Today, there are two posts in that broadsheet bastion of the bookmaking fraternity called The Guardian that focus on Sabermetrics. This prompts us to produce an overall assessment of the value of such "science" in modern day football.
To the uninitiated, Sabermetrics is a statistical evaluation of a sportsplayer based on selective and historical match data together with current training ground measurements. These analyses are extensively used in English football by the likes of Sam Allardyce, Aidy Boothroyd and Damien Comolli. As ever when the non-scientist approaches scientific data, there is much tomfoolery around. But, correctly used, Sabermetrics is an extremely valuable tool.
Sabermetrics was originally the analysis of baseball through objective evidence, especially baseball statistics. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research. It was coined by Bill James, who was among its first proponents and has long been its most prominent advocate known to the general public. In the US, a leading advocate of such analyses is Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's baseball team who repeatedly manage to finish in the higher reaches of the tournaments while having the lowest wage bill in the league.
As Sabermetrics has two core constituencies, the value of a player and the current form of a player, we will take these two areas in turn. Lets start with the transfer market.
"We too often reward the lucky strike and overvalue randomness" states Beane and, indeed, there are a whole load of players who live on one "magic" moment - think Michael Owen's pre-gambling-career goal against Argentina or John Barnes' genius against Brazil. The key issue here is value. Players are effectively commodities in the financial market that is football. As with all market prices, the value is based on historical information. But the value of a football player differs from the value of a stock in one very important manner - nowhere near all the information is in the price. Market efficiency, as this is known, is a vital component of market analysis. If financial markets were strongly efficient, no analyst would be able to make a profit as all the information would be fully incorporated into the market price. Fortunately for my bank balance, financial markets are only weakly efficient allowing skilled operators to detect value and arbitrage opportunities in the marketplace. The football transfer market does not even reach the benchmark of weak efficiency. Players used to be assessed solely by eye or on the word of trusted scouts but the evaluation now utilises the statistics generated by companies like ProZone, Opta and Sports Universal. And herein lies one of the problems. The statistics are simplistic. There is no differentiation within the data. So, Opta measure a Ray Wilkins-style 1.5 metre square ball as equivalent to a Juan Sebastian Veron 50 metre switching quarterback delivery. When coaches, agents and managers make an assessment of a player based solely on pseudo-statistics, they are using the data to create invalid structures. The outcome is contrary to the declared aim - value is destroyed rather than created. For example, Comolli used Sabermetrics in determining that Darren Bent was worth £17 million in the summer - although adequate, Bent's real value is probably around one-third of this price. The highly skilled operations, like Arsenal, utilise proprietary analyses based on Sabermetrics together with the intuitive assessments of the management team. This approach undoubtedly is the preferable route to success and Wenger has spent a nett £5 million in the same window that Abramovich has forked out a quarter of a billion pounds. And which of these two teams has the more sustainable squad? Evidently, not Chelsea...
Sabermetrics has a further problem with regard to the transfer market. We could, if we chose to, name around twenty players in the Premiership who incorporate gambling interests into their playing performances. To correctly evaluate such an individual, one is required to use enhanced statistics, gut feeling and the correlation between performance and betting patterns in the global markets. Once again, the slickest are already scratching the surface of this holistic approach as was demonstrated by the total lack of interest from any of the major Mediterranean teams in Frank Lampard when he was being offered around last summer or when all the top English sides decided to pass on Michael Owen's availability after Real Madrid - a player at the peak of his career rarely makes a move from the biggest club in the world to the biggest club in Tyneside willingly.
Additionally, Sabermetrics fails to pick up on the solo rogue operator. Whereas the most criminalised players are retained by the leading bookmakers, the loose cannons corrupt to a personal agenda. Step forward Mr Tim Howard. We have been reliably informed that Howard has a bit of a grudge against Ferguson after being axed at Old Trafford. Both prior to last season's home match against Chelsea and yesterday's match against Arsenal, our contact has warned us to expect underperformance from the Everton keeper. And we were grateful for the input as Arsenal managed to score four goals from four shots on target and, despite being outplayed for much of the game, were able to come away with a 4-1 victory. Just ask yourself, what value are Opta's (or indeed anybody else's) stats on these games? The player evaluation must be holistic otherwise the idiocy of Comolli and his like will continue to be the norm away from the very top outfits. An additional benefit of the correct utilisation of Sabermetrics is created by arbitrage over a time window. This is Wenger's core competency - buy cheap, sell rich as he has repeatedly shown with the likes of Henry, Petit, Overmars, Vieira, Anelka etc.
The second area where Sabermetrics are widely abused is in team selection. Although there is value in measuring a players training performance cycles, it should merely form one tool in the box. Morale, motivation, private life, grudge, interpersonal issues etc etc are also relevant but the core problem with such naive assessment is that it individualises a team game. The core competency in a team sport is producing a scenario where the complete team performs at a greater level than the basic sum of its parts - team spirit cannot be measured nor created by measuring a cycling machine. Furthermore, when players realise that their place in the starting eleven is dependent on running around like a blue-arsed-fly in training, they effectively undermine the team effort by putting in too much effort in training in midweek with the result that the side selected for the weekend game is physically more tired than the players who took it easier in training. This impacts negatively on results. Such methods also require a hierarchy sympathetic to the use of Sabermetrics. Allardyce undoubtedly had such an environment at Bolton but the ego's, gamblers, cliques and general dysfunctionality at Newcastle is an altogether different beast. If I were Big Sam, I'd sell Owen, Emre, Barton, Viduka, Carr, Rozehnal and Geremi in the January transfer window and use Sabermetrics to bring in young committed and non-corrupt players at a fraction of the cost (both in transfer and wages). I have no doubt that results would improve.
Of course, the media plays a role in this misuse of pseudo-statistics. As does aesthetics...
We are all persuaded by a credible source rather than a credible argument and, so, when journalists wax lyrical about the sublime touch of Dimitar Berbatov, sending his value ever upwards in the process, they choose to ignore the fact that the man often selects to be a liability (as Martin Jol discovered to his cost). Additionally, the media promotes those who it is in the interests of The Game to be promoted - the number of column inches associated with the 20 Premiership players who we know to be working alongside bookmakers is far out of kilter with the performances of these players on the pitch. And, as we have stated before, the Guti and The Beast Syndrome results in a homoerotic element to the evaluation - we simply do not believe that being square-jawed, or having symmetrical features or flowing locks has any influence on match performance. Of course, the beautiful are known statistically to succeed more than the aesthetically challenged but, when making the assessment of a player's true value, such factors should be sidelined. Who would you rather have in your team, Paul Scholes or Guti, Franck Ribéry or David Beckham, Carlos Tevez or Berbatov? And, although a true great, Paolo Maldini was never quite as good as the length of his eyelashes would suggest. There is, indeed, considerable evidence that Black and red-haired players are grossly undervalued when compared to the standard anglo-saxon features...
Around 50% of the teams in the top two English leagues utilise Sabermetrics. As with all analyses, it is the inputs which produce value. Give a neural network to a monkey and you'll get Watford; give it to Wenger and you'll get Arsenal. If Arsenal were to incorporate the machinations against their interests by the English institutional powers into their holistic Sabermetrics, they would actually have had a chance of the title this year - as we showed in our last post, Arsenal would have been eight points clear at the seasonal midway stage without the effect of corrupt match officials. But, in the criminalised world of the Premiership, there are many necessary skills that have too little to do with football and too much to do with the global gambling markets.
There is one other prime problem with Sabermetrics. By applying an analysis that aims to effectively play the percentages, the coaches who develop simplistic Sabermetrics are unable to adapt to the tactical requirements necessary to win the really big games. And it is these matches that determine trophies. Although he is past his sell-buy date now, a couple of years ago, Barcelona would rather select Ronaldinho, even though he had spent the night samba-ing around the Ramblas, than any other individual who had happened to have had a particularly good training session on the rowing machine. Barça won the Champions League and it is interesting that Beane's baseball team always falls short of ultimate success as Sabermetrics, while perhaps improving the chances of avoiding massive underachievement, similarly fails to engender overachievement.
Dietrological intend to launch a new business next summer. Provisionally entitled Holistic Sabermetrics, we will be offering a thorough and complete statistical assessment of both individual and team realities based on our proprietary data. We are confident of our success in this venture - there is nobody else out there with our databases.
Someday soon, somebody is going to be persuaded by the pseudo-scientific data to pay £30 million for Berbatov. They should probably chat with us first...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Sunday 30 December 2007
Thursday 27 December 2007
Manchester United Have Won The Premiership
Manchester United yesterday secured the Opening Championship in the Premiership after Arsenal were physically intimidated without the protection of the match officials for the third consecutive away match. When we projected this scenario earlier in the season, there were those who doubted our assessment. Its humble pie all round as we demonstrate below that the title has already been wrenched from the Gooner's hands.
In late 2006 and earlier this year, Dietrological had a series of interactions with Arsène Wenger regarding the negative officiating that his side were receiving at the hands of the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB). We were after a consultancy but couldn't reach an agreement and we undertook some parallel work with an Arsenal board member instead. Fair dinkum. Wenger utilised our analysis of Arsenal matches to approach the PGMOB and, with a seasonal lo and behold, the PGMOB exercised a preference reversal for the relatively meaningless end of season events. This bias in favour of Arsenal continued into the early stages of this season - indeed there was a window where 85% of the key match decisions went in favour of the north Londoners. Over the last couple of months, however, the momentum against Arsenal on the pitch has been extensive with precisely 100% of the key match decisions being to their detriment. The powers-that-be in the English game may adjust their hidden agenda under pressure but the template returns to normality as soon as is feasibly possible. Why so?
Arsenal are the only leading side in England who have not yet sold out to the major betting concerns that control their competitors. This is anathema to the Premier League, the PGMOB, the FA and, most importantly, the bookmakers. Cartel structures develop their solidity through a total inclusion of the leading protagonists - think OPEC. Indeed, the oil cartel shares many similarities with the football gambling sector. Arsenal's refusal to sell ownership to the likes of Kroenke and the baby boiling smack importing rapist from Uzbekistan is costing the betting industry oodles of cash. The comparison with Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea is startling. The massively rigged game at the weekend between Man Utd and Everton could never occur for an Arsenal event for one simple reason - Arsenal will not be a part of it and it is much more difficult to corrupt a game using only one team and the match officials as experienced observers are able to detect the machinations at play.
The impact of Arsenal's refusal to become involved in this massive corruption has a far greater influence on the bookmaker's bottom line than you would think. The mathematics of a solid cartel versus a fragmented one are revealing and, as global betting liquidity spirals out of control, the negative impact on the profits of the psychopaths is marked. It remains the view of our traders that Arsenal will not be allowed a sniff of the Premiership title until they do the decent thing and welcome the bookmakers into the boardroom.
But Arsenal are only one of the teams selected for focus by the PGMOB on behalf of their crooked bosses at the Premier League. Below, we reveal the Premiership table as it would appear this morning WITHOUT the negative input of the PGMOB match officials. The most tedious part of trading football markets is undoubtedly the amount of time that one has to spend watching the behavioural aspects of the match officials during matches - for very key games, we are required to send a representative to monitor the officials in-running. But the data is massive. By running these analyses through one of our pieces of software, we are able to determine the authentic outcomes for every match in the season to date. Inevitably, there are some grey areas. For example, when the PGMOB representative invalidates the game in the very early phases, it is virtually impossible to project what the remaining 80 minutes might have produced on a level playing field. But, such qualifications aside, the data is still mightily interesting. So, here we go. The table below is what you should be seeing this morning. The figures in parentheses relate to the inverse points differentials due to the corrupt influence of the PGMOB match officials ie Man Utd have been "given" a handicap start of nine points over Arsenal in the first half of the season or, to put it another way, Newcastle have been given a 6 point handicap start so far this season.
1. Arsenal 19 games - 46 points (+2)
2. Manchester United 19 - 38 (-7)
3. Manchester City 18 - 36 (+2)
4. Everton 19 - 36 (+3)
5. Liverpool 18 - 35 (-1)
6. Chelsea 19 - 33 (-5)
7. Blackburn Rovers 18 - 30 (+4)
8. Portsmouth 19 - 30 (-1)
9. Aston Villa 19 - 28 (-2)
10. Tottenham Hotspur 19 - 26 (+5)
11. Reading 19 - 24 (+2)
12. West Ham United 18 - 23 (-3)
13. Fulham 19 - 23 (+9)
14. Wigan Athletic 19 - 20 (+4)
15. Bolton Wanderers 19 - 20 (+3)
16. Newcastle United 19 - 20 (-6)
17. Birmingham City 19 - 19 (+1)
18. Middlesbrough 19 - 15 (-2)
19. Sunderland 19 - 14 (0)
20. Derby County 19 - 7 (0)
* It is little surprise that Man Utd and Chelsea are aided and abetted by the bookmakers but the bias in favour of Newcastle is more entertaining. As may be seen from the data, the north east are crap at football. With the additional absence of any Yorkshire representatives, there is a very real possibility that the whole of eastern England stretching down to Reading will be without a team to support if the bottom three above were to be relegated.
* Mohamed al-Fayed will be visiting Swansea and Carlisle next season as Fulham are being hammered by the PGMOB - that will teach him to object to the murdering of his son by the English establishment. Furthermore, Lawrie Sanchez has a case against the PGMOB over his dismissal as the Cottagers have been denied a rightful mid-table position. The same statement, with reservations, could be applied to Martin Jol at Spurs.
* The battle at the top is more intriguing. Manchester United have been given the title as both Chelsea and Liverpool have been targeting the Champions League since Day One and Arsenal are carrying excessive handicap weights. So the glory hunting prawn sandwich brigade from anywhere-other-than-Manchester will be able to rejoice in the futility of their success. More interesting will be how the Premier League manage to achieve their targets in positions 2 to 5. Obviously, Everton will have to go and the four Champions League slots will be handed to the Big 4. But, due to the machinations involving the G14(18) and the UEFA Strategy Group, fifth place is critical this season as the team finishing fifth will be invited to join the top table of clubs within UEFA. In fact, fifth place is all that is left to play for and we haven't even reached the New Year!
* And this last point encompasses the real problem with corruption in football from the perspective of a fan. If the season is merely being played out to a Premier League, G14(18) and bookmaker hidden agenda then what is the point in going to cheer on, say, Blackburn or Everton?
In conclusion, no matter how many branded Mega Saturdays, Super Sundays and Grand Slam Wednesday afternoons that Sky peddle in our direction, there is nothing left to play for. All those column inches relating to Liverpool still being in the title race could be better filled with something real. Like news, for example. We opposed Liverpool as soon as the markets opened up in the summer and we would now willingly offer 50's on a scouse Premiership triumph next May.
So long as the Premier League, under the criminal stewardship of Richard Scudamore, bows down at the feet of the bookmaking industry, this will be our footballing reality in this country. You better get used to it...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
In late 2006 and earlier this year, Dietrological had a series of interactions with Arsène Wenger regarding the negative officiating that his side were receiving at the hands of the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB). We were after a consultancy but couldn't reach an agreement and we undertook some parallel work with an Arsenal board member instead. Fair dinkum. Wenger utilised our analysis of Arsenal matches to approach the PGMOB and, with a seasonal lo and behold, the PGMOB exercised a preference reversal for the relatively meaningless end of season events. This bias in favour of Arsenal continued into the early stages of this season - indeed there was a window where 85% of the key match decisions went in favour of the north Londoners. Over the last couple of months, however, the momentum against Arsenal on the pitch has been extensive with precisely 100% of the key match decisions being to their detriment. The powers-that-be in the English game may adjust their hidden agenda under pressure but the template returns to normality as soon as is feasibly possible. Why so?
Arsenal are the only leading side in England who have not yet sold out to the major betting concerns that control their competitors. This is anathema to the Premier League, the PGMOB, the FA and, most importantly, the bookmakers. Cartel structures develop their solidity through a total inclusion of the leading protagonists - think OPEC. Indeed, the oil cartel shares many similarities with the football gambling sector. Arsenal's refusal to sell ownership to the likes of Kroenke and the baby boiling smack importing rapist from Uzbekistan is costing the betting industry oodles of cash. The comparison with Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea is startling. The massively rigged game at the weekend between Man Utd and Everton could never occur for an Arsenal event for one simple reason - Arsenal will not be a part of it and it is much more difficult to corrupt a game using only one team and the match officials as experienced observers are able to detect the machinations at play.
The impact of Arsenal's refusal to become involved in this massive corruption has a far greater influence on the bookmaker's bottom line than you would think. The mathematics of a solid cartel versus a fragmented one are revealing and, as global betting liquidity spirals out of control, the negative impact on the profits of the psychopaths is marked. It remains the view of our traders that Arsenal will not be allowed a sniff of the Premiership title until they do the decent thing and welcome the bookmakers into the boardroom.
But Arsenal are only one of the teams selected for focus by the PGMOB on behalf of their crooked bosses at the Premier League. Below, we reveal the Premiership table as it would appear this morning WITHOUT the negative input of the PGMOB match officials. The most tedious part of trading football markets is undoubtedly the amount of time that one has to spend watching the behavioural aspects of the match officials during matches - for very key games, we are required to send a representative to monitor the officials in-running. But the data is massive. By running these analyses through one of our pieces of software, we are able to determine the authentic outcomes for every match in the season to date. Inevitably, there are some grey areas. For example, when the PGMOB representative invalidates the game in the very early phases, it is virtually impossible to project what the remaining 80 minutes might have produced on a level playing field. But, such qualifications aside, the data is still mightily interesting. So, here we go. The table below is what you should be seeing this morning. The figures in parentheses relate to the inverse points differentials due to the corrupt influence of the PGMOB match officials ie Man Utd have been "given" a handicap start of nine points over Arsenal in the first half of the season or, to put it another way, Newcastle have been given a 6 point handicap start so far this season.
1. Arsenal 19 games - 46 points (+2)
2. Manchester United 19 - 38 (-7)
3. Manchester City 18 - 36 (+2)
4. Everton 19 - 36 (+3)
5. Liverpool 18 - 35 (-1)
6. Chelsea 19 - 33 (-5)
7. Blackburn Rovers 18 - 30 (+4)
8. Portsmouth 19 - 30 (-1)
9. Aston Villa 19 - 28 (-2)
10. Tottenham Hotspur 19 - 26 (+5)
11. Reading 19 - 24 (+2)
12. West Ham United 18 - 23 (-3)
13. Fulham 19 - 23 (+9)
14. Wigan Athletic 19 - 20 (+4)
15. Bolton Wanderers 19 - 20 (+3)
16. Newcastle United 19 - 20 (-6)
17. Birmingham City 19 - 19 (+1)
18. Middlesbrough 19 - 15 (-2)
19. Sunderland 19 - 14 (0)
20. Derby County 19 - 7 (0)
* It is little surprise that Man Utd and Chelsea are aided and abetted by the bookmakers but the bias in favour of Newcastle is more entertaining. As may be seen from the data, the north east are crap at football. With the additional absence of any Yorkshire representatives, there is a very real possibility that the whole of eastern England stretching down to Reading will be without a team to support if the bottom three above were to be relegated.
* Mohamed al-Fayed will be visiting Swansea and Carlisle next season as Fulham are being hammered by the PGMOB - that will teach him to object to the murdering of his son by the English establishment. Furthermore, Lawrie Sanchez has a case against the PGMOB over his dismissal as the Cottagers have been denied a rightful mid-table position. The same statement, with reservations, could be applied to Martin Jol at Spurs.
* The battle at the top is more intriguing. Manchester United have been given the title as both Chelsea and Liverpool have been targeting the Champions League since Day One and Arsenal are carrying excessive handicap weights. So the glory hunting prawn sandwich brigade from anywhere-other-than-Manchester will be able to rejoice in the futility of their success. More interesting will be how the Premier League manage to achieve their targets in positions 2 to 5. Obviously, Everton will have to go and the four Champions League slots will be handed to the Big 4. But, due to the machinations involving the G14(18) and the UEFA Strategy Group, fifth place is critical this season as the team finishing fifth will be invited to join the top table of clubs within UEFA. In fact, fifth place is all that is left to play for and we haven't even reached the New Year!
* And this last point encompasses the real problem with corruption in football from the perspective of a fan. If the season is merely being played out to a Premier League, G14(18) and bookmaker hidden agenda then what is the point in going to cheer on, say, Blackburn or Everton?
In conclusion, no matter how many branded Mega Saturdays, Super Sundays and Grand Slam Wednesday afternoons that Sky peddle in our direction, there is nothing left to play for. All those column inches relating to Liverpool still being in the title race could be better filled with something real. Like news, for example. We opposed Liverpool as soon as the markets opened up in the summer and we would now willingly offer 50's on a scouse Premiership triumph next May.
So long as the Premier League, under the criminal stewardship of Richard Scudamore, bows down at the feet of the bookmaking industry, this will be our footballing reality in this country. You better get used to it...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday 26 December 2007
Dreaming Of A Black Xmas
As the Premiership season reaches its half-way stage today, Uriah Rennie takes charge of the match between Sunderland and Manchester United.
Out of over 750 appointments of Premiership referee and their assistants by the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) this season, Mr Rennie is the first Black face to enter the field of play.
Furthermore, there is not one Black manager in the Premiership and all the levers of power reach up to white caucasian features in charge of football's governing bodies.
Yet, 35% of the players who started the weekend Premiership matches were Black.
In England, institutional racism is evidently not only a prime concern in the police, the military, government, academia and business but also in sport.
Compare and contrast with the number of column inches given to the really critical issue of "too many foreigners in the English game".
We would have thought this small island nation would have evolved beyond such attitudes following the Raj and Rhodesia...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Out of over 750 appointments of Premiership referee and their assistants by the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) this season, Mr Rennie is the first Black face to enter the field of play.
Furthermore, there is not one Black manager in the Premiership and all the levers of power reach up to white caucasian features in charge of football's governing bodies.
Yet, 35% of the players who started the weekend Premiership matches were Black.
In England, institutional racism is evidently not only a prime concern in the police, the military, government, academia and business but also in sport.
Compare and contrast with the number of column inches given to the really critical issue of "too many foreigners in the English game".
We would have thought this small island nation would have evolved beyond such attitudes following the Raj and Rhodesia...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Monday 24 December 2007
"The Beashed Is Unleast"
So celebrated Sky's scouse comedy commentator, Rob Palmer, after Julio Baptista had volleyed misery into the heart of Catalunya in last night's el clásico - the final major betting event of the pre-xmas weekend. We must assume that Palmer's inability to speak parallelled the speechlessness of anybody unfortunate enough to bear witness to the six massively corrupted televised matches offered for our delectation and delight.
For proprietary analytical reasons, we intend to focus on just three of these matches - the north London derby, Manchester United's pantomime performance against Everton and, lastly, the corruption in Catalunya.
We have posted previously that the major turnover televised Sky matches are particularly hot betting markets and that these events receive entirely inappropriate input from the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) officials - think Man Utd v Chelsea, Everton v Liverpool, West Ham v Spurs, Newcastle v Arsenal, Man Utd v Spurs and, of course, Liverpool v Chelsea. This latter farce was perpetrated by one Rob Styles who also took charge of Saturday's attempt at corruption at The Emirates.
Orwell reckoned that, by the age of 50, everybody has the face that they deserve - Mr Styles has fast-tracked this process and the players were correct to count their fingers after the post-match handshakes. There were four penalty decisions in the match and Styles managed to get every single one incorrect. Thanks to Almunia's penalty save, justice was done but the integrity of the game in England took yet another battering. This randomisation, at best, and straight market manipulation, at worst, has characterised the first half of this Premiership season - we might as well forget the farcical officiating and the football and allow the Pools Panel to determine match outcomes instead. Indeed, it is the bookmakers (who are the offshoots from the original football pools companies) who make these decisions anyway!
And, so to Old Trafford for the theatre at The Theatre Of Dreams. This match was entirely rigged. Consider the following statement which formed a part of the Dietrological Silver/Gold Information Service yesterday: "Weird shit! We advise three positions on this event. Buy Everton at +1.5 on the Asian Handicaps BUT also back Manchester United both on Fixed Odds and in the form of HT-Draw/FT-Man Utd. We believe that a one goal Manchester victory is an assured outcome". We never even broke sweat in the trading room as we watched events unfold and we profited further by selling Bookings on the Spreads after 15 minutes as Howard Webb attempted to drum up a fake competitiveness with his early yellows. Now over seventy thousand people remortgaged their property to be able to witness this charade and, additionally, anybody who took betting positions opposite the manipulation will be similarly out of pocket. Entertainingly, Steve McBettingman's half time summary on Setanta accidentally let some of these corrupted cats out of their coercive bags by allowing his innate stupidity to define our about-to-be-witnessed reality.
Before we discuss the corruption in Spain (which frequently favours the Castillian plain), there are a couple of other factors that came to light over the weekend. Firstly, Assistant Referees are increasingly forming a part of the PGMOB corruptions. Two Premiership matches at Reading and Villa had incorrect results after the linespeople made myopia a core competency - the match at Villa Park was particularly interesting. We had a massive position against a Villa victory on this match although we were forced into some defensive hedging on the morning of the event. Our angle was that Shinawatra required at least a Draw so that his publicity vehicle (the football team formerly known as Manchester City) would still be in the Champions League slots as the people of Thailand went to the polls yesterday. The elections are currently projected to give the Shinawatra-linked People's Power Party (sic) nearly 50% of the seats and rarely can a linesman's decision have proved such a striking example of chaos theory - a linesman's flag is not raised in Birmingham leading to a right wing kleptocracy being voted into power in Bangkok. More weird shit...
From Birmingham to Bangkok to Blackburn to Barcelona and el clásico. As Steve Bennett took longer than necessary to aid Chelsea's victory at Blackburn, the clout of the media and the bookies were clearly demonstrated when the Kick Off time for the Barcelona/Real Madrid game was delayed by four minutes to allow for the four thousand fouls by Blackburn in Lancashire to be counted. Delaying the biggest game in Europe for this?! Mejuto González was selected to officiate and all Scots will be aware that Snr González is crooked by power. There are two key ways for a referee to rig a match. The most obvious involves sendings off and penalties but the top level officials are so in control of the operation at hand that they are able to corrupt match outcomes by a more subtle control. This latter option was the only one open to González on Sunday as the backroom dealing over the selection of referees for el clásico is extensive and it is indicative of Barcelona's current lack of focus and spirit that their internal analysts did not undertake their homework on the referee. For González gave the Catalans absolutely nothing all night within twenty metres of the Madrid area. Barca's players were repeatedly blocked off, tripped or pushed to the ground around the edge of the area but Snr González had his focus on his cashflow rather than anything so restraining as the Rules of the Game. Blanca Navidad indeed - it will always be Viva La Quinta Brigada...
The weekend consequently began as it had started with institutional and bookmaker corruption undermining our beautiful game. Due to our access to highly privileged inside information and private money markets, we are able to create holistic overviews of these corrupted markets in manners that are unavailable to the general public. The only route to reality for the masses is the media which is their particular misfortune. We have repeatedly outlined the criminality emanating from Murdoch's manipulators at Sky and we wish to extend our focus on their corruption by addressing Sky Stats. At selective times during matches, Sky unveils little irrelevancies to float across the bottom of your screen - pseudo statistics that are selected to tilt your betting to an inappropriate externalised agenda. You know the sort of thing: "On the last seven occasions that Newcastle have equalised in a home match on a Sunday against a team playing in yellow, they went on to win". Oh, better have a tenner on the Geordies then... Also, Sky used to offer us many more options and services during the match. Remember the graphic to measure the 10 yard Free Kick distance? Well, we cannot have the PGMOB Boys being monitored so we'll scrap that. And, what about Player Cam? This revealing little service was a permanent grin in the offices as one was able to focus directly on the machinations of the likes of diddy Michael Owen as they underperformed to a hidden agenda.
There is a general openness across Europe relating to match statistics and data in all forms of media. This is not replicated in Britain as it will expose the players who are deliberately underperforming - Sky are simply not going to tell you that Frank Lampard has a 35% pass success rate or that Owen last had a shot on target prior to decimalisation. And, its not just Sky unfortunately. Earlier in the year, we posted that the PGMOB had met with representatives of the BBC Match Of The Day programme to "suggest" that criticism of match officials be removed from the programme. Lawro leapt to do the PGMOB's bidding. Gary Lineker is a harder psychology to read. One of the prime reasons that our Trading Team includes a Behavioural Psychologist is to psychoanalyse the manipulators and the talking heads both via words and deeds. And the deeds include body language. When Alan Hansen had the temerity to suggest that Rob Styles had got all four penalty decisions incorrect in the north London derby, Lineker demonstrated his Lawro links via his entertainingly aggressive body language.
We should boycott Walker's crisps in protest...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
For proprietary analytical reasons, we intend to focus on just three of these matches - the north London derby, Manchester United's pantomime performance against Everton and, lastly, the corruption in Catalunya.
We have posted previously that the major turnover televised Sky matches are particularly hot betting markets and that these events receive entirely inappropriate input from the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) officials - think Man Utd v Chelsea, Everton v Liverpool, West Ham v Spurs, Newcastle v Arsenal, Man Utd v Spurs and, of course, Liverpool v Chelsea. This latter farce was perpetrated by one Rob Styles who also took charge of Saturday's attempt at corruption at The Emirates.
Orwell reckoned that, by the age of 50, everybody has the face that they deserve - Mr Styles has fast-tracked this process and the players were correct to count their fingers after the post-match handshakes. There were four penalty decisions in the match and Styles managed to get every single one incorrect. Thanks to Almunia's penalty save, justice was done but the integrity of the game in England took yet another battering. This randomisation, at best, and straight market manipulation, at worst, has characterised the first half of this Premiership season - we might as well forget the farcical officiating and the football and allow the Pools Panel to determine match outcomes instead. Indeed, it is the bookmakers (who are the offshoots from the original football pools companies) who make these decisions anyway!
And, so to Old Trafford for the theatre at The Theatre Of Dreams. This match was entirely rigged. Consider the following statement which formed a part of the Dietrological Silver/Gold Information Service yesterday: "Weird shit! We advise three positions on this event. Buy Everton at +1.5 on the Asian Handicaps BUT also back Manchester United both on Fixed Odds and in the form of HT-Draw/FT-Man Utd. We believe that a one goal Manchester victory is an assured outcome". We never even broke sweat in the trading room as we watched events unfold and we profited further by selling Bookings on the Spreads after 15 minutes as Howard Webb attempted to drum up a fake competitiveness with his early yellows. Now over seventy thousand people remortgaged their property to be able to witness this charade and, additionally, anybody who took betting positions opposite the manipulation will be similarly out of pocket. Entertainingly, Steve McBettingman's half time summary on Setanta accidentally let some of these corrupted cats out of their coercive bags by allowing his innate stupidity to define our about-to-be-witnessed reality.
Before we discuss the corruption in Spain (which frequently favours the Castillian plain), there are a couple of other factors that came to light over the weekend. Firstly, Assistant Referees are increasingly forming a part of the PGMOB corruptions. Two Premiership matches at Reading and Villa had incorrect results after the linespeople made myopia a core competency - the match at Villa Park was particularly interesting. We had a massive position against a Villa victory on this match although we were forced into some defensive hedging on the morning of the event. Our angle was that Shinawatra required at least a Draw so that his publicity vehicle (the football team formerly known as Manchester City) would still be in the Champions League slots as the people of Thailand went to the polls yesterday. The elections are currently projected to give the Shinawatra-linked People's Power Party (sic) nearly 50% of the seats and rarely can a linesman's decision have proved such a striking example of chaos theory - a linesman's flag is not raised in Birmingham leading to a right wing kleptocracy being voted into power in Bangkok. More weird shit...
From Birmingham to Bangkok to Blackburn to Barcelona and el clásico. As Steve Bennett took longer than necessary to aid Chelsea's victory at Blackburn, the clout of the media and the bookies were clearly demonstrated when the Kick Off time for the Barcelona/Real Madrid game was delayed by four minutes to allow for the four thousand fouls by Blackburn in Lancashire to be counted. Delaying the biggest game in Europe for this?! Mejuto González was selected to officiate and all Scots will be aware that Snr González is crooked by power. There are two key ways for a referee to rig a match. The most obvious involves sendings off and penalties but the top level officials are so in control of the operation at hand that they are able to corrupt match outcomes by a more subtle control. This latter option was the only one open to González on Sunday as the backroom dealing over the selection of referees for el clásico is extensive and it is indicative of Barcelona's current lack of focus and spirit that their internal analysts did not undertake their homework on the referee. For González gave the Catalans absolutely nothing all night within twenty metres of the Madrid area. Barca's players were repeatedly blocked off, tripped or pushed to the ground around the edge of the area but Snr González had his focus on his cashflow rather than anything so restraining as the Rules of the Game. Blanca Navidad indeed - it will always be Viva La Quinta Brigada...
The weekend consequently began as it had started with institutional and bookmaker corruption undermining our beautiful game. Due to our access to highly privileged inside information and private money markets, we are able to create holistic overviews of these corrupted markets in manners that are unavailable to the general public. The only route to reality for the masses is the media which is their particular misfortune. We have repeatedly outlined the criminality emanating from Murdoch's manipulators at Sky and we wish to extend our focus on their corruption by addressing Sky Stats. At selective times during matches, Sky unveils little irrelevancies to float across the bottom of your screen - pseudo statistics that are selected to tilt your betting to an inappropriate externalised agenda. You know the sort of thing: "On the last seven occasions that Newcastle have equalised in a home match on a Sunday against a team playing in yellow, they went on to win". Oh, better have a tenner on the Geordies then... Also, Sky used to offer us many more options and services during the match. Remember the graphic to measure the 10 yard Free Kick distance? Well, we cannot have the PGMOB Boys being monitored so we'll scrap that. And, what about Player Cam? This revealing little service was a permanent grin in the offices as one was able to focus directly on the machinations of the likes of diddy Michael Owen as they underperformed to a hidden agenda.
There is a general openness across Europe relating to match statistics and data in all forms of media. This is not replicated in Britain as it will expose the players who are deliberately underperforming - Sky are simply not going to tell you that Frank Lampard has a 35% pass success rate or that Owen last had a shot on target prior to decimalisation. And, its not just Sky unfortunately. Earlier in the year, we posted that the PGMOB had met with representatives of the BBC Match Of The Day programme to "suggest" that criticism of match officials be removed from the programme. Lawro leapt to do the PGMOB's bidding. Gary Lineker is a harder psychology to read. One of the prime reasons that our Trading Team includes a Behavioural Psychologist is to psychoanalyse the manipulators and the talking heads both via words and deeds. And the deeds include body language. When Alan Hansen had the temerity to suggest that Rob Styles had got all four penalty decisions incorrect in the north London derby, Lineker demonstrated his Lawro links via his entertainingly aggressive body language.
We should boycott Walker's crisps in protest...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday 19 December 2007
Recession Recession Recession Recession...
The festive tyrannies of fun precede the oncoming recession and celebrations will accordingly have a more manic and histrionic feel to them this year as there is a general perception that things can only get worser.
Via two posts, we will attempt to really depress you about the state of the planet and the global economic system prior to demonstrating that the gambling sector is one of the few to benefit from periods of recessionary pressures and, consequently, is a prime area of focus for creative trading strategies during such windows in the business cycle.
Baudrillard reasoned: "My hypothesis is that we have already passed the point of irreversibility, that we are already in an exponential, unlimited form in which everything develops in the void, to infinity, without any possibility of reapprehending it in a human dimension; in which we are losing the memory of the past, the projection of the future and the possibility of integrating that future into present actions". Pretty much the whole of this first post may be adequately condensed into this one statement but we attempt to add some market-orientated and systemic modelling to the argument. Inevitably, some aspects of this post will be derivative in nature in that the arguments of others are utilised alongside our own overviews as market analysts but we'll attempt to dovetail the two together in a semi-grammatical manner.
We're living in serious times. The key issue is this - systemic stability. Whether we choose to look at a universal, solar system, planetary, atomic or quantum level, we are dealing with systems in a state of equilibrium - a balance of the forces of physics that allow sustainability of the system over time. The shareholder capitalist economic infrastructure is also a system and, similarly to physical systems, the economic system also exists in states of equilibrium and stability. Or not... The economic system is a sub-system of our planetary eco-system - the two systems are inextricably linked and the former depends on the stability and the sustainability of the latter. As we are all of one species, we frame our analyses in similar ways and, consequently, the mathematics, statistics, logic and pattern recognitions utilised in one area share many parallels with similar techniques used in other systems. This aids our modelling. For example, the Oxford Interpretation or the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) in quantum physics shares many analytical similarities with both the global economic system and with football match betting markets in that the overall system or event must exist in one of a range of stable states of multiple equilibria - a football match must end with an integral number of goals differential or parity. In multi-layered systems, the situation is complicated by the presence of numerous feedback loops that accentuate any dynamic at play - the recent credit crisis is a result of feedback loops causing the markets to be unaware where the real risk lay and, similarly, the flaring between the two stars in a RS Canum Venaticorum Binary System produces new causal effects that destabilise the stellar system.
It is these feedback loops that will determine the future of both the current economic system and our planet - it is our argument that we face both systemic and super-systemic risk for the first time in our history. Firstly, we intend to look at the economic arena and address the obsession with economic growth and, secondly, we will address the risks in relation to the eco-system. We will also focus on the feedback loops between these systems. If we have done our research well, by this point we will have induced a degree of misery and, so, we will complete the post with a qualified optimism for a different future. But, before anything so uplifting, we need to deconstruct the economy.
Financial Markets in extremis are the current reality as the perverse incentives and warped feedback loops come back to haunt a non-sustainable economic system. Baudrillard: "...the phenomenon of globalisation is in itself random and chaotic, to the point where no-one can control it or claim to subject it to strategy". To a large extent, this statement is undoubtedly true but the modern globalised financial system allows certain institutions to directly apply a macro-dynamic to the market system. When the not-so-great and the not-so-good meet for the World Economic Forum each January in Davos, there are co-ordinated strategies put in place by the core protagonists. To some extent, business cycles may be controlled thus but the feedback loops effectively remove control of the strategy from the hands of the manipulators. This is the situation today. The world is teetering on the edge of a potentially major recession. The world's largest economy will certainly reach recession in 2008 and the impact of the subprime scandal, the dysfunctional money markets and the economic slowdown will create a global bust. The new paradigmists believe that the old restrictions on the growth in an economy no longer exist and their misguided optimism leads them to evaluate that the rapidly growing Indian and Chinese economies will offset America's well-deserved slump. Not so. The IMF and The World Bank have recently, and rather quietly, released figures which suggest that the economies of both India and China, measured at purchasing power parity (PPP), are 40% smaller than originally projected! We return to this point when looking more closely at growth and PPP below but the key impact of this information with regard to the oncoming recession is that the slowdown will be significantly more severe than most economists are currently projecting. There is no safety net. The recent injection of liquidity into the banking system is a rather desperate attempt to delay the inevitable. Resources were misallocated because of the cheapness of credit and the problem will not be solved by simply making money cheaper once again. Invasive intervention by the central banks and the state is hardly indicative of a free market economy that is both systemically robust and sustainable. Markets are primarily psychological rather than economic mechanisms and the only reason that the markets have not yet fallen to more realistic levels is the perseverance of economic theory perpetrated by the new paradigmists. Every economic boom brings out these operators whose idiocy is only superceded by those who they follow, like imperial apologist Niall Ferguson who moves between his academic posts at speed lest his intellectual frailties be exposed.
The market is not just a reality, it is an ideology. Such belief in a corrupt system requires for consumers to be convinced of the symbolic value of a product as opposed to a real value. A system based on lies and sleight of hand will always have a limited shelf life. Anti-growth economist Gustavo Esteva sums it up: "Without discussion, we accept that accelerated economic growth is desirable. Now the time has come to abandon this pernicious obsession". True. Growth-based shareholder capitalism requires vast income inequalities, resource abuse, inefficiency, a huge disenfranchised global underclass and a corrupt infrastructure backed by the military-industrial-financial elite. Growth also requires brinkmanship. In a competitive system, risks will always be taken to gain competitive advantage - the fallout from these risks is felt by us all through a wide spectrum of realities from dodgy pharmaceuticals to cluster bombs, from nuclear waste to an economy negatively impacting upon climate change. Esteva's research parallels the economic system with other systems and he asserts that most organisms achieve a correct level of growth and that any further growth is highly dysfunctional - think cancer. The economic system needs to accept a limit to its growth. Paul Streeton has shown that economic growth is inversely proportional to levels of justice in the world which is a good enough reason in itself. Furthermore, as we argue below, there is no trickle down effect without the utilisation of dishonest mathematics. Growth has a further major impact on its super-system, our eco-system. The level of economic activity is directly proportional to resource usage. At current projected rates of growth, George Monbiot points out that we will use as many of the planet's resources in the next 23 years as we have since the dawn of time. Even more disturbingly, this extrapolates into us removing 16 times our historical impact on the planet's resources within just one century! A sustainable future?
Baudrillard, again, cheers us up by stating: "Everything is taking us into a world steeped in definitive uncertainty". Once we start assessing man's impact upon the planet, there are no certainties, there are no laboratory experiments, there is no historical reference, the computer-generated scenario analyses are laughably simple - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for example, does not take the feedback loops which accelerate the rate of climate change into account when undertaking the mathematics! Despite this gross underestimation, the IPCC still projects that we will require a 85% global cut in carbon emissions by 2050 - as Monbiot says, this is a "complete decarbonisation of the global economy". And, what is the response of our great leaders? Well, Kyoto calls for cuts of 5% below 1990 levels in the next five years! The US, meanwhile, wants to introduce voluntary self-regulation in 2008 which is a nonsense. Self-regulation = no regulation as the protagonists who have created our unstable reality in the first place continue to act with a fascistic libertarian attitude. Greenwash is everywhere as the globalisers attempt to incorporate this critical issue into their marketing and branding campaigns and, more disturbingly, governments are playing along. When the EU decided to give away carbon permits rather than auctioning them as Game Theory suggests is preferable, they were effectively destabilising the nascent marketplace before it even came into existence. When one is addressing major vulnerabilities in an eco-system, there is a certain futility to establishing trading schemes to trade the risks. Baudrillard: "We have not taken a single step closer to the possible end goal. We have merely gone through a number of paradigms that have no end other than in the moment of their metamorphosis". And, we overrate our levels of development as a species. Four hundred years ago, Galileo was outside the system. If we are still around in another four hundred years, which of our current laws and certainties will be shown to be laughably simplistic? Well, we can only hope that they are not the ones relating to rate of climate change. This planet can exist in a range of equilibrium states. We are fortunate enough that the prime state is one that sustains our lives. But, our planet would be equally comfortable with an equilibrium state akin to Mars or Venus. The latter option, in particular, will make Djibouti, and even Leeds, seem idyllic by comparison.
Economics is not a science. It is a multidisciplinary arena. Early last century, Bertrand Russell wrote: "...but as everybody now recognises, supposed laws of economics have a much more temporary...validity". Put simply, economics may not be modelled in a manner that can be replicated ie it is not a science. Scientists may launch a space probe that uses planetary gravitational effects to visit several of our celestial neighbours. Economists cannot tell their arse from their elbow in comparison and no strategy may be orchestrated with any degree of certainty. Russell continued: "the authorities no longer have sufficient belief in the justice of their cause to think that it can survive the ordeal of free discussion". And not much has changed in the intervening century as shareholder capitalism hurtles towards oblivion.
As ever in our distorted capitalist system, the key to understanding the true aims of the global elite lies in PPP. If PPP is shown to be fallacious twaddle (which, of course, it is), there exists not one economic macro-measurement to demonstrate the integrity of the shareholder capitalist system. Measured in all other ways eg at market exchange rates, the plight of the world's poor is worsening by the day while the global oligarchs bask in incredible luxuries. The distortion of PPP allows economists to make the claim that shareholder capitalism improves the lives of us all. Even if this ludicrous claim were true, 1% of nothing is worth considerably less than 1% of a lot. But, its not true. This is why so much effort is made by the likes of the IMF and the World Bank to peddle the tissue of statistical lies that is PPP. We have outlined numerous arguments previously and we have many more stored away for future advantage, but for the sake of this post, we need to revisit one of our earlier statistics.
It is the one about the IMF and the World Bank suddenly realising that India and China's economies are 40% smaller than originally thought, when measured at PPP. If PPP were a robust statistic, such outrageous errors would not exist. It is the belief of our traders that the overestimate was a deliberate manipulation by the overseers of the global financial system to engender the required boom-and-bust market cycle so beloved by the insiders although we are obviously unable to prove this assertion. The impact of the poor modelling and decrepit statistics at the highest levels of our global system is marked. It had been thought that the global economy had been tootling along at 5%, the highest rate since the 1970's, when, in fact, it has actually been growing by 3.4% which is even slower than the 1980's. As it has got rather better for some, it has got markedly worse for a whole lot more. Without the fake mathematics of PPP, the reality of increasing income inequality, non-sustainability, psychopathic short-termist profit maximisation strategies and a complete lack of any democratic right to have a say in the demise of the planet on which we all live, are shown to be a deliberate structure enforced on the global population by the Davos brigade. A systemic autocracy removes the freedom of everyone - we are all either a slave to the workplace or to the dollar. My man, Baudrillard, yet again: "Misfortune, misery - all these things are traded very easily these days. There is a stock exchange of negative values, so to speak. So, debt, which is something negative and, at the same time, something virtual, can be traded".
Bertrand Russell might have been posh but he sure comes out with some great holistics: "In the modern world, there are clever men in laboratories and fools in power. The clever men are slaves...mankind (sic) collectively under the guidance of the fools and by the ingenuity of the clever slaves, is engaged in the great task of preparing its own extermination". And, so it is... There are two key aspects to this pretence of a system - corruption and reality. We'll take them in turn.
Corruption is endemic at all levels of the global economic and financial system. Nietzsche's "Power likes to walk on crooked legs" is an understatement! But, corruption is a vital part of the system - the economic template and corruption are systemically intertwined. People may stand up against corruption but it morphs into a new reality or alters the current reality to suit its continuing agenda. Corruption is an ever-present. No apologies for yet more Baudrillard: "In the same way that Nietzsche spoke of the vital illusion of appearances, we might speak of a vital function of corruption in society. The principle of corruption is illegitimate, it cannot be made official and hence it can speak only in secret". Due to the critical input of corruption to capitalism, there are no institutional attempts to impose regulatory or structural restrictions on the waves of corruption which underpin the entire financial system. If powers wished to reduce the opportunity for psychopathic corruption, a less absolute template could easily be created.
It is of the utmost importance for the mass corruption of our reality to be kept away from prying eyes. Shareholder capitalism achieves this goal through developing spectacular yet fake realities with the complicit support of the mainstream media while hiding away the occasional real reality with warnings to avert our eyes "as you might find some of the scenes in this report harrowing". "The real has only ever been a form of simulation" said guess-who and, in a world where we have "all been cloned mentally and culturally", the steady stream of spectacular realities become the equilibrium realities presented to and accepted by the cloned masses. In a further act of elitist name-dropping, Régis Debray, commenting on the society of the spectacle states: "we have...not communication but contamination of a viral type...everything spreads from one person to another in an immediate fashion". True.
So, we are in the position of having an economic system that is about to unravel disastrously while, at the same time for good measure, this self same system attempts to destroy the very environment in which it operates. As Baudrillard determined: "the economics sphere...is not exchangeable for anything". The necessary action MUST be determined by the near future actions of our overseers. If there is no concerted attempt to create a less psychopathic and more nurturing global system, there will be no other choice of action other than mass Direct Action against the supply side of the economic system. Their financial markets will need to be similarly targeted. Baudrillard is surely correct when he claims: "Something in all men profoundly rejoices in seeing a car burn". But it needn't come to widespread Direct Action (although it probably will...).
"We need to recover a sense of proportion that is simply another form of common sense: that sense that exists in community. To struggle against a culture of waste, disposability, destruction and injustice, and the culture that has produced global warming to which disasters caused by irresponsibility are now attributed, we can reclaim the sensible and responsible rejection of what is unnecessary in the name of socially viable goals, and discard forever the idolatry of economic growth. The time has arrived to seriously propose the advantages of a negative growth rate, clearly specifying what we would continue to stimulate. For example, the support of highly efficient, productive and sensible sectors, such as those that make up the majority of the persecuted “informal sector.” This will imply a focus on strengthening the productive capacity of the majority, instead of supporting the inefficient giants. The economists’ nightmare, a drop in the gross national product, could be a blessing for the majority" - so says Gustavo Esteva. The targeting of a negative growth rate is the ONLY option on the table.
Personally, I aim for a society based on solidarity, self-management, equity, diversity, environmentalism and scientific humanism where I choose not to differentiate hierarchically within or between species. I should grow up really...
In that he continually changes the way I perceive issues, the last word must go to Baudrillard.
"Destiny cannot be exchanged for anything...exchange is a delusion, an illusion, but everything conspires to have us act as though ideas, words, commodities, goods and individuals can be exchanged...That death itself can be exchanged for something".
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Via two posts, we will attempt to really depress you about the state of the planet and the global economic system prior to demonstrating that the gambling sector is one of the few to benefit from periods of recessionary pressures and, consequently, is a prime area of focus for creative trading strategies during such windows in the business cycle.
Baudrillard reasoned: "My hypothesis is that we have already passed the point of irreversibility, that we are already in an exponential, unlimited form in which everything develops in the void, to infinity, without any possibility of reapprehending it in a human dimension; in which we are losing the memory of the past, the projection of the future and the possibility of integrating that future into present actions". Pretty much the whole of this first post may be adequately condensed into this one statement but we attempt to add some market-orientated and systemic modelling to the argument. Inevitably, some aspects of this post will be derivative in nature in that the arguments of others are utilised alongside our own overviews as market analysts but we'll attempt to dovetail the two together in a semi-grammatical manner.
We're living in serious times. The key issue is this - systemic stability. Whether we choose to look at a universal, solar system, planetary, atomic or quantum level, we are dealing with systems in a state of equilibrium - a balance of the forces of physics that allow sustainability of the system over time. The shareholder capitalist economic infrastructure is also a system and, similarly to physical systems, the economic system also exists in states of equilibrium and stability. Or not... The economic system is a sub-system of our planetary eco-system - the two systems are inextricably linked and the former depends on the stability and the sustainability of the latter. As we are all of one species, we frame our analyses in similar ways and, consequently, the mathematics, statistics, logic and pattern recognitions utilised in one area share many parallels with similar techniques used in other systems. This aids our modelling. For example, the Oxford Interpretation or the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) in quantum physics shares many analytical similarities with both the global economic system and with football match betting markets in that the overall system or event must exist in one of a range of stable states of multiple equilibria - a football match must end with an integral number of goals differential or parity. In multi-layered systems, the situation is complicated by the presence of numerous feedback loops that accentuate any dynamic at play - the recent credit crisis is a result of feedback loops causing the markets to be unaware where the real risk lay and, similarly, the flaring between the two stars in a RS Canum Venaticorum Binary System produces new causal effects that destabilise the stellar system.
It is these feedback loops that will determine the future of both the current economic system and our planet - it is our argument that we face both systemic and super-systemic risk for the first time in our history. Firstly, we intend to look at the economic arena and address the obsession with economic growth and, secondly, we will address the risks in relation to the eco-system. We will also focus on the feedback loops between these systems. If we have done our research well, by this point we will have induced a degree of misery and, so, we will complete the post with a qualified optimism for a different future. But, before anything so uplifting, we need to deconstruct the economy.
Financial Markets in extremis are the current reality as the perverse incentives and warped feedback loops come back to haunt a non-sustainable economic system. Baudrillard: "...the phenomenon of globalisation is in itself random and chaotic, to the point where no-one can control it or claim to subject it to strategy". To a large extent, this statement is undoubtedly true but the modern globalised financial system allows certain institutions to directly apply a macro-dynamic to the market system. When the not-so-great and the not-so-good meet for the World Economic Forum each January in Davos, there are co-ordinated strategies put in place by the core protagonists. To some extent, business cycles may be controlled thus but the feedback loops effectively remove control of the strategy from the hands of the manipulators. This is the situation today. The world is teetering on the edge of a potentially major recession. The world's largest economy will certainly reach recession in 2008 and the impact of the subprime scandal, the dysfunctional money markets and the economic slowdown will create a global bust. The new paradigmists believe that the old restrictions on the growth in an economy no longer exist and their misguided optimism leads them to evaluate that the rapidly growing Indian and Chinese economies will offset America's well-deserved slump. Not so. The IMF and The World Bank have recently, and rather quietly, released figures which suggest that the economies of both India and China, measured at purchasing power parity (PPP), are 40% smaller than originally projected! We return to this point when looking more closely at growth and PPP below but the key impact of this information with regard to the oncoming recession is that the slowdown will be significantly more severe than most economists are currently projecting. There is no safety net. The recent injection of liquidity into the banking system is a rather desperate attempt to delay the inevitable. Resources were misallocated because of the cheapness of credit and the problem will not be solved by simply making money cheaper once again. Invasive intervention by the central banks and the state is hardly indicative of a free market economy that is both systemically robust and sustainable. Markets are primarily psychological rather than economic mechanisms and the only reason that the markets have not yet fallen to more realistic levels is the perseverance of economic theory perpetrated by the new paradigmists. Every economic boom brings out these operators whose idiocy is only superceded by those who they follow, like imperial apologist Niall Ferguson who moves between his academic posts at speed lest his intellectual frailties be exposed.
The market is not just a reality, it is an ideology. Such belief in a corrupt system requires for consumers to be convinced of the symbolic value of a product as opposed to a real value. A system based on lies and sleight of hand will always have a limited shelf life. Anti-growth economist Gustavo Esteva sums it up: "Without discussion, we accept that accelerated economic growth is desirable. Now the time has come to abandon this pernicious obsession". True. Growth-based shareholder capitalism requires vast income inequalities, resource abuse, inefficiency, a huge disenfranchised global underclass and a corrupt infrastructure backed by the military-industrial-financial elite. Growth also requires brinkmanship. In a competitive system, risks will always be taken to gain competitive advantage - the fallout from these risks is felt by us all through a wide spectrum of realities from dodgy pharmaceuticals to cluster bombs, from nuclear waste to an economy negatively impacting upon climate change. Esteva's research parallels the economic system with other systems and he asserts that most organisms achieve a correct level of growth and that any further growth is highly dysfunctional - think cancer. The economic system needs to accept a limit to its growth. Paul Streeton has shown that economic growth is inversely proportional to levels of justice in the world which is a good enough reason in itself. Furthermore, as we argue below, there is no trickle down effect without the utilisation of dishonest mathematics. Growth has a further major impact on its super-system, our eco-system. The level of economic activity is directly proportional to resource usage. At current projected rates of growth, George Monbiot points out that we will use as many of the planet's resources in the next 23 years as we have since the dawn of time. Even more disturbingly, this extrapolates into us removing 16 times our historical impact on the planet's resources within just one century! A sustainable future?
Baudrillard, again, cheers us up by stating: "Everything is taking us into a world steeped in definitive uncertainty". Once we start assessing man's impact upon the planet, there are no certainties, there are no laboratory experiments, there is no historical reference, the computer-generated scenario analyses are laughably simple - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for example, does not take the feedback loops which accelerate the rate of climate change into account when undertaking the mathematics! Despite this gross underestimation, the IPCC still projects that we will require a 85% global cut in carbon emissions by 2050 - as Monbiot says, this is a "complete decarbonisation of the global economy". And, what is the response of our great leaders? Well, Kyoto calls for cuts of 5% below 1990 levels in the next five years! The US, meanwhile, wants to introduce voluntary self-regulation in 2008 which is a nonsense. Self-regulation = no regulation as the protagonists who have created our unstable reality in the first place continue to act with a fascistic libertarian attitude. Greenwash is everywhere as the globalisers attempt to incorporate this critical issue into their marketing and branding campaigns and, more disturbingly, governments are playing along. When the EU decided to give away carbon permits rather than auctioning them as Game Theory suggests is preferable, they were effectively destabilising the nascent marketplace before it even came into existence. When one is addressing major vulnerabilities in an eco-system, there is a certain futility to establishing trading schemes to trade the risks. Baudrillard: "We have not taken a single step closer to the possible end goal. We have merely gone through a number of paradigms that have no end other than in the moment of their metamorphosis". And, we overrate our levels of development as a species. Four hundred years ago, Galileo was outside the system. If we are still around in another four hundred years, which of our current laws and certainties will be shown to be laughably simplistic? Well, we can only hope that they are not the ones relating to rate of climate change. This planet can exist in a range of equilibrium states. We are fortunate enough that the prime state is one that sustains our lives. But, our planet would be equally comfortable with an equilibrium state akin to Mars or Venus. The latter option, in particular, will make Djibouti, and even Leeds, seem idyllic by comparison.
Economics is not a science. It is a multidisciplinary arena. Early last century, Bertrand Russell wrote: "...but as everybody now recognises, supposed laws of economics have a much more temporary...validity". Put simply, economics may not be modelled in a manner that can be replicated ie it is not a science. Scientists may launch a space probe that uses planetary gravitational effects to visit several of our celestial neighbours. Economists cannot tell their arse from their elbow in comparison and no strategy may be orchestrated with any degree of certainty. Russell continued: "the authorities no longer have sufficient belief in the justice of their cause to think that it can survive the ordeal of free discussion". And not much has changed in the intervening century as shareholder capitalism hurtles towards oblivion.
As ever in our distorted capitalist system, the key to understanding the true aims of the global elite lies in PPP. If PPP is shown to be fallacious twaddle (which, of course, it is), there exists not one economic macro-measurement to demonstrate the integrity of the shareholder capitalist system. Measured in all other ways eg at market exchange rates, the plight of the world's poor is worsening by the day while the global oligarchs bask in incredible luxuries. The distortion of PPP allows economists to make the claim that shareholder capitalism improves the lives of us all. Even if this ludicrous claim were true, 1% of nothing is worth considerably less than 1% of a lot. But, its not true. This is why so much effort is made by the likes of the IMF and the World Bank to peddle the tissue of statistical lies that is PPP. We have outlined numerous arguments previously and we have many more stored away for future advantage, but for the sake of this post, we need to revisit one of our earlier statistics.
It is the one about the IMF and the World Bank suddenly realising that India and China's economies are 40% smaller than originally thought, when measured at PPP. If PPP were a robust statistic, such outrageous errors would not exist. It is the belief of our traders that the overestimate was a deliberate manipulation by the overseers of the global financial system to engender the required boom-and-bust market cycle so beloved by the insiders although we are obviously unable to prove this assertion. The impact of the poor modelling and decrepit statistics at the highest levels of our global system is marked. It had been thought that the global economy had been tootling along at 5%, the highest rate since the 1970's, when, in fact, it has actually been growing by 3.4% which is even slower than the 1980's. As it has got rather better for some, it has got markedly worse for a whole lot more. Without the fake mathematics of PPP, the reality of increasing income inequality, non-sustainability, psychopathic short-termist profit maximisation strategies and a complete lack of any democratic right to have a say in the demise of the planet on which we all live, are shown to be a deliberate structure enforced on the global population by the Davos brigade. A systemic autocracy removes the freedom of everyone - we are all either a slave to the workplace or to the dollar. My man, Baudrillard, yet again: "Misfortune, misery - all these things are traded very easily these days. There is a stock exchange of negative values, so to speak. So, debt, which is something negative and, at the same time, something virtual, can be traded".
Bertrand Russell might have been posh but he sure comes out with some great holistics: "In the modern world, there are clever men in laboratories and fools in power. The clever men are slaves...mankind (sic) collectively under the guidance of the fools and by the ingenuity of the clever slaves, is engaged in the great task of preparing its own extermination". And, so it is... There are two key aspects to this pretence of a system - corruption and reality. We'll take them in turn.
Corruption is endemic at all levels of the global economic and financial system. Nietzsche's "Power likes to walk on crooked legs" is an understatement! But, corruption is a vital part of the system - the economic template and corruption are systemically intertwined. People may stand up against corruption but it morphs into a new reality or alters the current reality to suit its continuing agenda. Corruption is an ever-present. No apologies for yet more Baudrillard: "In the same way that Nietzsche spoke of the vital illusion of appearances, we might speak of a vital function of corruption in society. The principle of corruption is illegitimate, it cannot be made official and hence it can speak only in secret". Due to the critical input of corruption to capitalism, there are no institutional attempts to impose regulatory or structural restrictions on the waves of corruption which underpin the entire financial system. If powers wished to reduce the opportunity for psychopathic corruption, a less absolute template could easily be created.
It is of the utmost importance for the mass corruption of our reality to be kept away from prying eyes. Shareholder capitalism achieves this goal through developing spectacular yet fake realities with the complicit support of the mainstream media while hiding away the occasional real reality with warnings to avert our eyes "as you might find some of the scenes in this report harrowing". "The real has only ever been a form of simulation" said guess-who and, in a world where we have "all been cloned mentally and culturally", the steady stream of spectacular realities become the equilibrium realities presented to and accepted by the cloned masses. In a further act of elitist name-dropping, Régis Debray, commenting on the society of the spectacle states: "we have...not communication but contamination of a viral type...everything spreads from one person to another in an immediate fashion". True.
So, we are in the position of having an economic system that is about to unravel disastrously while, at the same time for good measure, this self same system attempts to destroy the very environment in which it operates. As Baudrillard determined: "the economics sphere...is not exchangeable for anything". The necessary action MUST be determined by the near future actions of our overseers. If there is no concerted attempt to create a less psychopathic and more nurturing global system, there will be no other choice of action other than mass Direct Action against the supply side of the economic system. Their financial markets will need to be similarly targeted. Baudrillard is surely correct when he claims: "Something in all men profoundly rejoices in seeing a car burn". But it needn't come to widespread Direct Action (although it probably will...).
"We need to recover a sense of proportion that is simply another form of common sense: that sense that exists in community. To struggle against a culture of waste, disposability, destruction and injustice, and the culture that has produced global warming to which disasters caused by irresponsibility are now attributed, we can reclaim the sensible and responsible rejection of what is unnecessary in the name of socially viable goals, and discard forever the idolatry of economic growth. The time has arrived to seriously propose the advantages of a negative growth rate, clearly specifying what we would continue to stimulate. For example, the support of highly efficient, productive and sensible sectors, such as those that make up the majority of the persecuted “informal sector.” This will imply a focus on strengthening the productive capacity of the majority, instead of supporting the inefficient giants. The economists’ nightmare, a drop in the gross national product, could be a blessing for the majority" - so says Gustavo Esteva. The targeting of a negative growth rate is the ONLY option on the table.
Personally, I aim for a society based on solidarity, self-management, equity, diversity, environmentalism and scientific humanism where I choose not to differentiate hierarchically within or between species. I should grow up really...
In that he continually changes the way I perceive issues, the last word must go to Baudrillard.
"Destiny cannot be exchanged for anything...exchange is a delusion, an illusion, but everything conspires to have us act as though ideas, words, commodities, goods and individuals can be exchanged...That death itself can be exchanged for something".
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Monday 17 December 2007
Sepp Blatter - Twenty Years Of Ineptitude
Sepp Blatter joined with the FIFA executive committee on Saturday to reintroduce a ban on matches played at altitude without "adequate time to acclimatise" - a version of this ban was proposed in June but, on that occasion, FIFA repeatedly backtracked before shelving its little ruse in the face of popular unrest at the decision.
When externally analysing a corrupt edifice, even the most peripheral of institutional acts might reveal factors from the hidden agenda. This one little Reuters release is a mine of valuable information and it is little wonder that FIFA have chosen to avoid any mention of this major change in the rules on the FIFA web homepage preferring instead, for example, to run a poll on "What has surprised you most so far at the FIFA Club World Cup Japan 2007?" (answer: "Its utter irrelevance, but thank you for asking").
As in all soap operas, it is firstly necessary to provide some background to the plot so far.
In February, Flamengo of Brazil made a complaint about having to play a Copa Libertadores match in Bolivia at altitude because "it puts players lives at risk". By the summer, the regional complaint had become global and, as in all instances of centralisation of power, inappropriate decisions were made to inappropriate agendas which bore no relation to the actual situation on the ground (whatever altitude that ground might be). By June, Blatter produced the initial ban set at 2500 metres above sea level (masl). Following representations, protests, political considerations but, with no rumours of any kickbacks at all, the threshold was raised to 3000masl. Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, called on the help of Chile's president, Michelle Bachelet, and she visited Blatter in person to argue Bolivia's case while visiting Switzerland. This was a major positive advancement in relations between Bolivia and Chile with their antagonistic history. By bending to the wishes of Bachelet, Blatter would have been able to reduce political tensions in the region which, seemingly, is one of the global agendas that FIFA (and UEFA for that matter) frequently stomp with their outsized boots. Initially, Blatter agreed and up went the threshold to 3600masl - just high enough to allow matches to be played at La Paz which sits at that very height.
Both the initial ban and the embarrassing climbdown were made against the backdrop of last summer's Copa América and, as intended, created political tensions at the tournament with the hosts Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador lining up on one side and FIFA, Colombia and the USA choosing the right wing corner. Blatter is antisocial in the degree of control that FIFA exerts over the marketing of its own events and to deliberately destabilise a tournament taking place in the birthplace of the Bolivarian Revolution was an undoubtedly political act. The opening ceremony became a political show of strength with media blackouts in the US, interrupted match coverage in Venezuela and Chávez being flanked by Morales and Maradona in the stadium making it quite clear that both the left and the right were using the competition politically.
The ban, both then and now, is entirely arbitrary on other levels. But, worse still, it is an ENTIRELY political act. Lets check it out.
The most important point to be made here is that there is absolutely no scientific evidence indicative of a causal link between altitude and health risk at these heights. Playing sport is a risky business anyway and choosing the performance of sport at height is an arbitrary threshold of invalidity. Moreover, by repeatedly adjusting the apparently safe altitude threshold, FIFA are clearly demonstrating that their decisions are not being based on the marvels of modern science. It is either safe to play at 2500masl according to FIFA's "science" or it isn't - it isn't a negotiable fact if you are coming strictly from the medical angle. By expanding this ruse with the "acclimatisation" issue, FIFA are further muddying the medical waters while effectively forcing a ban through as no team will be able to visit the Andes more than a couple of days ahead due to club or other international commitments.
And, why select altitude? Clubs and nations make use of and abuse a whole range of advantages when playing at home. Heat, playing in a war zone, frozen pitches, pollution, wind, pitch dimensions, the watering of pitches, pitch quality and gradient etc etc etc. I mean, why is it any less of an advantage for Turkey or Greece to host Euro 2008 Qualifiers when it is 96 degrees in the shade compared to Perú, Bolivia or Ecuador playing at an altitude that THEY are used to? Home advantage is supposed to be about, well, home advantage. By arbitrarily choosing one advantage for banning, FIFA is doing a buffoonery thing. Or is it?
The new ban has been set, arbitrarily as I have said with respect to the science, at 2750masl. But arbitrary is the last thing that the 2750masl is! There were originally five countries affected by the initial 2500masl ban - Ecuador, Bolivia, Perú, Mexico and Colombia. Left wing Quito (2800masl) and La Paz both fail the test and, consequently, no representatives of Ecuador or Bolivia will be allowed to play at home. Meanwhile Perú, whose lowland coastal regions have been devastated by natural disaster, will be prevented from playing in Cusco (3400masl). This obviously has no link whatsoever to Perú's audacity at putting on trial former US puppet, Alberto Fujimori, for corruption linked to the infrastructural frailties that magnified the disaster. However, by astonishing good fortune, the US client state Colombia comes in just under the new threshold with Bogotá peaking at 2640masl while the club Toluca in that other US client state Mexico comes in 2680masl.
It is obviously no surprise that the global game is run to a globalisation agenda. Think back to Uzbekistan being denied a rightful place at the last FIFA World Cup to enable Trinidad And Tobago to qualify - a double whammy which enabled an oil-rich state to replace a left wing dictatorship while also allowing Jack Warner, president of much of the western footballing world, to run his World Cup ticket scam while the players still await payment (once again, with no indication of anything suggestive of kickbacks to FIFA). There are numerous other examples. Think last year's arbitrary banning of Iran for "having surnames indicative of terrorism" or some such nonsense or check the manner of referee decision making in matches involving the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Meanwhile, to help celebrate the massive benefits bestowed by the US surge in Iraq, the national football team was allowed to win The Asia Cup courtesy of FIFA and Saudi Arabia. The marketing blitz roared: "The invasion must have been a success as the national team is overperforming on an international stage". This cozy image of a nation reunited and renewed was, unfortunately, cruelly shattered when several members of the squad disappeared after a recent match in Australia and are said to be seeking asylum from their newly free oil-economy.
On a football level, these rulings matter. Aside from the Big Two, there is a very competitive nature to all South American World Cup Qualifiers and Copa Libertadores matches and the denial of home advantage to two of the ten nations is a major competitive advantage to Paraguay and Colombia in particular. No Bolivian team has ever qualified for a World Cup (although they were invited along in 1950) and neither Ecuador nor Bolivia have ever won anything at either club or international level. The targeting of lower tier representatives is the common template across the footballing world - we posted last week about the highly selective nature of the UEFA rigged match "inquiry" (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/12/psychopaths-need-nannies.html). Bolivia are ranked 108 in the world and Ecuador come in 56th and Argentinian journalist Gonzalo Bonades is surely correct when he states: "This is just another example of how the wealthy bully the poor just because they have the power to do it". Interestingly, it is understood that the non-existent G14(18) made representations to FIFA regarding the impacts on their property of being expected to play at altitude just days prior to events marketed at a club level - Manchester United prefer the direct route with Carlos Tevez "electing" to get himself sent off just 11 minutes into Argentina's recent match in Bogotá!
FIFA exists to govern the world game apolitically and with integrity. It evidently fails to achieve either of these aims although now is neither the time nor space to fully expand these particular arguments.
It is the time, however, to ask why the FIFA executive committee is able to repeatedly find copious amounts of time to discuss such an irrelevancy when, right in front of their privileged eyes, there are more important issues at large?
Such as the issues of racism, gambling impacting upon outcome, corrupt players and referees, mafia ownership, the economic enslavement of many African players, political interference, matches being bought and tournaments being corrupted, the widespread use of Performance Enhancing Substances, the equally widespread corruption at all levels of our beloved FIFA family...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
When externally analysing a corrupt edifice, even the most peripheral of institutional acts might reveal factors from the hidden agenda. This one little Reuters release is a mine of valuable information and it is little wonder that FIFA have chosen to avoid any mention of this major change in the rules on the FIFA web homepage preferring instead, for example, to run a poll on "What has surprised you most so far at the FIFA Club World Cup Japan 2007?" (answer: "Its utter irrelevance, but thank you for asking").
As in all soap operas, it is firstly necessary to provide some background to the plot so far.
In February, Flamengo of Brazil made a complaint about having to play a Copa Libertadores match in Bolivia at altitude because "it puts players lives at risk". By the summer, the regional complaint had become global and, as in all instances of centralisation of power, inappropriate decisions were made to inappropriate agendas which bore no relation to the actual situation on the ground (whatever altitude that ground might be). By June, Blatter produced the initial ban set at 2500 metres above sea level (masl). Following representations, protests, political considerations but, with no rumours of any kickbacks at all, the threshold was raised to 3000masl. Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, called on the help of Chile's president, Michelle Bachelet, and she visited Blatter in person to argue Bolivia's case while visiting Switzerland. This was a major positive advancement in relations between Bolivia and Chile with their antagonistic history. By bending to the wishes of Bachelet, Blatter would have been able to reduce political tensions in the region which, seemingly, is one of the global agendas that FIFA (and UEFA for that matter) frequently stomp with their outsized boots. Initially, Blatter agreed and up went the threshold to 3600masl - just high enough to allow matches to be played at La Paz which sits at that very height.
Both the initial ban and the embarrassing climbdown were made against the backdrop of last summer's Copa América and, as intended, created political tensions at the tournament with the hosts Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador lining up on one side and FIFA, Colombia and the USA choosing the right wing corner. Blatter is antisocial in the degree of control that FIFA exerts over the marketing of its own events and to deliberately destabilise a tournament taking place in the birthplace of the Bolivarian Revolution was an undoubtedly political act. The opening ceremony became a political show of strength with media blackouts in the US, interrupted match coverage in Venezuela and Chávez being flanked by Morales and Maradona in the stadium making it quite clear that both the left and the right were using the competition politically.
The ban, both then and now, is entirely arbitrary on other levels. But, worse still, it is an ENTIRELY political act. Lets check it out.
The most important point to be made here is that there is absolutely no scientific evidence indicative of a causal link between altitude and health risk at these heights. Playing sport is a risky business anyway and choosing the performance of sport at height is an arbitrary threshold of invalidity. Moreover, by repeatedly adjusting the apparently safe altitude threshold, FIFA are clearly demonstrating that their decisions are not being based on the marvels of modern science. It is either safe to play at 2500masl according to FIFA's "science" or it isn't - it isn't a negotiable fact if you are coming strictly from the medical angle. By expanding this ruse with the "acclimatisation" issue, FIFA are further muddying the medical waters while effectively forcing a ban through as no team will be able to visit the Andes more than a couple of days ahead due to club or other international commitments.
And, why select altitude? Clubs and nations make use of and abuse a whole range of advantages when playing at home. Heat, playing in a war zone, frozen pitches, pollution, wind, pitch dimensions, the watering of pitches, pitch quality and gradient etc etc etc. I mean, why is it any less of an advantage for Turkey or Greece to host Euro 2008 Qualifiers when it is 96 degrees in the shade compared to Perú, Bolivia or Ecuador playing at an altitude that THEY are used to? Home advantage is supposed to be about, well, home advantage. By arbitrarily choosing one advantage for banning, FIFA is doing a buffoonery thing. Or is it?
The new ban has been set, arbitrarily as I have said with respect to the science, at 2750masl. But arbitrary is the last thing that the 2750masl is! There were originally five countries affected by the initial 2500masl ban - Ecuador, Bolivia, Perú, Mexico and Colombia. Left wing Quito (2800masl) and La Paz both fail the test and, consequently, no representatives of Ecuador or Bolivia will be allowed to play at home. Meanwhile Perú, whose lowland coastal regions have been devastated by natural disaster, will be prevented from playing in Cusco (3400masl). This obviously has no link whatsoever to Perú's audacity at putting on trial former US puppet, Alberto Fujimori, for corruption linked to the infrastructural frailties that magnified the disaster. However, by astonishing good fortune, the US client state Colombia comes in just under the new threshold with Bogotá peaking at 2640masl while the club Toluca in that other US client state Mexico comes in 2680masl.
It is obviously no surprise that the global game is run to a globalisation agenda. Think back to Uzbekistan being denied a rightful place at the last FIFA World Cup to enable Trinidad And Tobago to qualify - a double whammy which enabled an oil-rich state to replace a left wing dictatorship while also allowing Jack Warner, president of much of the western footballing world, to run his World Cup ticket scam while the players still await payment (once again, with no indication of anything suggestive of kickbacks to FIFA). There are numerous other examples. Think last year's arbitrary banning of Iran for "having surnames indicative of terrorism" or some such nonsense or check the manner of referee decision making in matches involving the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Meanwhile, to help celebrate the massive benefits bestowed by the US surge in Iraq, the national football team was allowed to win The Asia Cup courtesy of FIFA and Saudi Arabia. The marketing blitz roared: "The invasion must have been a success as the national team is overperforming on an international stage". This cozy image of a nation reunited and renewed was, unfortunately, cruelly shattered when several members of the squad disappeared after a recent match in Australia and are said to be seeking asylum from their newly free oil-economy.
On a football level, these rulings matter. Aside from the Big Two, there is a very competitive nature to all South American World Cup Qualifiers and Copa Libertadores matches and the denial of home advantage to two of the ten nations is a major competitive advantage to Paraguay and Colombia in particular. No Bolivian team has ever qualified for a World Cup (although they were invited along in 1950) and neither Ecuador nor Bolivia have ever won anything at either club or international level. The targeting of lower tier representatives is the common template across the footballing world - we posted last week about the highly selective nature of the UEFA rigged match "inquiry" (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/12/psychopaths-need-nannies.html). Bolivia are ranked 108 in the world and Ecuador come in 56th and Argentinian journalist Gonzalo Bonades is surely correct when he states: "This is just another example of how the wealthy bully the poor just because they have the power to do it". Interestingly, it is understood that the non-existent G14(18) made representations to FIFA regarding the impacts on their property of being expected to play at altitude just days prior to events marketed at a club level - Manchester United prefer the direct route with Carlos Tevez "electing" to get himself sent off just 11 minutes into Argentina's recent match in Bogotá!
FIFA exists to govern the world game apolitically and with integrity. It evidently fails to achieve either of these aims although now is neither the time nor space to fully expand these particular arguments.
It is the time, however, to ask why the FIFA executive committee is able to repeatedly find copious amounts of time to discuss such an irrelevancy when, right in front of their privileged eyes, there are more important issues at large?
Such as the issues of racism, gambling impacting upon outcome, corrupt players and referees, mafia ownership, the economic enslavement of many African players, political interference, matches being bought and tournaments being corrupted, the widespread use of Performance Enhancing Substances, the equally widespread corruption at all levels of our beloved FIFA family...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Sunday 16 December 2007
Grand Scam Sunday 2008
RK: "A warm welcome to Grand Scam Sunday - a Sky/Star Asia Spectacular Branded Extravaganza".
Cue: A video mosaic of rapidly sequenced images featuring referees, assistant referees, 4th officials, replays of scandalous decisions intercut with betting slips, trading screens and suitcases with money inside them...
RK: "Well, have we got one huge Scam for you today here direct from the SkyBet Trading Rooms? To help talk us through the disinformation, we are delighted to welcome RW who used to play for two of the teams in action today, alongside our very own manipulators of public information AG and JR. Good afternoon gentlemen. How do you see these games going this afternoon?".
AG: "Well, R, isn't it a miracle of probability that the big betting Saturday before xmas has thrown up these two huge Scams? The fixture list could not have been manipulated any better from a marketing perspective. And, R, as soon as MH was selected to referee the Liverpool Reds game, we knew what sort of betting market to expect. Lets have a look at his best manipulations so far this season".
Cue: Another mixture of dives becoming penalties and a referee walking into Isle of Man bank...
JR: "To be totally honest, you'd have to go the same way as The Racing Post is persuading its readers to bet on the games, R. My dad told me what will happen in the later game and we've all got a nice little earner on the Half Time/Full Time market for the Arsenal betting event".
RW: "I'd agree with J and A. My money always follows The Racing Post and The Sporting Life advices on the games. And, if in doubt, I check out The Sun. You can trust these guys, R".
RK: "You certainly can. Let's hear what RH from The Tragic Sign has to say".
RH: "All the professional money is, remarkably, following the same teams as the leisure punter money and everybody should be feeling massive pangs of regret if they have not placed at least 25% of the weekly domestic budget on each of these two gambles. Come on now. Every little helps our shareholders and our traders".
AG: "RH is right. Teams A and B are unbackable and, with AW on the later game, we are assured of a volatile betting marketplace. The early manipulations came from Russia but Asia quickly traded a range of strategic market knowledge before the big London and Gibraltar firms undertook their own corruptions. R, its looking at the moment like the dominant poker hand is in Bangkok but there are several hands to play prior to kick off".
JR: "Yeah, dad got on in Gibraltar...".
RW: "I'd agree with J and A. My money always follows The Racing Post and The Sporting Life advices on the games. And, if in doubt, I check out The Sun. You can trust these guys, R".
RK: "So, lets look at the offshore financial centre cashflows of the referees in the season to date. As you will see, it has been a tricky one for at least one official as he has desperately attempted to move his millions between centres utilising regulatory loopholes".
Cue: Banks, Liechtenstein, Macau, high class call girls and the ubiquitous suitcases of cash...
RK: "There have been rumours of a change of referee hovering around the Arsenal game all week as different mafia clans attempt to exert ultimate control over the later Scam".
JR: "Yeah, dad's little earner yesterday was messed up by Hackett doin' that. It was a loadsofmoney-job's-a-good'un-certainty and then Hackett changes the bloody ref! What's it coming to when you can't land a little earner on the side of a corrupt match?
AG: "That's dreadful, J. It's a disgrace when you lose psychopathic and absolute control of a high profile televised Scam. I've been doing it on-and-off all season and I find it abhorrent that, in this day and age, there are people out there who do not yet understand that Sky/Star Asia must win".
RK: "Absolutely, A. I couldn't agree with you more".
RW: "I'd agree with J and A. My money always follows The Racing Post and The Sporting Life advices on the games. And, if in doubt, I check out The Sun. You can trust these guys, R".
RK: "Okay, let's get the team news from The Hicks And Gillett Halliburton Emporium".
CK: "I've just been into the referee's changing room, R, and there are no reports of any niggling injuries for today's match officials. MH felt a few involuntary spasms earlier in the week but nothing to keep him from controlling the Grand Scam Opening Event".
RK: "And the players?"
CK: "We've seen some evidence of insider trading both in Asia and Europe and there are huge rumours of inappropriate Russian money on both of the games. I'm sure that the relevant players will perform as is required. There's a lot of EPO around".
RK: "Great, C".
AG: "Ay, that is good news. I like a tidy watertight corruption".
Cue: Laughter all around the studio.
RK: "Are you and the trading team happy with the choices of MH and AW to officiate?"
AG: "Well, yes and no, R. At least MR and HW are the 4th Officials but we'd always prefer MR or HW on the pitch for obvious reasons that we needn't go into live on air".
Cue: Yet more hilarity and backslapping humour from the corruption team.
AG: "But, R, there is one important point to be made here. This is the Sky/Star Asia Grand Scam and it is outrageous that Manchester Blues were allowed to win yesterday. How can we market this Scam as the Grand Scam if some non-criminalised match official allows another team to break into the Top Four. Its an outrage and something must be done about it".
RK: "I couldn't agree more, boss. So, a prediction from each of you gentleman please".
AG: "Well, there's limited liquidity on the first game as our psychopathic attempts to control the betting markets are finally being noticed by punters and there are rumours that some working class gambling addicts are turning away from Sky Scams which will have to be addressed. You'd have to go with the EPO though. As for the later game, we all know what is going to happen and it serves their right for refusing to be taken over by criminal money".
RK: "I couldn't agree more, A".
JR: "To be honest, somebody's going to get a good slappin' later. You know what I mean?"
RW: "I'd agree with J and A. My money always follows The Racing Post and The Sporting Life advices on the games. And, if in doubt, I check out The Sun. You can trust these guys, R".
RK: "And, now before we go over to the trading room to monitor the market action, here are some product placements, a fifteen minute advertorial for those Grand Scam Ford Cars and some self-promotional stuff for future Sky/Star Asia Scams over the festive season".
At the end of last night's Match Of The Day, Gary Lineker concluded the show with the semi-immortal line: "The Game's Bent". All around the trading room, there was silence. Shock, even... Following a swift rewind, we were relieved to find that this action did not represent a cleansing of football punditry in the face of this massive global corruption but rather referred instead to the excellent hat-trick scored for Wigan by Marcus Bent. Phew!
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Cue: A video mosaic of rapidly sequenced images featuring referees, assistant referees, 4th officials, replays of scandalous decisions intercut with betting slips, trading screens and suitcases with money inside them...
RK: "Well, have we got one huge Scam for you today here direct from the SkyBet Trading Rooms? To help talk us through the disinformation, we are delighted to welcome RW who used to play for two of the teams in action today, alongside our very own manipulators of public information AG and JR. Good afternoon gentlemen. How do you see these games going this afternoon?".
AG: "Well, R, isn't it a miracle of probability that the big betting Saturday before xmas has thrown up these two huge Scams? The fixture list could not have been manipulated any better from a marketing perspective. And, R, as soon as MH was selected to referee the Liverpool Reds game, we knew what sort of betting market to expect. Lets have a look at his best manipulations so far this season".
Cue: Another mixture of dives becoming penalties and a referee walking into Isle of Man bank...
JR: "To be totally honest, you'd have to go the same way as The Racing Post is persuading its readers to bet on the games, R. My dad told me what will happen in the later game and we've all got a nice little earner on the Half Time/Full Time market for the Arsenal betting event".
RW: "I'd agree with J and A. My money always follows The Racing Post and The Sporting Life advices on the games. And, if in doubt, I check out The Sun. You can trust these guys, R".
RK: "You certainly can. Let's hear what RH from The Tragic Sign has to say".
RH: "All the professional money is, remarkably, following the same teams as the leisure punter money and everybody should be feeling massive pangs of regret if they have not placed at least 25% of the weekly domestic budget on each of these two gambles. Come on now. Every little helps our shareholders and our traders".
AG: "RH is right. Teams A and B are unbackable and, with AW on the later game, we are assured of a volatile betting marketplace. The early manipulations came from Russia but Asia quickly traded a range of strategic market knowledge before the big London and Gibraltar firms undertook their own corruptions. R, its looking at the moment like the dominant poker hand is in Bangkok but there are several hands to play prior to kick off".
JR: "Yeah, dad got on in Gibraltar...".
RW: "I'd agree with J and A. My money always follows The Racing Post and The Sporting Life advices on the games. And, if in doubt, I check out The Sun. You can trust these guys, R".
RK: "So, lets look at the offshore financial centre cashflows of the referees in the season to date. As you will see, it has been a tricky one for at least one official as he has desperately attempted to move his millions between centres utilising regulatory loopholes".
Cue: Banks, Liechtenstein, Macau, high class call girls and the ubiquitous suitcases of cash...
RK: "There have been rumours of a change of referee hovering around the Arsenal game all week as different mafia clans attempt to exert ultimate control over the later Scam".
JR: "Yeah, dad's little earner yesterday was messed up by Hackett doin' that. It was a loadsofmoney-job's-a-good'un-certainty and then Hackett changes the bloody ref! What's it coming to when you can't land a little earner on the side of a corrupt match?
AG: "That's dreadful, J. It's a disgrace when you lose psychopathic and absolute control of a high profile televised Scam. I've been doing it on-and-off all season and I find it abhorrent that, in this day and age, there are people out there who do not yet understand that Sky/Star Asia must win".
RK: "Absolutely, A. I couldn't agree with you more".
RW: "I'd agree with J and A. My money always follows The Racing Post and The Sporting Life advices on the games. And, if in doubt, I check out The Sun. You can trust these guys, R".
RK: "Okay, let's get the team news from The Hicks And Gillett Halliburton Emporium".
CK: "I've just been into the referee's changing room, R, and there are no reports of any niggling injuries for today's match officials. MH felt a few involuntary spasms earlier in the week but nothing to keep him from controlling the Grand Scam Opening Event".
RK: "And the players?"
CK: "We've seen some evidence of insider trading both in Asia and Europe and there are huge rumours of inappropriate Russian money on both of the games. I'm sure that the relevant players will perform as is required. There's a lot of EPO around".
RK: "Great, C".
AG: "Ay, that is good news. I like a tidy watertight corruption".
Cue: Laughter all around the studio.
RK: "Are you and the trading team happy with the choices of MH and AW to officiate?"
AG: "Well, yes and no, R. At least MR and HW are the 4th Officials but we'd always prefer MR or HW on the pitch for obvious reasons that we needn't go into live on air".
Cue: Yet more hilarity and backslapping humour from the corruption team.
AG: "But, R, there is one important point to be made here. This is the Sky/Star Asia Grand Scam and it is outrageous that Manchester Blues were allowed to win yesterday. How can we market this Scam as the Grand Scam if some non-criminalised match official allows another team to break into the Top Four. Its an outrage and something must be done about it".
RK: "I couldn't agree more, boss. So, a prediction from each of you gentleman please".
AG: "Well, there's limited liquidity on the first game as our psychopathic attempts to control the betting markets are finally being noticed by punters and there are rumours that some working class gambling addicts are turning away from Sky Scams which will have to be addressed. You'd have to go with the EPO though. As for the later game, we all know what is going to happen and it serves their right for refusing to be taken over by criminal money".
RK: "I couldn't agree more, A".
JR: "To be honest, somebody's going to get a good slappin' later. You know what I mean?"
RW: "I'd agree with J and A. My money always follows The Racing Post and The Sporting Life advices on the games. And, if in doubt, I check out The Sun. You can trust these guys, R".
RK: "And, now before we go over to the trading room to monitor the market action, here are some product placements, a fifteen minute advertorial for those Grand Scam Ford Cars and some self-promotional stuff for future Sky/Star Asia Scams over the festive season".
At the end of last night's Match Of The Day, Gary Lineker concluded the show with the semi-immortal line: "The Game's Bent". All around the trading room, there was silence. Shock, even... Following a swift rewind, we were relieved to find that this action did not represent a cleansing of football punditry in the face of this massive global corruption but rather referred instead to the excellent hat-trick scored for Wigan by Marcus Bent. Phew!
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Saturday 8 December 2007
If Anyone Can Fallon Can
The Betfair/City of London Police crown trial of Irish jockey Kieran Fallon and his co-defendants collapsed yesterday after Judge Thayne Forbes determined that the defence did not have a case to answer.
There are two key questions that we need to address:
i) Why was this case brought to trial?
ii) Is this that rare thing, a valid whitewash?
Before attempting to answer these points, I should explain a few things for newer readers. Before working in football, for five years I traded professionally around the horseracing rails and betting rings of Britain. My Economics Ph.D thesis (undertaken at the same time) was entitled "The Impact of Conspicuous Money on Outcomes in British Horserace Betting Markets" and, before I deprofessionalised, I undertook several high level consultancy projects within the British horseracing industry. Although I rarely trade on horses nowadays due to the corruption, I do get involved in Cheltenham and a few of the other major events. My specific knowledge of recent developments in the marketplace is sketchy but I think that I have a reasonable enough overview of the industry sector to provide an angle on the Fallon Affair.
We should also state that Dietrological had wide-ranging internal discussions about whether to offer to help Betfair with their case against Fallon but, for the reasons laid out below, we decided against offering our/my services.
Finally on the boring stuff, we are limited in what we are able to say on certain matters due to legal reasons. If we say something, it is because we are able to prove our point with hard evidence.
Comprendez?
In the mid-nineties, Kieran Fallon was yer man in Newmarket. Fallon performed a highly professional job for both the British racing establishment and for certain key elements of the bookmaking industry. Choosing our words quite carefully, there were many events where it was not feasible to trade on a Fallon mount due to externalised and inappropriate influences. The industry sector, particularly around Newmarket, clearly owed yer man a favour and, yesterday, Thayne Forbes did the decent stiff-upper-lip thing and, in releasing the Fallon Six, additionally prevented what is left of the integrity of British horseracing from being further raked through the mud in full public glare. They'll probably give the judge a gong for services rendered.
Anyway, back to the mid-nineties. Kieran Fallon's talents for dancing from below were not restricted to the saddle and, in a style that would have made Dave Allen proud, he was not an unknown bedroom guest of some pretty posh English totty. Fair dinkum - he was making the rich richer... Then there occurred the alleged liaison with Henry Cecil's wife which, on level of severity, isn't far below fucking a monarch really and enough was decided to be enough. In the imperial days of yore, the little man would have been despatched on a prison ship to Botany Bay but Ballydoyle was seen as a viable modern alternative.
With the yoke of underachievement removed from his shoulders, Fallon won six out of seven jockeys titles, collected a whole host of major race victories, came home on some well-backed favourites to the annoyance of his former paymasters and was so superior to the majority of his fellow jockeys that he was still able to throw in the occasional underachieving ride just for the craic.
Betfair must sit on masses of insider trading that never reaches the light of day never mind ending up in the highest court of the land. All bookmakers utilise inside knowledge for avoiding liabilities, for proprietary trading as well as for hedging purposes. The choice of Fallon's gang was arbitrary. Aside from the thirteen other jockeys who have lost their licences for similar misdemeanours in the last couple of years, there is a whole societal sub-network of families, individuals, lobbies, associations and institutions that dominate the "sport" in Britain. We choose not to name names in this place but Fallon's "arrangement" with the bookmakers was hardly unique. There was presumably a bit of grudge, a retaliatory punch in an ongoing battle, even a little anti-Irishness in the decision to proceed against the best flat jockey of modern times. Fallon's co-defendant Philip Sherkle is surely correct when he asserted outside the courtroom: "I thought only horses wore blinkers".
The choice of Fallon had further general benefits to the bookmaking industry in Britain. By keeping a highly talented loose cannon out of the game at the peak of his career, they regained control of the marketplace to significant financial benefit and, additionally, by being able to paint the fake public reality that betting exchanges somehow invite criminality into the gambling medium, the leading traditional bookmakers have been able to fire a shot across the bows of Betfair too. This distortion should not be allowed to pass unchallenged. In the days before the spread firms and the betting exchanges, it was not possible for a non-bookmaker to lay a horse ie to back a horse to lose. This was a very profitable trading strategy which, due to a suitable market infrastructure, was only available to the bookmakers and those with access to the private markets. Nowadays we can all oppose a favourite and this has impacted upon the traditional bookmaker's cartelised control of the industry in Britain to a massive extent. Customers have also been fleeing to the betting exchanges because of the smaller margins and the sheer unprofessionalism of Betfair's role in this affair cannot have been good for company morale nor public perception.
Although the English bookmakers were pleased to have Fallon out of the way, the traditional layers and the wider racing establishment had no interest in helping the Betfair case. Betfair are out of the loop of the inner ring which used to make up the Association of Major Levy Payers and, indeed, are viewed as the enemy from some mid-sized towns beginning with the letter "H". Consequently, with the sense of omerta becoming overbearing, Betfair were forced to fly in a leading Australian steward to gain independent judgement of Fallon's 27 suspect rides. So battle was joined with Betfair's key defence witness having no knowledge nor experience of British horseracing. This is almost as foolhardy as having Mark Shields take charge of the Woolmer inquiry! To further aid the destabilisation of the prosecution case, Mark Manning, the acting detective inspector in charge of the investigation, confessed: "I'm not a gambler and I know nothing about Betfair". Brilliant. After yesterday's collapse of the case, Manning went public with the claim that he might well accept a job with the British Horseracing Authority at the conclusion of the trial. You couldn't make this up! At least his extensive experience will be an asset!!??
A key piece of information in the termination of the trial was the assessment of Timeform's Jim McGrath. It was his personal view that the Ballinger Ridge race (Ballinger Ridge is an alleged Fallon underachiever that allowed co-defendant and professional gambler Miles Rodgers to pocket £27,000 on the winner) required too much judgement to deliberately cheat. Nonsense. I was an excellent reader of races in-running and I know an underachieving horse when I see one. Fallon not only gained eye contact with the fast approaching winner but he continued to hold his horse back for a few further strides before reacting. McGrath is a key cog in the British racing sector. His organisation makes a tidy living out of publicising the fallacy that horseracing results are related to form when, in reality, they are simply correlated with betting market patterns. But McGrath is a very talented and quick-thinking operator - we respect his talents but not his choice of career. When you are a professional in the gambling industry, the reliable and disinformational sources tend to diverge and we confess to being surprised that so much weight was given to one flawed judgement from an industry insider who had no interest in the case proceeding. The law is evidently a bigger ass than Ballinger Ridge!
The case cost £10 million over three and a half years and yet the prosecution case could have been put together on a Friday afternoon by an industry professional - these people evidently do lunch extensively. The financial winners? The traditional bookmakers and the English racing establishment will be feeling smug as their lack of perspective prevents them seeing the damage being done to their little ruse - a short term gain before a longer term fall. The financial losers? All non-professional punters who choose to bet on British horseracing, Betfair, the taxpayer, the credibility of the City of London Police (which will bring a chirpy smile to Harry Redknapp's face), Kieran Fallon and Irish racing.
"From the nags to the hacks, noone wants to blow the whistle" was the perceptive summary of Jon Snow on last night's Channel 4 News programme. And these are the prime issues with British racing. Firstly, corruption is endemic within the "sport". And, secondly, these people have been interbreeding with each other for centuries and they are the establishment. They meet up around the country to give each other prizes and they don't wish for anybody to be poking their proletarian noses in. The bookmakers are equally reclusive. This is a scam at a societal level and it is only correct that this ludicrous singling out of Kieran Fallon and his co-defendants has been be terminated.
A whitewash? Yes. But, a valid whitewash... It is simply a pity that the wigged one wielded his gavel just in time to prevent the jury (and the wider public) seeing the detailed evidence gathered against the defendants.
As I said, you couldn't make it up.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
There are two key questions that we need to address:
i) Why was this case brought to trial?
ii) Is this that rare thing, a valid whitewash?
Before attempting to answer these points, I should explain a few things for newer readers. Before working in football, for five years I traded professionally around the horseracing rails and betting rings of Britain. My Economics Ph.D thesis (undertaken at the same time) was entitled "The Impact of Conspicuous Money on Outcomes in British Horserace Betting Markets" and, before I deprofessionalised, I undertook several high level consultancy projects within the British horseracing industry. Although I rarely trade on horses nowadays due to the corruption, I do get involved in Cheltenham and a few of the other major events. My specific knowledge of recent developments in the marketplace is sketchy but I think that I have a reasonable enough overview of the industry sector to provide an angle on the Fallon Affair.
We should also state that Dietrological had wide-ranging internal discussions about whether to offer to help Betfair with their case against Fallon but, for the reasons laid out below, we decided against offering our/my services.
Finally on the boring stuff, we are limited in what we are able to say on certain matters due to legal reasons. If we say something, it is because we are able to prove our point with hard evidence.
Comprendez?
In the mid-nineties, Kieran Fallon was yer man in Newmarket. Fallon performed a highly professional job for both the British racing establishment and for certain key elements of the bookmaking industry. Choosing our words quite carefully, there were many events where it was not feasible to trade on a Fallon mount due to externalised and inappropriate influences. The industry sector, particularly around Newmarket, clearly owed yer man a favour and, yesterday, Thayne Forbes did the decent stiff-upper-lip thing and, in releasing the Fallon Six, additionally prevented what is left of the integrity of British horseracing from being further raked through the mud in full public glare. They'll probably give the judge a gong for services rendered.
Anyway, back to the mid-nineties. Kieran Fallon's talents for dancing from below were not restricted to the saddle and, in a style that would have made Dave Allen proud, he was not an unknown bedroom guest of some pretty posh English totty. Fair dinkum - he was making the rich richer... Then there occurred the alleged liaison with Henry Cecil's wife which, on level of severity, isn't far below fucking a monarch really and enough was decided to be enough. In the imperial days of yore, the little man would have been despatched on a prison ship to Botany Bay but Ballydoyle was seen as a viable modern alternative.
With the yoke of underachievement removed from his shoulders, Fallon won six out of seven jockeys titles, collected a whole host of major race victories, came home on some well-backed favourites to the annoyance of his former paymasters and was so superior to the majority of his fellow jockeys that he was still able to throw in the occasional underachieving ride just for the craic.
Betfair must sit on masses of insider trading that never reaches the light of day never mind ending up in the highest court of the land. All bookmakers utilise inside knowledge for avoiding liabilities, for proprietary trading as well as for hedging purposes. The choice of Fallon's gang was arbitrary. Aside from the thirteen other jockeys who have lost their licences for similar misdemeanours in the last couple of years, there is a whole societal sub-network of families, individuals, lobbies, associations and institutions that dominate the "sport" in Britain. We choose not to name names in this place but Fallon's "arrangement" with the bookmakers was hardly unique. There was presumably a bit of grudge, a retaliatory punch in an ongoing battle, even a little anti-Irishness in the decision to proceed against the best flat jockey of modern times. Fallon's co-defendant Philip Sherkle is surely correct when he asserted outside the courtroom: "I thought only horses wore blinkers".
The choice of Fallon had further general benefits to the bookmaking industry in Britain. By keeping a highly talented loose cannon out of the game at the peak of his career, they regained control of the marketplace to significant financial benefit and, additionally, by being able to paint the fake public reality that betting exchanges somehow invite criminality into the gambling medium, the leading traditional bookmakers have been able to fire a shot across the bows of Betfair too. This distortion should not be allowed to pass unchallenged. In the days before the spread firms and the betting exchanges, it was not possible for a non-bookmaker to lay a horse ie to back a horse to lose. This was a very profitable trading strategy which, due to a suitable market infrastructure, was only available to the bookmakers and those with access to the private markets. Nowadays we can all oppose a favourite and this has impacted upon the traditional bookmaker's cartelised control of the industry in Britain to a massive extent. Customers have also been fleeing to the betting exchanges because of the smaller margins and the sheer unprofessionalism of Betfair's role in this affair cannot have been good for company morale nor public perception.
Although the English bookmakers were pleased to have Fallon out of the way, the traditional layers and the wider racing establishment had no interest in helping the Betfair case. Betfair are out of the loop of the inner ring which used to make up the Association of Major Levy Payers and, indeed, are viewed as the enemy from some mid-sized towns beginning with the letter "H". Consequently, with the sense of omerta becoming overbearing, Betfair were forced to fly in a leading Australian steward to gain independent judgement of Fallon's 27 suspect rides. So battle was joined with Betfair's key defence witness having no knowledge nor experience of British horseracing. This is almost as foolhardy as having Mark Shields take charge of the Woolmer inquiry! To further aid the destabilisation of the prosecution case, Mark Manning, the acting detective inspector in charge of the investigation, confessed: "I'm not a gambler and I know nothing about Betfair". Brilliant. After yesterday's collapse of the case, Manning went public with the claim that he might well accept a job with the British Horseracing Authority at the conclusion of the trial. You couldn't make this up! At least his extensive experience will be an asset!!??
A key piece of information in the termination of the trial was the assessment of Timeform's Jim McGrath. It was his personal view that the Ballinger Ridge race (Ballinger Ridge is an alleged Fallon underachiever that allowed co-defendant and professional gambler Miles Rodgers to pocket £27,000 on the winner) required too much judgement to deliberately cheat. Nonsense. I was an excellent reader of races in-running and I know an underachieving horse when I see one. Fallon not only gained eye contact with the fast approaching winner but he continued to hold his horse back for a few further strides before reacting. McGrath is a key cog in the British racing sector. His organisation makes a tidy living out of publicising the fallacy that horseracing results are related to form when, in reality, they are simply correlated with betting market patterns. But McGrath is a very talented and quick-thinking operator - we respect his talents but not his choice of career. When you are a professional in the gambling industry, the reliable and disinformational sources tend to diverge and we confess to being surprised that so much weight was given to one flawed judgement from an industry insider who had no interest in the case proceeding. The law is evidently a bigger ass than Ballinger Ridge!
The case cost £10 million over three and a half years and yet the prosecution case could have been put together on a Friday afternoon by an industry professional - these people evidently do lunch extensively. The financial winners? The traditional bookmakers and the English racing establishment will be feeling smug as their lack of perspective prevents them seeing the damage being done to their little ruse - a short term gain before a longer term fall. The financial losers? All non-professional punters who choose to bet on British horseracing, Betfair, the taxpayer, the credibility of the City of London Police (which will bring a chirpy smile to Harry Redknapp's face), Kieran Fallon and Irish racing.
"From the nags to the hacks, noone wants to blow the whistle" was the perceptive summary of Jon Snow on last night's Channel 4 News programme. And these are the prime issues with British racing. Firstly, corruption is endemic within the "sport". And, secondly, these people have been interbreeding with each other for centuries and they are the establishment. They meet up around the country to give each other prizes and they don't wish for anybody to be poking their proletarian noses in. The bookmakers are equally reclusive. This is a scam at a societal level and it is only correct that this ludicrous singling out of Kieran Fallon and his co-defendants has been be terminated.
A whitewash? Yes. But, a valid whitewash... It is simply a pity that the wigged one wielded his gavel just in time to prevent the jury (and the wider public) seeing the detailed evidence gathered against the defendants.
As I said, you couldn't make it up.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday 6 December 2007
Psychopaths Need Nannies
When is a rigged match not a rigged match?
When the rigging is perpetrated by the bookmakers and/or the footballing authorities. That's when.
There is a flip side to this scenario - woe betide anybody else frigging about and rigging...
UEFA is currently investigating fifteen matches from the early phases of this season which revealed suspicious betting patterns. The events are from the Champions League, UEFA Cup and Euro 2008. These matches form part of a larger group of 26 "hot" matches over the last eighteen months but only this season's corruptions will be investigated.
Sieve-like in extremis, the leaks have been emanating from UEFA headquarters regarding the matches under review. We are told that countries like Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, the Baltic region and Georgia are seemingly the main protagonists. Inevitably, the inquest is leading to some of the perpetrators breaking cover or being exposed by domestic political opponents as sport and politics are inextricably linked throughout much of Europe.
For example, the Albanian Sports and Culture Minister Ylli Pango has accused the chairman of the Albanian FA, Armando Duka, of throwing the last two Euro 2008 qualifiers against Belarus and Romania. "There are clear suspicions that both matches might have been sold by the president of our National football federation" stated Ylli (feeling a bit illy). Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha has also accused the country's football leadership of "being linked with mafia groups rigging football matches for their own profits." Both matches were certainly of interest in the trading rooms. Belarus arrived in Tirana having successfully managed to land a major internal gamble when losing at home to Luxembourg (the visitors first competitive victory since 1995!). The Albanian FA have close links with their Turkish counterparts and, once Turk Bülent Demirlek was selected to officiate, the deal was feasible. Albania lost 4-2 with victory being decided by Romashchenko's penalty. Belarus, in their final two home matches, managed to lose to a side ranked 152 in the world before beating a nation ranked in the Top 10. Albania's 6-1 defeat in Romania four days later was a very different betting scam. For the Albania/ Belarus match, all the conspicuous insider money was hedged out to Asia in the very early market phases; for the Romania event, the scam was perpetrated at half time. In eighteen second half minutes, the Albanians managed to concede 5 goals with the obligatory two penalties and a pair of sendings off thrown in - both penalties were conceded by one Nevil Dede who completed his bosses work by getting himself dismissed!
So, these are just two of the suspicious events and we isolate them merely as a demonstration of the corrupt structures utilised elsewhere in Europe to land major betting scams. Euro 2008 Group G was certainly a highly manipulated group but the machinations were insignificant when compared with the shenanigans with kunas and shekels in England's qualifying group, Group E.
We have highlighted previously the rampant corruption in this group with five of the nations working either together or in isolation to achieve both short-term financial gains via illegal betting and longer term qualification targets utilising suitcases of money no doubt gained through the aforementioned underground gambling activities. Now, I'm quite partial to suitcases of money but I don't think that it is in the interests of the integrity of football as a whole to allow competitive events to be determined by issues relating to the illicit cashflows of the match officials and selected players.
It is quite correct that UEFA exposes these abuses but there is a problem of hierarchy here. It is easy to lambast lower tier nations for nest feathering but what about the Big 4?
In order to achieve the correct UEFA Seeding for the Finals, Germany deliberately lost to the Czech Republic prior to showing equal lack of determination in failing to beat Wales. Having won 16 and lost only 1 of their previous 20 home internationals, surely suspicions must have been raised in Nyon. A cursory glance at the betting markets would demonstrate that both these two "hot" matches were displaying their temperature both on the field of play and through illegal betting. The Germany/ Czech Republic opened at Ger -1.0 in Asia (ie you could buy or sell the Germans at a supremacy of one goal). And sell they did! Within the first twenty four hours of trading, over £200 million had been placed on the Czechs in the Far East and the market had moved to -0.0,0.5. Dynamics of threequarters of a goal within a day are conspicuous by their absence in our 16 years of databases of Asian market activity. For the Wales horserace, the market was placid until the earlier matches that might effect the German seeding had been completed and then a huge punt against a German victory surfaced globally in the final hour leading up to kick off. Our private information shows that both these betting scams were German in origin and, yet, UEFA inform us that no qualification issues regarding Euro 2008 were compromised by the alleged bent matches. Really? Obviously, structural implications of Germany's deliberate underperformance abound but a more pertinent route into UEFA's ostrichness with regard to Germany and illegal betting is evident. Any exposure of Germany would publicly portray the lack of institutional professionalism demonstrated by UEFA in the Seeding and Tournament Rules. File it away...
Anybody who watched the Scotland versus Italy game without doubting the integrity of match official extraordinaire, Manuel Gonzalez, cannot be aware of the rules of the game - a blight they share with the Spanish official. Yet, Snr Gonzalez obviously knew the rules of UEFA's real game namely, Italy (the World Cup holders) MUST qualify for the Euro 2008 Finals. This realisation also found its way to the betting markets so, in effect, UEFA's corruption of qualification resulted in professional traders profiting from an analysis of the UEFA corruption. Consequently, the only manner that UEFA is different to, say, Albania is that they rig the matches but leave others to do the profit maximisation from illegal gambling. Fin d'histoire...
Which brings us to England... Well over fifty per cent of the matches in Group E were "hot". The outcomes were correlated with betting patterns and some English players, the authorities and bookmakers were all actively involved in creative revenue streams. There has been no sign of any real evaluation of England's resultant failure by the mainstream media with the easy targets like the FA and the players being the culprits of choice. As ever, there was not one iota of linkage to illegal gambling. Similarly with the Liverpool versus Besiktas game which is allegedly one of UEFA's suspect 15 games. This record Champions League score of 8-0 followed Liverpool's defeat to the same team less than a fortnight earlier and the match data shows that the Scousers had 19 shots to their opponents one! The betting markets were also aware of the manipulations and the match represented a one-way betting market from when the prices were first chalked up - some psychos even bet heavily on a 8-0 scoreline! The British media and UEFA are busily reporting that, firstly, there is no indication that Liverpool did anything untoward. Really? And, secondly, UEFA now claim that this match is not on their list of fifteen after all. Uefa's director of communications, William Gaillard, helpfully confirmed the selective nature of any inquiry by stating: "None of the matches on the list are high-profile. They are all in the preliminary rounds of our competitions." So, no German, Italian, English or Spanish games then but excessive microfocus on the little fish in their microeconomies.
And this is the crux of the issue. The institutional spin is that UEFA and its leading member nations do not do corruption. Leaving aside Italy's calciocaos, Germany's match official Robert Hoyzer being imprisoned for fixing Bundesliga games to the benefit of Croat mafiosi, the repeated allegations of match officials being bought off by the major clubs in Spain, the message is one of trust - corruption is something which only occurs at the fringes of society, we are expected to believe!
Thabo Mbeki states (and we feel no compulsion to disagree with the man): "Power is gained and conceded through conspiracy". This simple structure perfectly describes the fragmented cartel template that is massively criminalising the English game. The media are more than aware of this corruption but choose to divert our eyes to more acceptable areas of concern. If corruption rears its ugly head, it is always German or Italian or, preferably, Balkan or ex-Soviet. There is one thing that this corruption never is - English.
This is a pity because it results in the vast majority of the English footballing population effectively having their existences demeaned by being expected to pay out to watch a spectacular experience based on a foundation of rampant corruption. It also begs the question, what the hell do you think you are watching here!!!?
Over the last few days, while the gutter and not-so-gutter press have been checking out the corruption of elsewhere, there have been eleven Premiership matches. To the knowledge of our traders, seven of these matches were corruptly influenced by institution, bookmaker, referee, player or, sometimes, a delicious brew of several of these protagonists. There are no column inches for this brand of corruption. Lets look at last night's Sky Theatre offering featuring Newcastle and Arsenal.
In the days leading up to the match, a major global gamble on Arsenal had been gaining momentum. The logic behind this money was inescapable. Newcastle were in uproar. Their previous two home defeats represented their worst consecutive reversals in over 70 years - having conceded three goals within the opening ten minutes against Pompey, the Geordies were lucky not to end up with nine men and a far heavier defeat to Liverpool. We have evidence of the internal battling and lack of team spirit that existed in the Toon hierarchy and, on top of that, your average Newcastle fan does self-harming support as a core competence. Not the greatest time for Sky to be showing the live visit of the best footballing team in the country! The mainstream media circus hammed up the reality with suggestions of the match being Allardyce's last in charge etc. So far, so typical. Six hours prior to kick off, however, something weird happened - humongous amounts of money started to be placed against Arsenal on the Asian Handicaps. With no logic behind the dynamic, it quickly became evident that a major co-ordinated corruption was taking place. The gamble continued at massive liquidity for a couple of hours and then, just as suddenly, terminated and the market reverted to equilibrium. This market structure is always indicative of insider trading. The final book represented one of the biggest betting markets of the year to date and we sat down to watch the scam unfold. Match referee Mike Dean was the man in charge of landing the deed and his sweat pores were dripping Wirral water when the Gooners took a third minute lead. From that moment on, the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) official used an old favourite template to thwart Arsenal. Dean allowed a highly physical game and his repeated allowance of clear fouls and indiscretions going unchecked ratcheted up the underlying sense of menace in the match. Wenger was rightly apoplectic post-match and refused to be interviewed by Sky, apparently, as Dean truly demonstrated his inappropriate stature in the final minutes of the game. Arsenal are physically one of the fittest teams in Europe and a large percentage of their goals occur towards the conclusion of games. To take account of this weakness in the betting scam, Dean simply allowed foul after foul to be perpetrated without punishment whenever Arsenal tried to attack in the latter stages. It was a very professional if very corrupt performance from Mr Dean and he fully deserved the Sky camera close-up with the non-gambling (sic) Andy Gray eulogising about his friend Dean's control of the game. This was all rather different to Gray's reaction to Dean's performance in the Man Utd versus Chelsea game when Gray and Skybet were on the wrong side of another betting scam. So the corrupt gamble was landed and the one based on the fundamentals failed which is hardly an uncommon reality in Scudamore's world at the Premier League.
We should not expect bookmakers and institutional power hierarchies to embrace integrity but, on this occasion, it might be in their collective interests for a window of pseudo-integrity. To explain, the kneejerk reaction of those in authority to any suggestion of corruption is denial. If the English bookmakers could find it within themselves to acknowledge that corruption does occur, they could create the dynamic potential to bolster their bottom line through an exposure of the externalised corruption in Group E. This just might result in England undeservedly being planted in the Euro 2008 Finals. Numerous Croatia and Russia games were of high fahrenheit and there are a whole range of bodies who would financially benefit from any rearrangement of our realities. The precedent exists with the exclusion of Yugoslavia in 1992 coming after the Final's Draw was made. That was for military rather than betting indiscretions and the FA must hope that the situations in Chechnya, Transdniestra, Nagorno-Karabakh or Ossetia deteriorate in the coming months in a manner that displays Russian aggression. Or UEFA action could be taken after the inevitable cutting off of gas supplies to Ukraine, Georgia and the like over this winter and the Russians may be barred for economic warfare.
Ignoring the words "dream" and "on", it might be worth hanging onto those "England To Qualify" betting slips after all...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
When the rigging is perpetrated by the bookmakers and/or the footballing authorities. That's when.
There is a flip side to this scenario - woe betide anybody else frigging about and rigging...
UEFA is currently investigating fifteen matches from the early phases of this season which revealed suspicious betting patterns. The events are from the Champions League, UEFA Cup and Euro 2008. These matches form part of a larger group of 26 "hot" matches over the last eighteen months but only this season's corruptions will be investigated.
Sieve-like in extremis, the leaks have been emanating from UEFA headquarters regarding the matches under review. We are told that countries like Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, the Baltic region and Georgia are seemingly the main protagonists. Inevitably, the inquest is leading to some of the perpetrators breaking cover or being exposed by domestic political opponents as sport and politics are inextricably linked throughout much of Europe.
For example, the Albanian Sports and Culture Minister Ylli Pango has accused the chairman of the Albanian FA, Armando Duka, of throwing the last two Euro 2008 qualifiers against Belarus and Romania. "There are clear suspicions that both matches might have been sold by the president of our National football federation" stated Ylli (feeling a bit illy). Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha has also accused the country's football leadership of "being linked with mafia groups rigging football matches for their own profits." Both matches were certainly of interest in the trading rooms. Belarus arrived in Tirana having successfully managed to land a major internal gamble when losing at home to Luxembourg (the visitors first competitive victory since 1995!). The Albanian FA have close links with their Turkish counterparts and, once Turk Bülent Demirlek was selected to officiate, the deal was feasible. Albania lost 4-2 with victory being decided by Romashchenko's penalty. Belarus, in their final two home matches, managed to lose to a side ranked 152 in the world before beating a nation ranked in the Top 10. Albania's 6-1 defeat in Romania four days later was a very different betting scam. For the Albania/ Belarus match, all the conspicuous insider money was hedged out to Asia in the very early market phases; for the Romania event, the scam was perpetrated at half time. In eighteen second half minutes, the Albanians managed to concede 5 goals with the obligatory two penalties and a pair of sendings off thrown in - both penalties were conceded by one Nevil Dede who completed his bosses work by getting himself dismissed!
So, these are just two of the suspicious events and we isolate them merely as a demonstration of the corrupt structures utilised elsewhere in Europe to land major betting scams. Euro 2008 Group G was certainly a highly manipulated group but the machinations were insignificant when compared with the shenanigans with kunas and shekels in England's qualifying group, Group E.
We have highlighted previously the rampant corruption in this group with five of the nations working either together or in isolation to achieve both short-term financial gains via illegal betting and longer term qualification targets utilising suitcases of money no doubt gained through the aforementioned underground gambling activities. Now, I'm quite partial to suitcases of money but I don't think that it is in the interests of the integrity of football as a whole to allow competitive events to be determined by issues relating to the illicit cashflows of the match officials and selected players.
It is quite correct that UEFA exposes these abuses but there is a problem of hierarchy here. It is easy to lambast lower tier nations for nest feathering but what about the Big 4?
In order to achieve the correct UEFA Seeding for the Finals, Germany deliberately lost to the Czech Republic prior to showing equal lack of determination in failing to beat Wales. Having won 16 and lost only 1 of their previous 20 home internationals, surely suspicions must have been raised in Nyon. A cursory glance at the betting markets would demonstrate that both these two "hot" matches were displaying their temperature both on the field of play and through illegal betting. The Germany/ Czech Republic opened at Ger -1.0 in Asia (ie you could buy or sell the Germans at a supremacy of one goal). And sell they did! Within the first twenty four hours of trading, over £200 million had been placed on the Czechs in the Far East and the market had moved to -0.0,0.5. Dynamics of threequarters of a goal within a day are conspicuous by their absence in our 16 years of databases of Asian market activity. For the Wales horserace, the market was placid until the earlier matches that might effect the German seeding had been completed and then a huge punt against a German victory surfaced globally in the final hour leading up to kick off. Our private information shows that both these betting scams were German in origin and, yet, UEFA inform us that no qualification issues regarding Euro 2008 were compromised by the alleged bent matches. Really? Obviously, structural implications of Germany's deliberate underperformance abound but a more pertinent route into UEFA's ostrichness with regard to Germany and illegal betting is evident. Any exposure of Germany would publicly portray the lack of institutional professionalism demonstrated by UEFA in the Seeding and Tournament Rules. File it away...
Anybody who watched the Scotland versus Italy game without doubting the integrity of match official extraordinaire, Manuel Gonzalez, cannot be aware of the rules of the game - a blight they share with the Spanish official. Yet, Snr Gonzalez obviously knew the rules of UEFA's real game namely, Italy (the World Cup holders) MUST qualify for the Euro 2008 Finals. This realisation also found its way to the betting markets so, in effect, UEFA's corruption of qualification resulted in professional traders profiting from an analysis of the UEFA corruption. Consequently, the only manner that UEFA is different to, say, Albania is that they rig the matches but leave others to do the profit maximisation from illegal gambling. Fin d'histoire...
Which brings us to England... Well over fifty per cent of the matches in Group E were "hot". The outcomes were correlated with betting patterns and some English players, the authorities and bookmakers were all actively involved in creative revenue streams. There has been no sign of any real evaluation of England's resultant failure by the mainstream media with the easy targets like the FA and the players being the culprits of choice. As ever, there was not one iota of linkage to illegal gambling. Similarly with the Liverpool versus Besiktas game which is allegedly one of UEFA's suspect 15 games. This record Champions League score of 8-0 followed Liverpool's defeat to the same team less than a fortnight earlier and the match data shows that the Scousers had 19 shots to their opponents one! The betting markets were also aware of the manipulations and the match represented a one-way betting market from when the prices were first chalked up - some psychos even bet heavily on a 8-0 scoreline! The British media and UEFA are busily reporting that, firstly, there is no indication that Liverpool did anything untoward. Really? And, secondly, UEFA now claim that this match is not on their list of fifteen after all. Uefa's director of communications, William Gaillard, helpfully confirmed the selective nature of any inquiry by stating: "None of the matches on the list are high-profile. They are all in the preliminary rounds of our competitions." So, no German, Italian, English or Spanish games then but excessive microfocus on the little fish in their microeconomies.
And this is the crux of the issue. The institutional spin is that UEFA and its leading member nations do not do corruption. Leaving aside Italy's calciocaos, Germany's match official Robert Hoyzer being imprisoned for fixing Bundesliga games to the benefit of Croat mafiosi, the repeated allegations of match officials being bought off by the major clubs in Spain, the message is one of trust - corruption is something which only occurs at the fringes of society, we are expected to believe!
Thabo Mbeki states (and we feel no compulsion to disagree with the man): "Power is gained and conceded through conspiracy". This simple structure perfectly describes the fragmented cartel template that is massively criminalising the English game. The media are more than aware of this corruption but choose to divert our eyes to more acceptable areas of concern. If corruption rears its ugly head, it is always German or Italian or, preferably, Balkan or ex-Soviet. There is one thing that this corruption never is - English.
This is a pity because it results in the vast majority of the English footballing population effectively having their existences demeaned by being expected to pay out to watch a spectacular experience based on a foundation of rampant corruption. It also begs the question, what the hell do you think you are watching here!!!?
Over the last few days, while the gutter and not-so-gutter press have been checking out the corruption of elsewhere, there have been eleven Premiership matches. To the knowledge of our traders, seven of these matches were corruptly influenced by institution, bookmaker, referee, player or, sometimes, a delicious brew of several of these protagonists. There are no column inches for this brand of corruption. Lets look at last night's Sky Theatre offering featuring Newcastle and Arsenal.
In the days leading up to the match, a major global gamble on Arsenal had been gaining momentum. The logic behind this money was inescapable. Newcastle were in uproar. Their previous two home defeats represented their worst consecutive reversals in over 70 years - having conceded three goals within the opening ten minutes against Pompey, the Geordies were lucky not to end up with nine men and a far heavier defeat to Liverpool. We have evidence of the internal battling and lack of team spirit that existed in the Toon hierarchy and, on top of that, your average Newcastle fan does self-harming support as a core competence. Not the greatest time for Sky to be showing the live visit of the best footballing team in the country! The mainstream media circus hammed up the reality with suggestions of the match being Allardyce's last in charge etc. So far, so typical. Six hours prior to kick off, however, something weird happened - humongous amounts of money started to be placed against Arsenal on the Asian Handicaps. With no logic behind the dynamic, it quickly became evident that a major co-ordinated corruption was taking place. The gamble continued at massive liquidity for a couple of hours and then, just as suddenly, terminated and the market reverted to equilibrium. This market structure is always indicative of insider trading. The final book represented one of the biggest betting markets of the year to date and we sat down to watch the scam unfold. Match referee Mike Dean was the man in charge of landing the deed and his sweat pores were dripping Wirral water when the Gooners took a third minute lead. From that moment on, the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) official used an old favourite template to thwart Arsenal. Dean allowed a highly physical game and his repeated allowance of clear fouls and indiscretions going unchecked ratcheted up the underlying sense of menace in the match. Wenger was rightly apoplectic post-match and refused to be interviewed by Sky, apparently, as Dean truly demonstrated his inappropriate stature in the final minutes of the game. Arsenal are physically one of the fittest teams in Europe and a large percentage of their goals occur towards the conclusion of games. To take account of this weakness in the betting scam, Dean simply allowed foul after foul to be perpetrated without punishment whenever Arsenal tried to attack in the latter stages. It was a very professional if very corrupt performance from Mr Dean and he fully deserved the Sky camera close-up with the non-gambling (sic) Andy Gray eulogising about his friend Dean's control of the game. This was all rather different to Gray's reaction to Dean's performance in the Man Utd versus Chelsea game when Gray and Skybet were on the wrong side of another betting scam. So the corrupt gamble was landed and the one based on the fundamentals failed which is hardly an uncommon reality in Scudamore's world at the Premier League.
We should not expect bookmakers and institutional power hierarchies to embrace integrity but, on this occasion, it might be in their collective interests for a window of pseudo-integrity. To explain, the kneejerk reaction of those in authority to any suggestion of corruption is denial. If the English bookmakers could find it within themselves to acknowledge that corruption does occur, they could create the dynamic potential to bolster their bottom line through an exposure of the externalised corruption in Group E. This just might result in England undeservedly being planted in the Euro 2008 Finals. Numerous Croatia and Russia games were of high fahrenheit and there are a whole range of bodies who would financially benefit from any rearrangement of our realities. The precedent exists with the exclusion of Yugoslavia in 1992 coming after the Final's Draw was made. That was for military rather than betting indiscretions and the FA must hope that the situations in Chechnya, Transdniestra, Nagorno-Karabakh or Ossetia deteriorate in the coming months in a manner that displays Russian aggression. Or UEFA action could be taken after the inevitable cutting off of gas supplies to Ukraine, Georgia and the like over this winter and the Russians may be barred for economic warfare.
Ignoring the words "dream" and "on", it might be worth hanging onto those "England To Qualify" betting slips after all...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday 4 December 2007
Billy Boys Bias To Beat The Bhoys?
The Scottish Premier League (SPL) is preparing the ground as much as possible to help Glasgow Rangers to qualify for the second phase of this season's Champions League. Sunday's match against the might of Gretna has been postponed to allow more preparation time for the Lyon match; the entire protestant population of south west Scotland is being given two days off work to focus on providing the necessary support; airports, roads and ferries are to be searched to reveal any French supporters trying to sneak in to the country; university boffins are focusing on cloud seeding to generate some driech weather for the guests; there are plans to offer bribes and housing extensions for the properties of the match officials; super-bugs are being liberally distributed in the kitchens of one particular five star hotel; there are even rumours of the sequel to The Wicker Man being filmed with Alain Perrin in starring role.
Now it is to be expected that a proud nation will do its utmost to improve the chances of its sports teams in transnational events. The SPL are by no means the only regulatory body who bend the rules in favour of their members - for example, Shakhtar Donetsk conveniently had their Ukrainian league game at the weekend postponed ahead of tonight's critical group game against Benfica. Where the SPL demonstrate a peculiarly distorted sense of perspective and fair-play is in the selective nature of their positive biases and punishments.
Tonight Celtic play the European champions, Milan, away in a game which is critical to the chances of the Bhoys reaching the next phase of the tournament. Last weekend, while the kickbacks and machinations were being determined behind the scenes in order to allow Rangers, Gretna, the SPL and Setanta to achieve a suitably mutually beneficial structure, Celtic were expected to play a key league match away to Hearts (live on Setanta) and were kicked around the pitch for ninety minutes with minimal protection from the SPL official, Kenny Clark. No sign of Setanta executives suggesting an arrangement "for the good of the country", no input from the SPL to aid one of its member sides and, most disturbingly, no creative thinking and planning by John Reid and the Parkhead board to optimise the possibility of Celtic proceeding.
Since time immemorial, the playing field north of the border has been severely tilted by the massive corruptions of the Scottish FA and the SPL favouring the light blue half of Glasgow over the emerald. All the usual micro-adjustments to a sporting reality have been fine-tuned in Scotland over the recent decades - control of match officials (step forward Hugh Dallas, Stuart Dougal and Clark), the creative timing of player punishment and suspensions, issues relating to the fixture list, ownership of other league members etc etc - and have reached a degree of institutionalised authenticity normally only observed when the likes of Silvio Berlusconi are in the vicinity. If the SPL was to decide only one of the Glasgow greats were in need of their help, one might have thought that Celtic's combination of two massive games in one week (Donetsk and Milan) with a huge league game in between would have been more worthy of SPL support than a Rangers schedule with a two week break between Champions League matches being punctuated by the scary opposition offered by a village that was a non-league team five years ago and one of 'Gers client clubs. But no! Gretna, Killie and Lyon over a fortnight is apparently a bigger obstacle than Donetsk, Milan and Hearts within six days.
This power-play corruption matters not just in sporting success terms. We are in the territory of financial incentives here and the rewards for being No 1 in Scotland are to be markedly greater in the immediate future. Scotland has climbed the rankings and seedings globally based on recent Champions League and UEFA Cup performances (particularly by Celtic) and the overachievement of the national team. From next season, the SPL champions will enter the Champions League Group Stage directly and now is most definitely a good time to be targeting supremacy. The G14(18) with its links to the UEFA Strategy Group are producing the footballing equivalent of musical chairs at the moment. The club power hierarchy in Europe is in a state of flux at all but the very highest levels and Rangers are currently ranked lower than Celtic with all the issues of status and influence which such a gradient implies. The importance of reaching the latter stages of this year's tournament and winning the SPL will yield rewards beyond those of trophies, medals and a short-term cash input. By stating very clearly to UEFA through their actions that one of the national teams is more favoured, the SPL is inducing inappropriate pressures into the integrity of European club competitions.
Scotland is a small country to be deserving of two teams in the Champions League latter stages particularly when there is a likelihood that the major territories of France, Germany and the Netherlands will each have no qualifiers. In the bad old days, UEFA was known to filter the qualifiers to a proprietary hidden agenda put together by the financial suits. One would hope that Platini's UEFA is moving beyond such competition rigging.
Anyway.
Walter Smith is said to be pleased with the free weekend. Given the precedent, the man should be fucking delighted.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Now it is to be expected that a proud nation will do its utmost to improve the chances of its sports teams in transnational events. The SPL are by no means the only regulatory body who bend the rules in favour of their members - for example, Shakhtar Donetsk conveniently had their Ukrainian league game at the weekend postponed ahead of tonight's critical group game against Benfica. Where the SPL demonstrate a peculiarly distorted sense of perspective and fair-play is in the selective nature of their positive biases and punishments.
Tonight Celtic play the European champions, Milan, away in a game which is critical to the chances of the Bhoys reaching the next phase of the tournament. Last weekend, while the kickbacks and machinations were being determined behind the scenes in order to allow Rangers, Gretna, the SPL and Setanta to achieve a suitably mutually beneficial structure, Celtic were expected to play a key league match away to Hearts (live on Setanta) and were kicked around the pitch for ninety minutes with minimal protection from the SPL official, Kenny Clark. No sign of Setanta executives suggesting an arrangement "for the good of the country", no input from the SPL to aid one of its member sides and, most disturbingly, no creative thinking and planning by John Reid and the Parkhead board to optimise the possibility of Celtic proceeding.
Since time immemorial, the playing field north of the border has been severely tilted by the massive corruptions of the Scottish FA and the SPL favouring the light blue half of Glasgow over the emerald. All the usual micro-adjustments to a sporting reality have been fine-tuned in Scotland over the recent decades - control of match officials (step forward Hugh Dallas, Stuart Dougal and Clark), the creative timing of player punishment and suspensions, issues relating to the fixture list, ownership of other league members etc etc - and have reached a degree of institutionalised authenticity normally only observed when the likes of Silvio Berlusconi are in the vicinity. If the SPL was to decide only one of the Glasgow greats were in need of their help, one might have thought that Celtic's combination of two massive games in one week (Donetsk and Milan) with a huge league game in between would have been more worthy of SPL support than a Rangers schedule with a two week break between Champions League matches being punctuated by the scary opposition offered by a village that was a non-league team five years ago and one of 'Gers client clubs. But no! Gretna, Killie and Lyon over a fortnight is apparently a bigger obstacle than Donetsk, Milan and Hearts within six days.
This power-play corruption matters not just in sporting success terms. We are in the territory of financial incentives here and the rewards for being No 1 in Scotland are to be markedly greater in the immediate future. Scotland has climbed the rankings and seedings globally based on recent Champions League and UEFA Cup performances (particularly by Celtic) and the overachievement of the national team. From next season, the SPL champions will enter the Champions League Group Stage directly and now is most definitely a good time to be targeting supremacy. The G14(18) with its links to the UEFA Strategy Group are producing the footballing equivalent of musical chairs at the moment. The club power hierarchy in Europe is in a state of flux at all but the very highest levels and Rangers are currently ranked lower than Celtic with all the issues of status and influence which such a gradient implies. The importance of reaching the latter stages of this year's tournament and winning the SPL will yield rewards beyond those of trophies, medals and a short-term cash input. By stating very clearly to UEFA through their actions that one of the national teams is more favoured, the SPL is inducing inappropriate pressures into the integrity of European club competitions.
Scotland is a small country to be deserving of two teams in the Champions League latter stages particularly when there is a likelihood that the major territories of France, Germany and the Netherlands will each have no qualifiers. In the bad old days, UEFA was known to filter the qualifiers to a proprietary hidden agenda put together by the financial suits. One would hope that Platini's UEFA is moving beyond such competition rigging.
Anyway.
Walter Smith is said to be pleased with the free weekend. Given the precedent, the man should be fucking delighted.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Monday 3 December 2007
Mr Brown Goes Off To Town On The 8:21
Windows like this are liable to demolish prime ministerial careers - not only has Gordon Brown lacked the midas-touch thing relating to England's Rugby Union World Cup Final and their abominable failure to qualify for Euro 2008 but now, after yesterday's draw for the Finals, the treble whammy is completed by the significantly increased probability of a German victory in the tournament. In these spectacular times, such matters take on levels of importance with regard to the national feelgood factor that are simply not parallelled by peripheral issues like the idiocy of giving the Bank Of England control of interest rates, presiding over the first bank run in 150 years, the financial short-sightedness of the private finance initiative or any of the many other examples of endemic corruption in Brown's world.
The German strategic planning for next summer's tournament has been exemplary. As we have previously posted, the Germans maintained their options regarding their positioning within the seedings until as late as possible thereby considerably tilting the tournament in their favour. Yesterday's draw could not have gone better for Germany. Pitched with the hardly daunting Croatia, Austria and Poland, by some distance the easiest group based on FIFA rankings, the Germans not only avoided the Group Of Death but got the optimised draw as they preferred the Croats to Sweden for strategic reasons. UEFA followed the stupidity of a non-Game-Theorised seeding system which significantly devalued many matches in the latter qualifying stages with an equally baffling seeding template for the finals. Groups A and B are kept apart from Groups C and D until the Final itself in a massive extra bonus for Germany - the former groups feature Austria, Switzerland, Turkey and Poland alongside Deutschland while the latter encompass Spain, Italy, France and Netherlands. The nonsensical nature of this structure is further demonstrated by the fact that teams may well end up playing nations in the semi finals that they have previously met in the group stages. A shuffled seeding template is always preferable in 16 team tournaments as it guarantees a more meritocratic competition. By structuring the finals in the manner selected, UEFA (presumably under the influence of the previous German-dominated regime) markedly increased the probability for a skewed top-half and bottom-half of the draw. With the template in place and the seedings fine-tuned, all the Germans required was the mythical "heated ball" bearing their name to be produced at the necessary moment. And voila! The vast majority of the strategic planning has been achieved without setting foot on a football pitch.
Now why can't England do that thing? The authorities and bookmakers in England are able to meticulously plan the corruption of Premiership and England international events utilising quite creative but destructive templates and yet they take on the persona of the statistically inept when a more constructive strategy is required. In comparison to the German guardians of the game, all we may anticipate from our bunch of corrupt incompetents is a flood of deceit and distortion in order to establish the proper spectacular society framework. And this is not just an English disease - the other leading UEFA nations have been similarly myopic towards the tournament realities of Euro 2008.
The advantages bestowed by the tournament draw are only part of the reason that Germany are the stand out ante-post bet. All of the German matches throughout the tournament will be in Vienna or Klagenfurt (in far-right dominated Carinthia) apart from their projected semi final meeting with Portugal, the Czechs or Croatia which is in Basle. The stability of base together with familiarity of stadia add a couple of extra notches to the German price. The domestic game is adapting itself to the cause of German supremacy too. Bayern Munchen have conveniently avoided qualification for this season's Champions League and, of the other representatives, Stuttgart are out while Bremen and Schalke need victories in the final matches to maintain interest into the new year. Another seeding template advantage graciously provided to the real hosts of next summer's Euro 2008 is that they will have an extra day to prepare for the Final. It is a point of some interest that the German power within UEFA that has been severely clipped by the election of Platini is still able, via strategic planning and infrastructural control, to establish the high ground available due to the tournament's lack of a level playing field. Some fringe firms are still offering 6.50 (11/2) on a German victory next summer and there has to be value in that price...
So what is a xenophobe to do? No foreigners to rant at, no targets for the vitriol. A more enlightened nation might choose another country to support based on geographical proximity or some shared aspect of history. Unfortunately, the English despise everyone and so a better option for maintaining interest (and betting turnover) is to unsupport a few of the teams. The psychology of this is entertaining. If one accepts that the Germans will win, a carefully created unsupport portfolio of, say, France, Italy and Russia will allow periodic days of rejoicing as your selected teams fall by the wayside one by one. Other possible choices for the disenfranchised engerlander fan might include a similar unsupport strategy for the Tour de France or the Olympics. The deconstructive negativity of such behaviour seems suitably apt for this island nation.
The bookmakers had developed financial strategies linking Euro 2008 and the Chinese Olympics but such combinations have had to be readdressed following their superb example of preemptively counting chickens. More focus is now being given to the betting opportunities offered by Beijing in a trial run of the potential bonanza for the English establishment in 2012. The randomising impact of the climate and the pollution will be a factor in the bookies favour and the layers always enjoy a randomiser in legitimate events. The only other glimmer on a rather cloudy footballing horizon for the bookies in the summer is that at least Mike Riley will get a couple of matches to officiate prior to being discarded for underperformance. And such underperformance déjà vu'd its way back into our lives when it was discovered that one Graham Poll was to referee Sky's irrelevance of a game between English-fat-bastards-in-the-pay-of-bookmakers XI and Foreigners-who-we-have-learned-to-accept XI yesterday. A book, frequent newspaper columns, appearances on BBC, being selected for Sky party events... He's going to return, I can feel it in my blood.
So who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hackett?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The German strategic planning for next summer's tournament has been exemplary. As we have previously posted, the Germans maintained their options regarding their positioning within the seedings until as late as possible thereby considerably tilting the tournament in their favour. Yesterday's draw could not have gone better for Germany. Pitched with the hardly daunting Croatia, Austria and Poland, by some distance the easiest group based on FIFA rankings, the Germans not only avoided the Group Of Death but got the optimised draw as they preferred the Croats to Sweden for strategic reasons. UEFA followed the stupidity of a non-Game-Theorised seeding system which significantly devalued many matches in the latter qualifying stages with an equally baffling seeding template for the finals. Groups A and B are kept apart from Groups C and D until the Final itself in a massive extra bonus for Germany - the former groups feature Austria, Switzerland, Turkey and Poland alongside Deutschland while the latter encompass Spain, Italy, France and Netherlands. The nonsensical nature of this structure is further demonstrated by the fact that teams may well end up playing nations in the semi finals that they have previously met in the group stages. A shuffled seeding template is always preferable in 16 team tournaments as it guarantees a more meritocratic competition. By structuring the finals in the manner selected, UEFA (presumably under the influence of the previous German-dominated regime) markedly increased the probability for a skewed top-half and bottom-half of the draw. With the template in place and the seedings fine-tuned, all the Germans required was the mythical "heated ball" bearing their name to be produced at the necessary moment. And voila! The vast majority of the strategic planning has been achieved without setting foot on a football pitch.
Now why can't England do that thing? The authorities and bookmakers in England are able to meticulously plan the corruption of Premiership and England international events utilising quite creative but destructive templates and yet they take on the persona of the statistically inept when a more constructive strategy is required. In comparison to the German guardians of the game, all we may anticipate from our bunch of corrupt incompetents is a flood of deceit and distortion in order to establish the proper spectacular society framework. And this is not just an English disease - the other leading UEFA nations have been similarly myopic towards the tournament realities of Euro 2008.
The advantages bestowed by the tournament draw are only part of the reason that Germany are the stand out ante-post bet. All of the German matches throughout the tournament will be in Vienna or Klagenfurt (in far-right dominated Carinthia) apart from their projected semi final meeting with Portugal, the Czechs or Croatia which is in Basle. The stability of base together with familiarity of stadia add a couple of extra notches to the German price. The domestic game is adapting itself to the cause of German supremacy too. Bayern Munchen have conveniently avoided qualification for this season's Champions League and, of the other representatives, Stuttgart are out while Bremen and Schalke need victories in the final matches to maintain interest into the new year. Another seeding template advantage graciously provided to the real hosts of next summer's Euro 2008 is that they will have an extra day to prepare for the Final. It is a point of some interest that the German power within UEFA that has been severely clipped by the election of Platini is still able, via strategic planning and infrastructural control, to establish the high ground available due to the tournament's lack of a level playing field. Some fringe firms are still offering 6.50 (11/2) on a German victory next summer and there has to be value in that price...
So what is a xenophobe to do? No foreigners to rant at, no targets for the vitriol. A more enlightened nation might choose another country to support based on geographical proximity or some shared aspect of history. Unfortunately, the English despise everyone and so a better option for maintaining interest (and betting turnover) is to unsupport a few of the teams. The psychology of this is entertaining. If one accepts that the Germans will win, a carefully created unsupport portfolio of, say, France, Italy and Russia will allow periodic days of rejoicing as your selected teams fall by the wayside one by one. Other possible choices for the disenfranchised engerlander fan might include a similar unsupport strategy for the Tour de France or the Olympics. The deconstructive negativity of such behaviour seems suitably apt for this island nation.
The bookmakers had developed financial strategies linking Euro 2008 and the Chinese Olympics but such combinations have had to be readdressed following their superb example of preemptively counting chickens. More focus is now being given to the betting opportunities offered by Beijing in a trial run of the potential bonanza for the English establishment in 2012. The randomising impact of the climate and the pollution will be a factor in the bookies favour and the layers always enjoy a randomiser in legitimate events. The only other glimmer on a rather cloudy footballing horizon for the bookies in the summer is that at least Mike Riley will get a couple of matches to officiate prior to being discarded for underperformance. And such underperformance déjà vu'd its way back into our lives when it was discovered that one Graham Poll was to referee Sky's irrelevance of a game between English-fat-bastards-in-the-pay-of-bookmakers XI and Foreigners-who-we-have-learned-to-accept XI yesterday. A book, frequent newspaper columns, appearances on BBC, being selected for Sky party events... He's going to return, I can feel it in my blood.
So who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hackett?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
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