This is the aspect I find far more fascinating than talk about yet more reffing absurdities after all these years - but so few people have actually looked in to this it's rare to ever get the chance to post about it. I was influenced by the writing of Declan Hill who researched corruption in places like Greece, Turkey and Spain. The usual refrain from the UK media/pundit class is that this all averages out at the end of the day, and that fans imagine conspiracies against their own teams. But is that true? Hill looked into what he calls "match arranging" in some detail (Conte was accused of this in Italy). This is not (primarily) about gambling, but rather when two clubs decide to arrange the results of a game. This could be where one club has nothing to play for and the other is in relegation trouble or challenging for places (frequently rumoured in spain) - but also more generally during a season where a top club needs points. This occurred in Turkey where Fenerbahçe was caught arranging wins for themselves and banned from Europe. The typical template is between senior figures at clubs who have large networks in the game (e.g. Chairmen). A club them agrees to try less hard in the game with word passed down to the management, or group of players (e.g Conte). Now what is interesting about all this is not that it is happening but rather the claim that it can't be happening in the EPL. But given that it is essentially an unregulated, non-transparent grey market, why would clubs not use this edge? The general answer seems to be that the english lads are too honest - but we know that there is no reason to think the UK is not fairly corrupt - at least as far as white collar corruption goes. We know FIFA is corrupt, UEFA is corrupt.But its just the english lads who are too honest? Personally I believe in view of the templates for match arranging that have been demonstrated in other countries, it it is almost certain to be happening everywhere.
This is the part I find most absurd because these are just obvious steps you would take to make the game more transparent and trust worthy - and other sports have done it! e.g. why not have enough refs so that each ref only takes control of each team 2x per season? It's laughable that one guy should be controlling a large % of a teams games This is endemic in football IMO. e.g. the supposed "random" draw, which of course really depends on the demands of broadcasters, policing etc etc Personally I don't believe there is any vast conspiracy to help one team win. Rather I believe its a non-transparent grey market where people like SAF have improper influence. Also because multiple teams try to cheat in every way they can, what you end up watching is a confused mess rather than any specific conspiracy. The best thing to do is simply look at what Milan and Juve were caught doing.
It's interesting the football media has started in with the fans are idiots coverage This happens every time When it becomes obvious that the decisions in the Arsenal v City game were absurd, the media cranks up "fan blaming" content Note the article is based on no data or serious analysis. Just claimed views of what some fans supposedly claimed in pubs I can’t forgive Andre Marriner. A mate feels the same about Mike Dean. In fact, fans everywhere think refs are biased against their club.Do we believe that? Is it not more likely that the ref has had a bad game?Maybe we see what we want to see.🥫🎩https://t.co/TPhbDK5Dpv— Stuart James (@stujames75) January 3, 2022
This is why I said the Odegaard pk shout was a non issue to me that was from MOTD btw Heres another angle from MOTD that unsurprisingly no one wanted to show yesterday 🙄 https://t.co/75x13NTssp pic.twitter.com/ZxrY6ymlwv— h (@Ha1soo) January 2, 2022
...or Ederson undercuts where Odegaard would naturally be putting his foot down in order to control the ball. Regardless, the bigger issue, which I know people have already noted here, is why was this not worthy of review but the Xhaka "foul" was? The other question is given that Atwell so dismissively yelled at Silva to "get up" in real time, if VAR is telling him there was a shirt tug, wouldn't he look to see if the shirt tug really caused the tumble or whether was Silva was already in mid-dive as it looked to most of us. Again, I'm not having a dig at you. I know you've been saying Atwell was poor overall. Just wanted to reiterate how frustrating VAR is. Yes, humans are subjective and will even view/interpret replays differently. But why is even the application of VAR so inconsistent. That's what's so infuriating.
Thanks for detailing the basis for some of your musings. I think that capitalism and greed are oversized motivators, and I doubt that England would be entirely immune to corruption and match-fixing. Your post started off with this line "The usual refrain from the UK media/pundit class is that this all averages out at the end of the day, and that fans imagine conspiracies against their own teams. But is that true?". So I thought your subsequent post was going to address both of those issues, but it seems to have only addressed the former. But the oft cited feeling that there's a refereeing conspiracy against Arsenal is left unsupported. In fact, the details you describe in other countries like Turkey, support the idea that the corruption is driven by clubs who want to "get ahead" by any means available, e.g. refereeing. It does not support the idea that anyone (clubs, owners, leagues, etc) has a vendetta against certain other clubs, trying to "kick them down" by any means available, e.g. refereeing. In the end I can imagine, without too much mental contortion, a team like Citeh illegally tilting the table in their favor. They've already had run-ins with accusations of financial or book-keeping shenanigans. It doesn't seem too far-fetched that they'd try to "influence" the refs. But I cannot easily imagine, a team like Arsenal (or any other team frankly) being the target of a conspiratorial vendetta. If there was such a thing going on, what would be the motivator? Rivalry? Hate? Spite? Sure fans tend to venture into that territory on anonymous Internet fora, but do owners, clubs or league management? I've seen no evidence of that. And I like to believe we're far from it becoming a reality.
Look around you bro, conspiracies are part and parcel of the discourse for reasonable people now. Because many of them have been true!
Not feeling digged at, I agree on VAR its a joke designed to protect referees. Yesterday Mane was let off the hook, and Dixon said it would have been a red card if it happens in the 45th minute. As for the play it appears from the angle I posted he got the ball first same thing Wrighty said on MOTD. I think the old adage comes to mind "Never assign to malice what could be easily ascribed to stupidity". We have to keep in mind most of us are average, exceptions being this esteemed group here, and so yeah that part.
I have a certain amount of sympathy for referees. It's a tough-ass job and you'll never be judged fairly by the partisans. But VAR is meant to help the referees - to make their jobs easier and less subject to criticism, right? Amazing how the opposite has happened.
To be clear i am not talking about match fixing (i.e where a match is fixed to make money on betting markets). I am talking about match arranging i.e, where clubs exploit grey markets and edges which are not strictly illegal. I believe any serious discussion should focus on templates that have been proven to exist in the past. A reffing conspiracy against individual teams makes not much sense. Why would such a conspiracy be organised? On the other hand we have seen in the past that teams like Juve and Milan have been able to influence what refs are appointed to their games - presumably because they feel those refs gave them better decisions. Agreed - this is why I feel the latest Athletic article is beating on a straw man. In the templates I described, you would experience unfairness when your team was playing against SAF for example, or you would find your team does not get the calls that other favoured teams get. So for example Bruno gets some absurd pen decisions for mere "contact" which Arse don't get in other games. Or within the same game, City get a questionable pen whilst Arsenal's is not reviewed. This is what Tompkins data showed. Liverpool simply don't get the penalties they should expect, compared to some other teams. That doesn't mean there is a conspiracy against liverpool. Cheating is basically part of the game, whether its finances, bungs in the transfer market, doping, arranging, etc I think this doesn't happen. What would be the purpose? I do thing some players are favoured e.g. Kane, Rio and get protection from the refs, whereas at Arsenal we saw our players got no protection at all. Why didn't the tough teams hack out guys like Giggs the way they did with Arse players? Managers are the first to claim that there are reffing conspiracies yet the journalists always ignore this as mind games!
Jitty, the example you want to make is that of the NBA (pre-2010) assigning Bennett Salvatore to playoff game 6s when a home team win would force a game 7. For everyone calling Jitters a conspiracy theorist, what he's proposing (more referees, more transparency, random referee assignment) is pretty damn reasonable as things go.
This. Both fouls were initially waved off, only one got reviewed. And the one that got reviewed involved the least egregious tackle in real time. I'm not into conspiracy theories and I accept refs are human, but the system as a whole should involve more oversight. As Gab Marcotti offers, there should be a process whereby ref decisions are explained to the public. Even if only at the end of the year. I do think refs need to be reviewed and graded or otherwise monitored for consistency of their performance. I realize this would have to be on a level commensurate with what each league can afford, but there should be a mechanism in place that works to help improve performance with regard to clarity and consistency.
Exactly—in the NBA it’s a lot more obvious what the league is doing with ref assignments but the same principle is obviously in place in the PL
In a nutshell that's what I think and was saying in my last post. And yet some people both on this board and amongst the wider fanbase still imply or outright state that there's a conspiracy against us, i.e. referee calls tend to go against us more than they do other teams. That's always seemed to me as a myopic, hyper-tribal, victim-mentality way of thinking.
I think some might be inferring/ implying conspiracy when the more appropriate term would be implicit bias. For instance, I pretty much assume all refs succumb to at least some pressure from home crowds and star players, and sometimes that might carry over in other ways. I don't think there's an orchestrated plot for or against a team, however.
The only people inferring conspiracy are the ones saying other people are claiming conspiracy, which is something no one is doing. I don’t really see anybody implying conspiracy, either. Apologies, it just gets tiresome to read all these posts crying about conspiracists when in this context they don’t exist.
Perhaps you're more of a revisionist than a conspiracist? For years some of our brethren have complained of calls tending to not go our way (compared to other teams), games being tilted against us, certain refs having something against us, etc, etc. I'd venture a guess that these musings of conspiracy probably increased in frequency and volume during our downturn(s) in form over the past 10 years, as frustrated fans needed multiple targets for their kvetching. I'm NOT saying that it's the majority of fans who do this... it's not. But these folks have been quite noticeable... to me anyway. But apparently YMMV?
In the NBA it’s commonly acknowledged that veterans, especially veteran stars get the marginal calls while rookies don’t. The rookies have to build a reputation, both for their basketball skills and their temperament. With respect to temperament, the Warriors Draymond Green has developed a reputation as a hothead, so if they were to say the same thing to a referee, Green will pick up a technical and a player like Andre Igoudala won’t. Xhaka is subject to the same implicit bias. He has developed a reputation as a hothead and he will pick up yellow cards for fouls that others get away with. With respect to the marginal bias against young players that haven’t built up a reputation for their soccer skills, I suspect in the next year or two that teams won’t get away with kicking Saka all over the park. I think the yellow cards will come out much more quickly. In addition, in two years Odegaard might get the pk he didn’t get on Saturday. Referees are human, their decisions can be affected by individual and team reputations.