conspiracy theory corner
I've become quite engrossed by a blog I've found which claims that the Premiership, the Champions League and international football are all heavily fixed. Over the past few years of watching Premiership football, more and more often with each passing season I've seen some very strange things occur, and a lot of the time I'm left simply scratching my head. I'm sure you'll have a hatful of examples depending on who you support. As a Tottenham fan I think of Pedro Mendes' goal at Old Trafford; I think of the whole squad being struck down by a mystery virus when they were 4th on the last day of the season; I think of the other week at City, when Ireland was incorrectly waved onside and Bent incorrectly waved offside.
When the people in the media collude, loudly declare that everything's as it should be and move on to another topic, you find yourself getting docile, accepting it too and moving on, you become convinced that everything's normal and there's something wrong with you, because surely a newspaper like the Guardian would say speak up if there was something dodgy, right?
The thing about this blog is that it's not some eccentric out in the wilderness (like me), it's a market trading expert who follows all the far eastern betting patterns and is able to tell what's going to happen in the next round of fixtures. His company take on clients for £2000 a week and tell them, with a 90% success rate, what the weekend's results will be; paying no attention to injuries, tactics, form but a great deal of attention to the betting markets.
It's largely controlled, unsurprisingly, through referees. Serie A is notorious for corruption, unlike us with our English sense of fair play. Yet Italy and Germany have a pool of 40 top-flight referees; the Prem uses just a dozen "elite" refs. If they're so elite, how to explain the fact that more and more match outcomes nowadays are determined not by one team outplaying the other, but by some 'controversial' refereeing mistake? And each official's history shows a clearly visible pattern of "mistake"-making with particular recipients.
Club ownership is a major factor as more and more top flight teams fall into the hands of gangsters. Man City's owner had 2,500 peasants extrajudicially killed, including girls as young as 8, in a 'war on drugs' that left the drug barons untouched. Portsmouth's owner is an arms trader. West Ham's owner's wife previously married and bore four children to George Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party. My beloved Spurs are implicated by the fact that they have a £40m contract with their current sponsors, a far-east betting firm called Mansion. Think of the inside information the bookies could use. We didn't get £40m just to put a name on our shirts.
Fulham, the blog asserts, have had countless points taken away by referees because of Al Fayed's mouthiness towards the establishment. Arsenal would still be clear at the top of the league were it not for referee bias; they are being punished for refusing to sell to Usmanov, thus remaining the last big team who are not part of the cartel. When they do, the market will be sewn up and the rigging of results even more straightforward. All this might sound wild but I find it quite compelling.
If, like me, you've spent the past few years with a nagging sense at the back of your head that there's something wrong with this picture, I strongly advise you to have a read at www.footballisfixed.blogspot.com.
As the Premierhsip continues down the road of greyhound racing, I can see myself spending less time following Spurs and more time following Linfield; perhaps Leyton Orient; perhaps I'll give it all up and learn to play the theremin.