The Press Sin Game

George Orwell — 'Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.'

Channel 4 News exposed the blog 'The Pressing Game' on Friday's programme.

This blog was established to promote the authenticity of Qatar's 2022 World Cup and targets all individuals who dare stand up to the emirate eg Greg Dyke and Gary Lineker.

The men behind the blog are depressive reformed alcoholic war criminal Alastair Campbell and his son Rory together with the PR firm Portland Communications (where Campbell is a senior adviser).
Portland's biggest client are the Qatari government!
And Portland is a member of the Public Relations Consultants Association, which has a professional charter that seems to forbid such practices.

This isn't journalism. It is biased PR.

Talking of which, the Guardian football people don't mention this farcical story despite it gaining mainstream television news status.
This is to be expected as the football agent orchestrating Guardian output, John Colquhoun, is joined at the pelvis to Campbell.

These people are sailing very close to the wind.

http://www.channel4.com/news/fa-chief-condemns-online-dirty-tricks-by-qatar-s-pr-firm

Third Party Poopers

For The Guardian newspaper (sic) to be making flaccid claims over their stance on 3rd Party Player Ownership when their football output is directly linked to a football agent who is actively involved in 3rd Party Player Ownership is a dereliction of journalism beyond the norm.

David Conn is either a con...
... or he is being conned.

Pitiful PR and absolutely not journalism.

Spanish Matchfixing English Corruption

Unlike the Premier League, the Spanish authorities are beginning to take action against matchfixing in La Liga.

On the last day of season 2010/11, Levante played Real Zaragoza in a game that was of no consequence for the hosts but that the visitors had to win in order to secure their safety in the top flight.

Zaragoza won 2-1 with 20 shots to 3 and 11 corners to 1 advantage and Deportivo La Coruna were relegated instead.

The president of the Spanish league, Javier Tebas, flagged up this match amongst others in June last year and now players involved in the matchfixing event have been summoned by a Spanish state prosecutor.

Compare with the Premier League where Fulham beat Portsmouth on the last day of season 2007/08 in match known to have been fixed with Danny Murphy scoring the goal immediately after it became necessary for Fulham to win rather than draw to stay in the EPL keeping Fulham manager Roy Hodgson in his job.
Reading were relegated instead.

And corruption pays as Hodgson is now manager of England on £3.5m per annum while Murphy is paid odious amounts by BBC for spouting rubbish and has declared an interest in becoming the new Fulham manager!

Was Arsenal Versus Manchester City Fixed?

Arsenal have suffered repeatedly from a refereeing bias against their interests in the Premier League over the last decade. Year after year the Londoners are at the bottom of the hierarchy when the tilt in match decisions is assessed.
These biases don't even out over a season or over time.
Wenger is aware of these machinations.

But Saturday's match between Arsenal and Manchester City perfectly demonstrated the critical need for the implementation of video technology and the option of managers challenging refereeing decisions.

This match saw some very very suspicious betting patterns in the 90 minutes leading up to kick off.
For the people behind this trading, the gamble was landed as the match was drawn.

But, in reality, the match should have been a victory for the Mancunians - there were evident fouls leading up to both of Arsenal's goals and City should have been given a penalty for Jack Wilshere's handball.
2-2 becomes 0-3.

The inability of Mark Clattenburg, his assistants and 4th Official Jonathan Moss to correctly call these incidents made the game a spectacular farce - great to watch but nothing to do with the integrity of the game and with insiders making considerable money into the bargain.

Hearing that poisoned dwarf Danny Murphy defending the officials on Match of the Day would have had more resonance if Murphy wasn't linked with Moss via professional gambling football agent John Colquhoun.

Arsenal have been denied titles in recent years due to the actions of the PGMOL refereeing body and nothing in this post suggests any wrongdoing on their behalf.

But it is disturbing to be in agreement (for the very first time) with Sepp Blatter, managers must be able to challenge erroneous and not-so-erroneous decisions.
Otherwise football is just greyhound racing with coloured boots.

End Of Term For Headmaster Jon Moss

Jonathan Moss has refereed three televised Premier League matches this season.

In the first, he couldn't get his vanishing spray to work, dropped his pencil while attempting to make a booking and sent off Jason Puncheon (a match changing decision as it turned out).

In the second, he sent off James Chester in 14th minute which was always going to be a game-changer in that Hull City had played a Europa League match 3 days earlier. 10 man Hull took the lead and would have won if Moss hadn't incorrectly given a throw in to Stoke leading to Hull players being out of position for the equalising goal.

On Saturday, the man and his assistants surpassed themselves with an array of decisions that beggared belief - a complete randomising of the match.
It might have been exciting but it is supposed to be so with the correct implementation of the rules. Offside goals, the non-sending off of Tim Howard for three separate red card offences, inability to collate his reliance on 4th Official, assistants and EPL Match Centre and his repeated failure to keep up with the play made the match into fake theatre.

Why does this man keep getting these high betting turnover tv matches?
Surely it is time for a demotion.

Oh...
... there's some other shit too.

http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/john-colquhoun-and-jonathan-moss.html

Stellar Evolution

There were a number of considerably below par match-changing underperformances on Saturday in the Premier League.

Below we list the lowest rated players from WhoScored.com in these matches together with an assessment of performance and details of the players' agents.

• Phil Jagielka (Everton/England) 4.8 - responsible for first two Chelsea goals (Stellar)
• Tim Howard (Everton/USA) 5.4 - should have been sent off three times (for handling outside his area as last man, grabbing Diego Costa by the throat and head-butting César Azpilicueta). His attempts at saving the 6 goals were highly questionable (Wasserman Media Group)
• Joe Hart (Man City/England) 5.2 - made dreadful error to gift Stoke victory and behaved bizarrely in the aftermath of goal (Stellar)
• Chris Brunt (WBA/N Ireland) 5.3 - made error leading to key Swansea goal  and substituted (Key Sports)
• Jonas Olsson (WBA/Sweden) 5.4 - made error leading to goal (MD Management)
• Graham Dorrans (WBA/Scotland) 5.4 - error prone, booked and substituted (Stellar)    
 

http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/happy-anniversary-to-roy-hodgson.html

In that Hart, Jagielka, Johnson (Stellar), Baines, Cahill (Base) and Gerrard (Wasserman) were the primary underperformers during the World Cup, we ask how these players have been repeatedly chosen for Hodgson's squads?

We suggest that you keep an eye on this array of agents.