"Was it a battle between betting markets that saw Jon Moss selected for FA Cup Final ahead of Mark Clattenburg?"
As readers of Football is Fixed blog will understand, Jon Moss should never have been given the 2015 FA Cup Final considering his historical bias towards Arsenal and the disciplinary action taken against him during the 2014/15 season.
Other top flight and junior referees were almost unanimous in their suggestion that not only was the Moss selection a disgrace but also that the best referee for the FA flagship event would have been Mark Clattenburg (http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/what-other-referees-think-of.html).
So why wasn't he selected?
We have already given details in the above mentioned post regarding the selection of Moss, his in-match decision-making, Moss officiating 10/10 Arsenal wins (only 4 at home), the shenanigans in the Gunners v WBA game that gave Theo Walcott his FA Cup Final place concurrently with his negotiations via Key Sports Management over a new contract and the fact that the outcome was in the betting markets pre-match (i.e. there was insider trading on the match).
The 13 men and women who make up the FA's Referees' Committee select the FA Cup Final referee as opposed to just one individual selecting referees for Premier League games (Howard Webb).
Clattenburg has officiated at top level UEFA and FIFA events whereas Moss has never even officiated a Top Four match in the EPL. And then there is MOBGATE http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/mobgate-6.html
In 2005 and 2007, Clattenburg was one of the two pgMOB referees selected to officiate at the Premier League Asia Trophy (in Thailand and Hong Kong respectively). The latter tournament took place between 24th and 27th of July just one month after the convicted fraudster from Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, had purchased Manchester City. At the time of the purchase Shinawatra was in exile from his Thai homeland so he easily passed Richard Scudamore's Fit And Proper Person's Test (FPPT). Scudamore even sat next to Shinawatra at the first Manchester City home match under the Shinawatra regime.
Under Shinawatra, Mark Clattenburg showed an obviously unconscious bias towards Manchester City, a bias which bizarrely totally inversed after Shinawatra sold the club in September 2008. It was also Clattenburg who was selected to model the new AirAsia pgMOB referee kit alongside Shinawatra at the start of the 07/08 EPL season (http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/eight-days-in-life-of-fascist.html).
Fast forward to the season just ended and we find Mr Clattenburg having an interesting role in the affairs of Leicester City (owned by Thai company King Power). On the first two occasions Clattenburg officiated the Foxes, the club won 2 of their only 5 EPL victories achieved by April 4th - the first match versus Manchester United saw the visitors lose 5-3 via two penalties (one of which was entirely fake), a red card and a goal scored after the ball had gone out of play. All professional traders and bookies understood that the pre-match market on this game was indicative of a fixed match with very key insider money surfacing against Manchester United in the hour leading up to kick off.
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So Moss or Clattenburg...
... an overweight rock or a bewigged hard place.
Or perhaps it still hangs over Clattenburg that he was banned from refereeing for 8 months in 08/09 due to business debts, his personal life and alleged threats made to the family of a former business partner by making the following statement in an email "... taking me to court might cause your family some pain."
At the time, a former business associate of Clattenburg claimed the referee owed more than £170,000 including non-payment of PAYE, HMRC and VAT.
But of course, in ScudamoreWorld, the theme park of systemic corruption, the FA Cup is merely seen as just another competition on which to hang football out to dry.
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