Power and Glory

Please follow me on twitter: www.twitter.com/DimmyBad

(Please read the first 2 posts in this series which will give you some background on what we will be discussing: Part 1 http://diminbeirut.typepad.com/my-blog/2012/09/the-truth-is-out-there.html and Part 2 http://diminbeirut.typepad.com/my-blog/2012/10/corruption-and-influence-peddling-in-the-english-game.html). Also check out the follow up, after Clattenburg's return to reffing United: http://diminbeirut.typepad.com/my-blog/2012/10/the-whole-worlds-watching.html

First off, let me offer my congratulations to David Gill.

For those who missed it, it was announced this week that Gill is to replace Sir Dave Richards as the FA’s vice chairman. The confirmation of his promotion from board member to vice chairman will come at the next FA Council meeting. According to reports, this promotion is due to the FA’s desire to get Gill, Manchester United CEO, a place on Uefa’s executive committee, representing the English FA’s interests.

Well done Mr. Gill.

This rounds off another strange week in the wacky world of the FA. A week which saw them give their written reasons for banning John Terry for 4 games (half the punishment given to Luis Suarez), get called “a bunch of twats” by Ashley Cole, launch the modern Saint George Park which they hope will take England coaching into the next century (this is the organization that hired Roy Hodgson and Stuart Pearce as managers of the senior side and under 21 team) and refuse to give bans to Cheik Tiote, Robert Huth and Robin Van Persie for violent incidents.

The last one is particularly strange. The FA has shown in the past they will not hesitate to charge a player for off the ball violent conduct. They proved that last year when they banned the Italian Mario Baloteli for a stamp on England’s Scott Parker (the same game where the Englishman Jolean Lescott got no retrospective punishment for forearm smashing France’s Younes Kaboul…).

But enough about the FA for now, though we’ll come back to them later on.

After my last 2 posts got some amazing coverage (75,000 hits in a few days) and Chris Foy’s demotion to League 2 sent Twitter inTO a frenzy, the chief football correspondent of the Rupert Murdoch owned TheTimes, Tony Evans, wrote a piece rejecting the possibility of any pro Manchester United conspiracy. Evans stressed that referee selections were made 6 weeks in advance and thus Foy’s League 2 assignment had nothing to do with his United performance.

I found this strange: if this is true, why are assignments only announced the Monday before games? And, more to the point, how does the PGMOB actually demote referees? Doesn’t a single demotion affect the careful 6 weeks planning done?

Check this link http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/fans/faqs/when-are-referees-selected.html. The PGMOB themselves say that referees are selected for games based on several factors including their current form and how many times they reffed a club before.

How is possible then that these selections are made 6 weeks early? It just doesn’t make any sense at all. How does someone’s form leading up to mid-January earn him a big match in March? And if they take in consideration how many times a ref has taken charge of a team, why was Howard Webb (a referee who's given United 9 penalties in 32 games but only 10 to Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool in 100 matches)  given the last United game of the season at Sunderland last term, when he’d already refereed them more than anyone else previously?

Something is not right.

In my last post, we focused on current PGMOB head Mike Riley’s record refereeing Manchester United games. Riley became head of the PGMOB in 2009. The man he replaced was Keith Hackett.

Here is a quote about Hackett from the Manchester United manager after their Cup loss to Portsmouth in 2008. ‘I don’t think he’s doing his job properly and he needs to be assessed. He’s got his favourites, as everyone knows. You look at the refs we get away from home – Steve Bennett, Mark Clattenburg, Phil Dowd, all these people – we never get them at home, always away, and I think that tells you everything about him (Hackett). Clattenburg – oh, Jesus, God.”

(Poor Mark Clattenburg, remember, is the man who took charge of City’s 6-1 win at Old Trafford and hasn’t been assigned a United game for 36 premier league matches since)

A year later, Hackett was gone. Replaced with a man whose allegiance to Man United the Everton manager (and close friend of Ferguson) David Moyes wanted investigated. Like Alain Wiley (the ref in charge of the 4-1 Liverpool win at United), Hackett retired just months after heavy criticism from Ferguson.

“Coincidence”. Again.

Let’s now look at some stats. We saw in the 2 previous posts how long referees who took charge of Ferguson’s team went before being assigned them again. We saw how certain referees got demoted after making mistakes in United games (Atkinson,Jones) or simply officiating their defeats (Foy).

More to the point, we saw how referees Ferguson criticized were subsequently treated. We looked at United’s title winning 10/11 season, where they only lost 4 games and how 2 of those refs went a year without taking charge of them again (with 2 being demoted) while another went 9 months.

United’s title rivals that season were Arsenal and Chelsea. They lost 17 league games combined that season, under 10 different referees. Only 1 referee went a year without getting assigned one of their games (Mike Jones who took charge of Stoke’s victory against Arsenal late in the season and wouldn’t ref them again in the league till late last in the next term).

A huge majority of the refs would get another Blues or Gunners game just a few weeks after reffing a defeat. Certain refs would ref 2 defeats in a row and still get assigned to them a few weeks later.

What’s more striking, in comparison to United, is when referees made heavy blunders in a Chelsea or Arsenal game, there was no punishment.

For example, Phil Dowd took charge of the 4-4 Newcastle Arsenal game where he gave 2 ridiculous penalties to the Toon and sent off Abou Diaby. His next Arsenal game came just 6 weeks later. Would such controversial decisions against United game get him assigned a match at Old Trafford so soon after? It’s highly unlikely, just ask Martin Atkinson.

Liverpool lost 14 league games that season under the guise of 10 referees. Only one referee went a considerable amount of time without being assigned to them again: Michael Oliver who took charge of Kenny Dalglish’s first premier league game after his return at Blackpool, and would go 11 months without another LFC premier league game.

But, again, a big number of refs who took charge of LFC defeats would get another game assigned to them shortly. Howard Webb, Liverpool’s number 1 refereeing nemesis, took charge of the win against Chelsea just a few weeks after officiating the Goodison Derby loss.

The season before that, Rafa Benitez had criticized 2 referees for their performances in Liverpool games: Phil Dowd who took charge of the opening league defeat at Spurs and Lee Mason who sent 2 reds players off in a 3-1 loss to Fulham. Both reffed LFC games a couple of months after. Mason sent Javier Mascherano off in his next Liverpool game (also a defeat) and still got handed another Reds game to officiate a few weeks later.

Of course, this is all one season. And United only lost 4 games so the sample is small. But we saw in the last post what happened the next season: the demotion Mike Jones suffered after giving Demba Ba an imaginary penalty at Old Trafford as well as how long Clattenburg has gone without reffing United after the 6-1 loss to City. And of course, the brilliant “coincidence” of Chris Foy reffing a League 2 game for the first time in 5 years after taking charge of Spurs 3-2 win at Old Trafford.

And for people who still think the refereeing selection process is on the straight and narrow, please explain to me why poor old Mark Clattenburg was not given an Everton game to referee for an insanely long FIVE years after he took charge of the stormy Merseyside derby in 2007. Even considering Clattenburg’s year long absence from the game, surely under the PGMOB publically released criteria, he should have gotten an Everton game before 2012.

The selection process is flawed, full of contradictions and needs to be a lot more transparent. Other clubs may also have cases of referees going a long time without games: but as we saw in 2010/11, they’re very rare cases and are nowhere near as common as with United.

And more to the point, while it sometimes happens, a few things are unique to United.

Not a single referee has claimed that the FA is reticent to assign refs to matches where the club’s manager has criticized them (as Jeff Winter did about United). No ref has claimed he was banned from another club’s games for 2 years, like Jeff Winter did about United. No premier league club has its CEO promoted to Vice chairman of the FA and pushed for a leading role in UEFA. No club has had its ties with the head of the PGMOB put under question by the Everton manager. And no other club’s manager’s criticism of an official’s fitness (Alain Wiley) and PGMOB head performance (Keith Hackett) lead to the retirement of both individuals soon after.

The details that have come out in the case of Lance Armstrong have surely taught us one major lesson: It is extremely unhealthy to have a single individual hold so much power inside a sport.

This could lead to abuses of power, bullying, a culture of fear, influence peddling and pure corruption. After all the numerous “coincidences” we’ve seen in these 3 posts, the fact that Alex Ferguson’s political connections after decades in charge of England biggest team are far reaching, the constant bullying of journalists who dare ask a semi hard question as well as the comments from ex referee Jeff Winter then surely one has to wonder whether the squeaky clean English Premier League is anything but.

And thus, crucially, whether the FA’s desire to give David Gill even MORE power within the domestic and European game is a smart thing to do.

 

Thanks to Samer Faroukh, @SamerF89 for stats analysis, www.soccerbase.com for referee stats and Daniel Rhodes for his wonderful article on Alex Ferguson at www.tomkinstimes.com which alerted me to the Keith Hackett story.

Comments

[Joss Ackland]

So you write: " The FA has shown in the past they will not hesitate to charge a player for off the ball violent conduct..."

...followed in the VERY NEXT LINE with, "They proved that last year when they banned the Italian Mario Baloteli for a stamp on England’s Scott Parker (the same game where the Englishman Jolean Lescott got no retrospective punishment for forearm smashing France’s Younes Kaboul…)."

So, you've just contradicted your self. Clearly in Lescott's case they DID hesitate, didn't they?

Next you come up with: "Evans stressed that referee selections were made 6 weeks in advance and thus Foy’s League 2 assignment had nothing to do with his United performance... I found this strange: if this is true, why are assignments only announced the Monday before games?"

Perhaps it's nothing more sinister than ensuring that referees aren't ill or injured after the penultimate game before their next assignment? Any professional organisation will allow themselves a degree of leeway over appointments of this kind for the circumstances described.

You also seem to have a problem with the Chief Exec of the country's biggest and most globally prominent club being appointed to the FA and, so you suggest, UEFA. Do you want the Premier League to have clout in UEFA or not?

Or shall we put up John W Henry who has been at Liverpool five minutes and knows nothing about the game? Or maybe Delia Smith from Norwich? Maybe she could just get pissed and tell Michel Platini 'Let's be 'avin you!" ?

The rest of your screed is just sheer conspiracy theorising absent anything approaching like evidence. Yes you had an alleged 75,000 readers for your two previous posts.

There are millions who believe 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy against the Arab world.

There are billions who believe that various holy texts are historically accurate documents.

It doesn't make any of those things true either, anymore than the Liverpool Bootroom was a Mafia-style set up with each capo di tutti capi becoming the new 'Don' when the time was right. See how easy it is to make bollocks up?

Clearly, those at Liverpool FC will lap your nonsense up, but there again they originate plenty of their own nonsense like this so they're probably just happy for the helping hand.

Still, at least you're living up to your name of Dim. I'd suggest the addition of the word 'very' in front of it in future.

[Jevon Lfc]

Refs should be drawn for Premier League games under a lottery type ball dropping system. Nuff said.

Having Gill on the board at ALL considering the rub of the green that Manchester United have been getting for years now, is utterly a conflict of interest.

Get rid. Now.

[Tom Prickett (Spurs fan)]

There are 1 or 2 minor contradictions in this one, but if Joss can't see that having a CEO of one of the country's biggest clubs as head honcho at the FA is a major conflict of interest then he's blinded either by ignorance or loyalty to Utd.

Whether there is any truth behind the conspiracy theories is actually not the biggest issue - the issue is that nobody in the media is prepared to disprove the theory by actually investigating. The only journo to address the subject was Tony Evans and his argument has been picked apart by Nadim with reference the Premier League's own website.

That failure/refusal to properly investigate on the part of the media only adds weight to the theory.

[Joss Ackland]

@Tom Prickett

Why is it a conflict of interest? Gill would be v/c of the FA, not the PL which Dim in his tin foil hat believes United has all this influence over. It's hardly unusual for club chairmen to rech the upper echelons of the FA is it?

Why is it a problem for Gill to be there when it seemingly isn't a problem for City's ex-chairman,David Bernstein, to be current chairman of the FA? Or for David Dein to have been in the role that, allegedly, Gill is going to be appointed to? Or when Noel White, Liverpool's then chairman, sat on the FA's International committee in the 1990s?

So arguably, United have succeeded DESPITE having rival clubs chairmen in the upper echelons of the FA. Hardly fits VeryDim's narrative does it?

The problem with VeryDim and you is that clearly you have no historical perspective. VeryDim admits as much seeing as he has only been following English football since 1986.

So, in short, his conclusions about United having some hold over the FA and referees is, at best, laughable once a bit of perspective is introduced.

Perhaps, in turn, this is why there is no 'investigation' required - there is nothing to investigate!

Do you honestly think that in this day and age some grand conspiracy such as this could be kept a secret?

And what of Liverpool's success in the 70s and 80s? This, after all, was a blip in the otherwise mediocre history of the club (United on reaching 17 titles became the 'winningest' league side post WW2) which in and of itself could be the cause of conspiracy theorising if one were minded to do so.

However, I choose to believe that during that period, Liverpool had a stable management structure and a bloody good side, end of story. Only some nark with a laptop, internet access and a sense of profound bitterness would suggest United's success is the product of cheating.

He'd be better off exploring why Liverpool's marketing department failed to capitalise on the new era of football in the early 90s, why their managers then and ever since have spent large sums on mediocre 'talent', and perhaps then he'll be getting closer to the truth of why Liverpool, at least, haven't won a league title in over 20 years.

[Tinfoil Hat]

"...and refuse to give bans to Cheik Tiote, Robert Huth and Robin Van Persie for violent incidents.

The last one is particularly strange. "

Because it hasn't happened before....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1258346/Liverpool-skipper-Steven-Gerrard-escapes-ban-flooring-Pompeys-Michael-Brown-swinging-forearm.html

[Dimmy B]

Thanks Tin. You sort of make my point for me.

England stars are protected by the FA. Gerrard should have been banned for that elbow, it was his England start status that protected him. He only got a yellow for it IIRC. Ditto Rooney at Wigan (his subsequenet ban for swearing came as a direct result of the media demanding action). Lescot not getting a ban in the same match Balo did summed it up for me.The media went nuts over the Balo stamp and protected the England player, not mentionning it at all.

I have my own opinion why RVP and Huth avoided bans but that's for another day.

[Tinfoil Hat]

Really Dim, there is absolutely nothing in this, if there was it would have been exposed years ago, bringing down Manchester United would be the sporting story of the century.

[Redshadow]

Determined to prove anyone who Dares even Question the deliberate Calciopoli style monopoly your corporation - ahem 'club' have clearly arranged for 2 decades now wrong or even that no such monopoly Exists aren't you Joss? You know it wouldn't surprise me at all if you were one of the posters Demanding the Blog writer check refereeing patterns for clubs OTHER than United else? There analysis of ref's & thus any patterns they find? CANNOT be valid as it's not Fair yes? Now he's DONE that?

Despite this? You STILL find something to moan at & fact is? You always Will - stupidly IMO; Clearly you're a Man U' fan & desperate to keep all the inbuilt advantages your underhanded cheat Of a manager & 'club'/corporation have arranged for so long but I'll tell you now? When Ferguson goes? His 'arrangements'? WILL be found out & WHEN That happens? Lance Armstrong & Calciopoli Combined? Will look like picnics by comparism - I wouldn't be surprised if United were then stripped of at Least 6 or 7 of the ill-gotten titles they've Cheated their way to since the so-called 'Premier' League has begun & their name will certainly be blackened & discredited for ever after that as it should have been long since.

Until then? Another year, nothing changes & we all know WHY - that's what you're SO desperate to stop us knowing - Yes Joss? Problem is as I've said? You're To late now - the genie's out the bottle & isn't EVER going back now & when it finally turns On the so-called man who arranged it? It WILL destroy him & his odious arrangements that have benefited only one of the football corporations - sorry 'clubs' in this country (United)for so long & it will destroy them totally for what they've done & rightly so. However? there are obstacles in the way before this can be done to the level it should be & the illness in English Football burned out & excised.

Basically? Manchester United and the Premier League they helped bring into English Football? Have ruined it & damaged long-term the England National team & grassroots football & ONE man is at the heart of all that since it began - Alex Ferguson - The sooner the long-term illness that is United, the Premier League & Ferguson along with his so-called 'influence' & (handpicked) mob of referees are burned out & Excised from The English Game with the complete removal of the power they hold in English Football? The better & The sooner to that our great game can then Finally revert to something like fairness? The better for all English Football. However make no mistake to DO that & return English football to something like competitiveness & what it Should be? The power not just of Alex Ferguson & his 'spheres of influence' (i.e. Allies) amongst Referees & the FA etc but also of the Premier League? Will all HAVE to be completely destroyed & now the countdown has begun & they WILL be. Sooner or later - Mark my words...........

[Harry]

Dim continues to ignore the inconvenient truth that Liverpool’s great chairman John Smith was both a director of the Football League AND on the FA Council in the 1980s. By Dim's logic that is obviously why Liverpool won so many League and League Cup trophies in the 1980s and got so many refereeing decisions in their favour then too.

[gg]

I can't believe that Man United fans still think having MU CEO sitting as FA vice chairman is not a conflict of interest.

But seriously, if you do not support a single club, and only follow football news, it's clear as day that EPL league is absolutely corrupted. In fact all of those ridiculous calls, and drama, and banter was there for a reason: $$$.

I means if you follow the news, you will know the NFL, American football just got a match when referee got the wrong call, and it was absolutely blasted by the media, even by US president candidates. But the strange thing is, the incident got so many media attentions that it break several viewing record. That is what happens weekly in EPL, creating drama for audiences to suck away the whole league cash. EPL has been no more than a doctored movie, where results may vary here and there, but it will slot right back just as planned in long-term.

And it's not so rosy for MU either, as it gave them a false sense of achievement that they will be great forever. Soon enough, when the turn of power on with no Ferguson in charge to protect their interest, it will be getting harder for FA to keep MU, and that's when they will simply discarded for another club. Or worse the whole thing make public, and Man United get to be the scapegoat. Just like Hillsborough, it will all surface one day

[Judi Bola]

indeed, financial strength and the players on the field, greatly influence the success of a club