly how is Mark Clattenburg on the UEFA list when he is anybody's bitch? And Mallenco is renowned for his pro-Real Madrid bias in Spain while Craig Thomson secretly wears a Rangers shirt under his referee top and burns Celtic effigies in his garden shed.

The only reputational edge that the UEFA Champions League has over the EPL lies in the area of insider gambling - the EPL positively encourages such behaviour while Platini's men will not countenance it.

This is clearly visible in the analyses of the betting patterns.
Indeed, we are currently preparing a high level consultancy document on this very subject as the respective betting patterns when grouped together by tournament expose the degree to which the EPL is a poker table where insiders screw the gullible.

As Paul Breitner has recently stated, the EPL is "laughable" adding, for good measure, that the league "is now only the best league in Asia"!

And only in the underground illegal betting markets of Asia too...

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013 

The Secret Footballer and The Guardian

There are any number of ways that football agents can kill and feed off the sport onto which they leech.

In recent posts we have highlighted:

* Roy Hodgson's selection for Euro 2012 where 14 out of the 23 player squad were represented by four firms of agents (Base, Stellar, Wassermann Media and Key Sports). Base also represent Hodgson.

* The upcoming Merseyside derby will see up to 14 players - Carragher, Johnson, Kelly, Gerrard, Henderson, Shelvey, Wisdom, Howard, Baines, Hibbert, Jagielka, Distin, Osman and Naismith - represented by just three companies - Base, Stellar and Wassermann Media.

* The Manchester United versus Real Madrid fix where Jorge Mendes and Gestifute represented Ronaldo, Pepe, Di Maria, Coentrão and Jose Mourinho of Real and Nani of Man Utd which, as Nani was the source of the outcome, is highly problematical in itself. Mendes also represented non-playing participants Carvalho and Anderson.

These three cases are deliberately structured to be non-meritocratic and potentially corrupt with the core agents and individuals able to manipulate match outcomes to suit their power bases, transfer activities and insider betting activities.

This is the end of football as these shady groups are legally untouchable and markedly criminalised.

But there are shades of crime - some agents oscillate between white, grey and black markets while others gyrate between grey and black and still others reside comfortably and very profitably in the underground.

The most skilled operators are the former as they attempt to clean up past misdemeanours via reputational consultants and the like.

     John Colquhoun - The Anonymous Football Editor of the Guardian


Yesterday in the Guardian, there was a piece of simplistic dross by some sycophantic pseudo be-spectacled slime entitled "Do We Need Wikileaks Anymore?"
The question should surely be whether we need the Guardian newspaper anymore.

The editor, Alan Rusbridger, refuses to communicate over the fact that the Guardian's football output is under the direct control of John Colquhoun of Key Sports agents.
Instead Rusbridger desperately scrambles around to hide any evidence of this reality being so.

But just think of the benefits that this anonymous control of a leading newspaper's output has on the integrity of the game.

Players represented by John Colquhoun/Key Sports and associated agents (see above) receive free and positive exposure for their clients, transfer negotiations might be played out in public (check the Guardian output on the protracted Theo Walcott contract negotiations), corrupted match officials are given support and credence in return for future favours, malicious media gossip can be surreptitiously put into the public domain, betting strategies (for Mr Colquhoun is a professional gambler too) can be value-added by providing disinformation on matches to come which helps link the paper to the bookmaking industry. Colquhoun was even the hidden face behind the Secret Footballer farce which transferred from paper to book leading to more profits for the Guardian Group.

For a national newspaper in a deep financial crisis, adaptive strategies should be created to save the paper.
But these strategies should be sound business projects and not a distortion of truth for proprietary financial gain.
Rusbridger knows the score but is too busy hobnobbing with the great and the good to pay anything other than lip service to the ethics of journalism.

Wikileaks bravely blew the whistle on corrupting powers across the planet while the Guardian newspaper under the tutelage of Mr Rusbridger decided that such bottom up anti-corruption wasn't for the likes of a middle class "left of centre" organ and did the dirty on Wikileaks repeatedly...
... and once again for proprietary financial gain.

The people mentioned in this post are extorting the game that gave them a chance.
Pre-Thatcher, football was about players and fans...
... post-Thatcher, it has become a plaything for corrupt middlemen, underground bookmakers, criminalised referees and institutions, gutter media, rogue players and mafiosi from around the world.
These people distort our realities and then squirrel away their illicit gains in suitable offshore tax havens while the rest of us are told to do the austerity thing.

Thatcher would be proud of them all.
And she would be particularly proud that the only "left of centre" British broadsheet is now what it is.

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013 

Pot Calling Kettle

Insider gambling and the control of match outcomes by agents are the death-knell for football.

Mourinho Congratulating Business Colleague After Old Trafford Sending Off


When Sir Ferguson refused to attend the post-match press conference after Real Madrid had knocked Manchester United out of the Champions League, there was conspiratorial talk in the air of the home dressing room.

Pierluigi Collina, the UEFA Official Match Observer, had given full marks to match referee Cüneyt Çakır who had controversially sent off Nani, which was weird...
...weirder still was the fact that one agent, Jorge Mendes of Gestifute, owned the following individuals involved in the match - Ronaldo, Di Maria, Pepe, Coentrão of Real Madrid plus Jose Mourinho, the Real Madrid manager, and Nani!

As players are with agents for life but move between clubs with regularity, this structure raises serious questions about the integrity of the match and, indeed, football in general.

World Soccer magazine, for example, suggests that next season Ronaldo will be at Paris St Germain (PSG), Di Maria at PSG or Manchester United, Mourinho at PSG or Chelsea and Nani is going to Juventus or Porto!

World Soccer: "...FIFA's new "transfer matching system", which aims to introduce transparency to traditionally secretive deals between clubs, will not solve the problem. In the meantime, FIFA's existing agent-licensing system is being wound down - and criminal gangs are taking advantage..."

Still...
It was just like going to the theatre, with all the major actors playing a part - Di Maria limps off injured, Nani gets sent off, Mourinho makes an inspired substitution, Ronaldo scores the winner but doesn't celebrate and gets applauded by the audience, Mourinho commiserates with Ferguson and claims the better team lost.

Value fucking added!!!

The Theatre of Dreams, apparently.

    PC Howard Webb Trying Out Cross-Dressing Prior To A Man Utd Match


Yet Sir Ferguson bleats only about corruptions against his interests.
Ten Premier League referees have statistically "biased" data favouring Manchester United.
This season, Man Utd have not had ONE SINGLE penalty or sending off given against them in the EPL - the first time in history where a title will be won with such an "advantage".

Meanwhile, in the key away matches at Chelsea and Liverpool, United were provided with three sendings off, a penalty and an offside winning goal to help them on their way - in just two games!?
And, on Monday next, when the title will be all but secured at Old Trafford against the Noisy Neighbours, we have Mike Dean refereeing (Dean regarded Ferguson's abuse of an assistant referee during the Newcastle match in December as "reasonable and rational", and sent off Wilshire when United defeated Arsenal) and Howard Webb will stand next to Ferguson on the touchline helping events on their way as 4th Official.

   Ferguson Walks Away After Shaking Rafa's Hand And Offering Advice


Then there are the betting patterns on Monday's FA Cup replay between Chelsea and Man Utd.

One of the most major sustained gambles that we have ever witnessed existed on this match with almost all major bookmakers being aware of the one-track market by kick off.
Despite the teams being each-of-two in the market at the start of April Fool's Day, much more money and virtually all of the voluminous underground trades (literally) were on Chelsea to win.
This is absolutely not a normal betting pattern on a competitive FA Cup Quarter Final between two managers who hate one another!

Now where did this market knowledge emanate from?
Shouldn't someone be blowing the whistle?

Or is it prefered that we should all get worked up about a dodgy American billionaire sacking a multi-millionaire and replacing him with a dodgy Italian fascist multi-millionaire, while "our own" multi-millionaires stash their money offshore or, in the case of Sir Ferguson, at Goldman Sachs, and the new Man Utd CEO is a multi-millionaire former investment banker from JP Morgan?

Football you can believe in :)

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013