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There are, undoubtedly, some characters in the game who are more murky than Peter Kenyon.
But, despite this proviso, you wouldn't want him going out with your daughter, would you?
This week Kenyon, who tries to justify the stability of one of the most psychopathic entities in
world football, decided that it was a suitable time to lecture others from his House of Cards.
We delayed the release of the latest Bum Ref Index due to the astonishingly inept lack of
professionalism demonstrated by the match officials of the Professional Game Match Officials Board
(PGMOB) at the weekend. It would have been inappropriate to post an incomplete picture.
Before we assess the Dirty Dozen, the twelve referees who are particularly culpable in the
undermining of the integrity of the English top flight game, lets check out some holistics.
In the first of our two seasonal business development posts, we looked at the inevitability of
recession in 2008 while today we focus on why recessionary pressures are a great time to develop
creative trading strategies for gambling markets.
The key word here is creative. When the global economy is in bust mode, there is always an increase
in the liquidity of the global betting markets.
When I started The Fullback Files last year, my original intent was to spare my family and friends
from the sort of soccer rants that were usually greeted by smirks and eye-rolling, if not outright
disinterest. Instead, I sought an online audience that might actually find some degree of import in
what I had to say.
"Invention is always born of dissension" - Jean-François Lyotard.
Innovation and creativity are everything to Dietrological. You might expect us to live in
lateral-thinking-territory with respect to our analyses of the financial markets but our
experimentation also leads us to develop unusual business structures and enhanced business models.
The Premiership title will be heading down to The Emirates if Wenger's team can defeat already
relegated Derby in Setanta's Monday night mismatch.
Three points clear of Manchester United with a game in hand and only two more matches remaining,
one of which is a "internally controlled but systemically neutral" event in the Gunners
favour, Wenger's team deserve their triumph after a season of Total Football showed the benefits of
remaining a team of integrity in a very murky Premier League World.
If you think that the football betting markets are a bit of a grin, you should check out the
football transfer markets.
Highly inefficient and even more highly subjective, with no valid modelling to underpin the pricing
process, the transfer market is sometimes askew by over £10 million due to the utter
guesstimation of the evaluation process.
Licensed Betting Offices (LBOs) are a post-modernist artifice in which a traditional betting
environment has had its modern objects liberated from their original function. This new
infrastructure exists within the societal scam that is British bookmaking but the purpose of the
modernity of the environment is to optimise the returns to the bookmakers by utilising a range of
post-modernist and/or psychological devices.
Everybody has got a price.
According to our own individual and hidden agendas, shareholder capitalism enforces that we all set
proprietary thresholds relating to our employment and consultancy choices, our environmental
footprint and our degree of competitiveness in the workplace. Some people also set proprietary
benchmarks relating to the use of inside information, bribery, kickbacks, corruption, criminality
and coercion.
It is a reason not to be cheerful that work commitments have prevented any of our Trading Team from
attending the African Cup Of Nations (ACON) in Ghana. The tournament offers proper football with
minimal corruption as the personal prizes available to the players extend far beyond the tournament
itself - the ACON is a passport to a potentially secure financial future if a player is picked up
by any of the numerous European agents attending the event.
A Happy New Year to all of our Chinese and Asian clients and readers.
All Asian clients should check their emails where you will find a suitable red packet when you
return to business mode.
The mythology of Chinese New Year seems particularly apt when compared with the modern day
realities of the global football betting markets.
Privacy is paramount in a world where knowledge and data are the only competitive advantages. The
warped narrative sold to a consumerist planet by shareholder capitalism is based on the proprietary
ownership and the withholding of such information but this exchange is uni-directional and the
masses must be as diligent as the autocrats in protecting their own individual liberties.
Sunday sees the release of the latest Bum Ref Index which is inspired by The Economists Big Mac
Index (this uses the economic fabrication of purchasing power parity [PPP] to compare currencies
across the planet). Not only does the Bum Ref Index allow us to expose the worst culprits in the
whistleblowing department in the English Premiership, it also allows us to indulge in one of our
favourite, if a little repetitive, pastimes of dissing the pseudo-mathematic that is PPP.
Silver spoon merchant, Nick Hornby, has never cut a convincing figure and his books on football and
music have elevated the word "overrated" to new heights. Who cares that Oxbridge man supports
Arsenal? Is it of any relevance that, during his time at Cambridge University, he used to listen to
Bob Marley and The Clash?
"Postmodernism is incredulity towards meta-narrative" - Lyotard.
At all societal levels, the illusions warrant our attention, from the doublespeak of democracy to
the figment-of-imagination that is football.
"Can we sell you a fated event, pal?".
"No, we are postdelusional, thank you".
"Respect The Passion" screamed the Half Time advertisement for a particularly shoddy make of vehicle.
And Passion must be respected.
No carefree acknowledgement of a passing Passion, but a firm recognition of the emanation of a Spectacular Passion - the Passion of a Polluting Force.
Passion is no longer a "linking of souls", but merely a part of an inappropriate narrative imposed on the consumer - a linking of a product with an emotion.
"I'm a professional. I am 100% right".
So said referee Mark Halsey yesterday to Ipswich manager Jim Magilton after making a sending off
decision that was, in fact, 100% wrong. However, the man is most certainly a professional...
There are two fundamental factors that allow corruption to occur in a financial marketplace.
"Promoting choice and value for all gas and electricity customers" is allegedly the raison d'être
of Ofgem - one of the British government's utilities watchdogs. This bold claim is hardly supported
by recent events. Such occurrences provide a fine example of the skewing of incentives in order to
render the regulatory bodies toothless.
The one true universal city of Manchester has always suffered from being a testing ground for the
antisocial policies of a centralised government. From the cotton mills and workhouses of the
industrial revolution (sic) through to the supercasino and psychopathic football club ownerships of
today, we are the laboratory.
Painful as it is to paraphrase plastic Preston people, the "Premiership - You're Having A Laugh"
chant targeting Derby County fans on Saturday was, in our estimation, the joint funniest chant of
the season to date (alongside Manchester United's "What The Fuckin' Hell Is That?" greeting of
Peter Crouch entering as a substitute at Anfield).
How did Liverpool Football Club end up in this sorry mess? They may never walk alone but some of
the individuals that they are choosing to currently walk alongside are distinctly out of step with
the history of this once great club.
We warned last year, on this site, of the issues relating to being bought out by private equity
heads, Tom Hicks and George Gillett - Texan friends and associates of George W.
An omnipresent backdrop to my early years in Manchester was the shadow of the München air crash
which killed 23 people including not only Manchester United footballers but also the club secretary
and two coaches, two members of the plane's crew, a travel agent, a supporter and eight
journalists. If it had not been for the heroism of United keeper Harry Gregg, more would have died.
The death knell of the English Premiership as a fan-based competition was sounded yesterday by
Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore, with the announcement that, from season 2010/11,
Premiership games will be branded around the world as a globalised product. His selection of the
day of Chinese New Year for the publication of this proposed strategy is more than revealing.
Football is a closed shop industry and outsiders like ourselves are only invited within these
hallowed boundaries as we are able to significantly improve the performativity of aspects of the
market sector. From our varied experiences in these consultative roles, it is our estimation that
everybody of any stature within the sport of football is aware of the massive corruption in the
game.
Self sufficient and autonomous, able to survive and thrive in any geographical location that is
wired, establishing holistics and models across a range of market sectors and structures, the part
of one's life that relates to trading is highly innovative and should be celebrated. Or should
it?
Baudrillard: "The miracle of gaming is to make us live our freedom not as reality but as illusion -
a higher illusion, an aristocratic challenge to reality.
What do Michael Owen and Jérôme Kerviel have in common?
What's the difference between a whistleblower and a whistle blower?
Why is there nothing rather than something?
The answer to each of these questions lie in this post although they are secreted, providing merely
an essence of the linkage of neorealities.
Welcome to the wild, wacky and wicked world of shareholder capitalism.
There are clear parallels between the cartels governing the English football industry and those
covering other areas of the economy. These criminalised networks contort the system to the benefit
of big business and to the inevitable detriment of everybody else.
"Not the open revolt of a few, but the immense, latent defection, the endemic, masked
resistance of a silent majority, but one nostalgic for the spoken word and for violence. Something
in all men profoundly rejoices in seeing a car burn" - Jean Baudrillard.
"I see nothing intrinsically wrong with robbing a bank" - Yiorgios M.
"A history without desire, without passion, without tension, without real events, where the
problem is no longer one of changing life, which was the maximal utopia, but of surviving, which is
the minimal utopia".
"This disproportion between the human brain and the specific task of the species is a glaring
one in the immense majority of our activities (gambling on horses, jogging, TV, not to mention
'sleaze' and politics)".
A police chaplain has blessed the building where Austrian officers will conduct risk assessments
regarding the likelihood of a large-scale "terrorist" offensive at the Euro 2008
Finals.
Presumably, any religious "terrorist" worthy of the name will also be calling on divine
help in the aid of their cause.
Hai Romania...
As we predicted, the only lesser nation capable of producing A Shock in Euro 2008 is Romania.
Although, whether an Agreed Draw may be correctly termed A Shock is another matter.
Whatever.
Close historical ties (check out the statues in praise of the French military in Grădina Cişmigiu in Bucureşti) are a valuable commodity in a Group Of Death.
"The Self-Moving Life Of What Is Dead" - was Hegel's characterisation of money.
Jean Baudrillard: "This fetish money, around which global speculation revolves - far above and
beyond the reproduction of capital - has nothing to do with wealth or the production of wealth. It
expresses the breakdown of meaning, the impossibility of exchanging the world for its meaning, and
at the same time the need to transfigure that impossibility into a sign of some kind".
"How can one not speak of terrorism, how can one find a good use of the media - there is
none" - Umberto Eco.
As we recently prompted you, and we like a theme, all markets are functions of economic and
psychological mechanisms.
This would necessarily include Political Prediction Markets and, moreover, the hyperrealities that
they seek to efficiently price.
The new subscription structure of Football Is Fixed includes provision for a couple of Flashback
posts per month, in order that we may either demonstrate our prescience or allow for the
continuation of the arguments set out in the original post.
In December, we posted an article about the inevitability of a very deep recession, a Depression.
Newcastle fans are revolting.
A statement which some might argue is true on more than one level.
For the purposes of this blog though, and so as not to upset Mosher, lets pretend we are just
talking about the scenes of protest yesterday in the city and outside St James Park.
Two names have been wed in the news this month: Charles Ponzi, the con artist busted in 1920, and
Bernard Madoff, one of America's most successful hedge fund managers and a reputable pillar of the
Wall Street financial community. Madoff, whose name is actually pronounced "made off,"
took the scheme that Ponzi made famous to [.
Two names have been wed in the news this month: Charles Ponzi, the con artist busted in 1920, and
Bernard Madoff, one of America's most successful hedge fund managers and a reputable pillar of the
Wall Street financial community. Madoff, whose name is actually pronounced "made off,"
took the scheme that Ponzi made famous to [.
"Monopoly structures (and any state is a monopoly, since it claims a monopoly in the political and
social spheres) cannot but secrete a para-political society, a mafia of some sort, to control this
form of generalised corruption. It is pure hypocrisy on behalf of the political authorities to
fight this mafia, since it is an emanation of those authorities themselves.
So...
Has capitalism been saved?
If you were to believe the hysterical coverage in the mainstream capitalist media, you would
certainly think so.
After trillions of dollars have been simply handed over to the architects of the Crash, the markets
bounced back slightly from the 40% losses that they have experienced in the last months.
It's A CRASH!!!
Baudrillard: "Globalisation is the globalisation of technologies, markets, tourism, information;
universality is the universality of values, human rights, freedoms, culture, democracy.
Globalisation seems irreversible; the universal might be said, rather, to be on its way out.
