• The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...

    Get involved!

Competition Is It Match Fixing?

Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports

Are Referee's Reffing Us Out of The Premier League?


  • Total voters
    151
Far from it sure.

But my imagination should not be the bar for whether or not this is a real thing.

And me asking a relatively simple question - who is this match fixing benefiting - is quite fair.

It could be x or y is not a convincing answer IMHO

You completely ignored the gambling market- easy answer right there.

Ignore anything you find inconvenient- kind of like your assessment of Ange's tenure on here.

Have fun with the blinders on.
 
You completely ignored the gambling market- easy answer right there.

Ignore anything you find inconvenient- kind of like your assessment of Ange's tenure on here.

Have fun with the blinders on.

Huh?

The gambling market has done fine without match fixing or maybe they have always been in on it.

Im not ignoring it, I just dont find it plausible that the gambling markets have infiltrated the refereeing networks
 
A lot of posters saying we are being persecuted, then I watch us tonight.

Every time a Chelsea player gets the ball, he gets his body behind it, knowing one of our fucking brain dead imbeciles is going to clatter them from behind. And joy of joys, they get exactly what they want.

That’s why we give away loads of fouls and get loads of cards. Our players are fucking stupid cunts.
 
A lot of posters saying we are being persecuted, then I watch us tonight.

Every time a Chelsea player gets the ball, he gets his body behind it, knowing one of our fucking brain dead imbeciles is going to clatter them from behind. And joy of joys, they get exactly what they want.

That’s why we give away loads of fouls and get loads of cards. Our players are fucking stupid cunts.
Not saying you’re wrong about the lack of cunning amongst our players but it’s way too frequent how they don’t check anything that could benefit us.
 
My proposal to fix the constant incompetence and accusations of bias around referees and VAR is simple. Put 3 people on VAR:
  • 1 qualified referee
  • 2 ex-professionals with no involvement in either club
When there’s a contentious incident, all 3 independently review it and press a voting button on whether the on-field ref should be sent to the monitor. If 2 out of 3 vote yes, the referee goes to the screen.

Crucially:
  • the 3 reviewers are not allowed to talk to each other during the review, in separate rooms.
  • no leading the referee towards a decision through the headset
  • once the ref goes to the monitor, he reviews it himself in silence and makes the final call
Part of the problem now is referees seem too hesitant to make strong decisions on the pitch because they know VAR is sitting behind them as a safety net. Then when VAR reviews it, you end up with refs backing up their mates and hiding behind the phrase not clear and obvious because it’s the easiest route to avoid overturning a colleague.

It creates a closed loop where weak on-field decisions survive, obvious errors get protected, and accountability disappears into technical wording. At the moment VAR feels less like an independent review system and more like referees marking each other’s homework.

Adding ex-pros brings actual football understanding, while independent silent voting removes the pile-up effect where one dominant voice sways the outcome.

Would it eliminate every bad decision? Obviously not. Football is subjective. But it would add accountability, transparency and independent judgement instead of the current officiating echo chamber that nobody trusts anymore.
Just get rid is the correct answer.
 
Incompetence and our awfulness. We were woeful last season, too - not like this is suddenly a new thing? And - even if there was some bias against giving us pens and fouls, there’s nothing stopping us playing better and scoring from open play.

Nope - inconsistent reffing and poor players (and injuries, tbf).
 
I don’t really buy into the whole brown envelopes and outright match fixing stuff, but I absolutely believe unconscious bias exists in officiating, and frankly that still corrupts outcomes whether people like the word or not.

Yes, Spurs have been poor at times this season. Nobody’s denying that. But bad performances don’t suddenly excuse the ridiculous volume of baffling decisions we seem to get compared to everyone else.

There was a graph floating around recently showing touches in the box vs penalties and fouls received leading to yellow cards. Every other club was basically clustered together while Spurs were sitting miles out on their own. At some point you stop calling that a random variance and start questioning why.

It’s not tinfoil hat conspiracy, this is just human psychology. Bias does not have to be deliberate. Tottenham are one of the most disliked clubs in the country, probably because we annoy everyone without actually winning enough to justify the hatred. But that perception absolutely filters into subconscious decision making.

Take any Spurs fan on here. Imagine one of us became a Premier League referee. The league would obviously keep us away from Spurs and probably away from London games altogether. Fine. But they cannot measure which clubs you naturally prefer, which fanbases you get on with, or which clubs you quietly cannot stand.

That’s where unconscious bias comes in. In every 50/50 decision, your brain naturally leans somewhere. Maybe it’s a marginal foul. Maybe it’s whether something is enough contact. Maybe it’s VAR deciding whether something is a clear and obvious error. Humans are not robots. If you already subconsciously lean one way, those marginal calls follow.

That doesn’t mean refs wake up trying to screw Spurs over. But pretending personal bias, media narratives and club perception play zero part in split-second human decisions is just naive.
 
Saw people bickering in match threads on refs and establishment scripting matches. Think the discussion is more appropriate here.

Jesus, are people really thinking corruption of the game is scripting it to some forms of big outcomes? Like making sure the scoreline is this and that sort of monumental? That would be so obvious and dead giveaway.

Betting in football, especially non officials ones, have tonnes of different bet kinds, and some are really creative ones.

There could be a bet of '0 pens awarded to Spurs all season' . Then you wonder why pens are so hard to be awarded to us especially coming so close to the end of the season when the other bets of Spurs having X number of pens could be won by bookies soon.

Then consider another one - 'scum going the entire season with no red cards' and 'scum going the entire season with no pens conceded'. A multiply bets on these two could yield odds of over 1 is to a 5-6 figure sum, if it started collecting at season start. Punters who got involved are whales too. The odds are so high and winnings will be extraordinary. These punters certainly have their means to pay people involved in the game to keep their bets winnable at all costs.

I'm not saying these are exactly that. But I won't be surprised the concept being similar. And I'm sure this is only the tip of the iceberg when comes to sports betting and the possible implications to games being corrupted.

Certainly Romero number of reds is a popular bet type.
 
My proposal to fix the constant incompetence and accusations of bias around referees and VAR is simple. Put 3 people on VAR:
  • 1 qualified referee
  • 2 ex-professionals with no involvement in either club
When there’s a contentious incident, all 3 independently review it and press a voting button on whether the on-field ref should be sent to the monitor. If 2 out of 3 vote yes, the referee goes to the screen.

Crucially:
  • the 3 reviewers are not allowed to talk to each other during the review, in separate rooms.
  • no leading the referee towards a decision through the headset
  • once the ref goes to the monitor, he reviews it himself in silence and makes the final call
Part of the problem now is referees seem too hesitant to make strong decisions on the pitch because they know VAR is sitting behind them as a safety net. Then when VAR reviews it, you end up with refs backing up their mates and hiding behind the phrase not clear and obvious because it’s the easiest route to avoid overturning a colleague.

It creates a closed loop where weak on-field decisions survive, obvious errors get protected, and accountability disappears into technical wording. At the moment VAR feels less like an independent review system and more like referees marking each other’s homework.

Adding ex-pros brings actual football understanding, while independent silent voting removes the pile-up effect where one dominant voice sways the outcome.

Would it eliminate every bad decision? Obviously not. Football is subjective. But it would add accountability, transparency and independent judgement instead of the current officiating echo chamber that nobody trusts anymore.

Balls to all that. Football is a simple game and I wish we'd stop coming up with new ways to complicate it.

Scrap the whole fucking thing and force refs to make decisions themselves again. I've had enough.
 
Its a madness how no decision goes our way and its being going on for 37 weeks. 37 weeks without a penalty is insane especially when you can think of 5 or 6 big appeals in the last few weeks alone. And then you consider some of the penalties given against us (Newcastle away!!) and its hard not to think its a ridiculous conspiracy. Then you factor in Woolwich who have had no red cards all season (They had 2 stone wall red cards not given in the last 4 weeks alone!) and have had no penalty given against them all season (insane stat). It is very hard not to feel totally aggrieved with the PGMOL as basically we've had 37 gameweeks of them pissing on our back and telling us its raining. Just one red card against Woolwich, one penalty against Woolwich or a penalty for us and we'd all feel at ease and assume this stuff sort of balances out - but no! There has been no respite, absolutely no let up and the frustration just continues to boil and boil over, where now you do fully believe there is a conspiracy.

However, I don't think last night was the tipping point everyone is making it out to be. Two 50/50ish big decisions went against us but tbh I'd have them more 60/40 in Chelsea's favour. Typical that we don't get the big call and yes Woolwich probably get the decisions if its them and not us. But realistically it would have been a very soft and harsh penalty if it was given ( but yes we had a similarly harsh one given against us at Newcastle). It also would have been a very harsh red for Delap as he was genuinely going for the ball but clumsily had the elbow up (but yes if that is Romero he gets sent off 100%). The problem is we've had such harsh calls given against us this season that we are now looking for a harsh call to be given against our opposition because we have receipts.

The PGMOL have caused all this. We've had multiple harsh decisions go against us all season long and we've had to watch our rivals Woolwich get a tonne of big decisions and nothing harsh go against them. I've never seen it go on 37 gameweeks like this where you can't even point to one game where you thought we got away with one or had a big decision go our way. The only red card given against us all season was by Soucek and in that game Romero bizzarely had a goal incorrectly ruled out in the first half at 0-0. So even that game which we won and the opposition had a red card, even that game we got fucked over by the ref. So its been 37 games where we can't point to a big decision helping us win, but we have about 20 examples where a big decision has cost us a game. Then you can argue the inverse for Woolwich.

Last night wasn't the tipping point. Like I said, both decisions were acceptable and would have probably been harsher against Chelsea if given. But the PGMOL have caused all this. The conspiracy is growing and growing and its months of frustration that has led to this.
 
My proposal to fix the constant incompetence and accusations of bias around referees and VAR is simple. Put 3 people on VAR:
  • 1 qualified referee
  • 2 ex-professionals with no involvement in either club
When there’s a contentious incident, all 3 independently review it and press a voting button on whether the on-field ref should be sent to the monitor. If 2 out of 3 vote yes, the referee goes to the screen.

Crucially:
  • the 3 reviewers are not allowed to talk to each other during the review, in separate rooms.
  • no leading the referee towards a decision through the headset
  • once the ref goes to the monitor, he reviews it himself in silence and makes the final call
Part of the problem now is referees seem too hesitant to make strong decisions on the pitch because they know VAR is sitting behind them as a safety net. Then when VAR reviews it, you end up with refs backing up their mates and hiding behind the phrase not clear and obvious because it’s the easiest route to avoid overturning a colleague.

It creates a closed loop where weak on-field decisions survive, obvious errors get protected, and accountability disappears into technical wording. At the moment VAR feels less like an independent review system and more like referees marking each other’s homework.

Adding ex-pros brings actual football understanding, while independent silent voting removes the pile-up effect where one dominant voice sways the outcome.

Would it eliminate every bad decision? Obviously not. Football is subjective. But it would add accountability, transparency and independent judgement instead of the current officiating echo chamber that nobody trusts anymore.

Absolutely not to ex-pros. They're typically brain dead idiots with big gobs. The bias issue is never fully addressed, either. Just because a ref has no particular bias against either of the teams they're officiating, it doesn't mean their actions in that game couldn't influence another game.
VAR should be a completely independent body of properly trained individuals and they should be fucking terrified of losing their job and being investigated for crimes if they make mistakes that cost teams hundreds of millions.

A lot of posters saying we are being persecuted, then I watch us tonight.

Every time a Chelsea player gets the ball, he gets his body behind it, knowing one of our fucking brain dead imbeciles is going to clatter them from behind. And joy of joys, they get exactly what they want.

That’s why we give away loads of fouls and get loads of cards. Our players are fucking stupid cunts.

You're absolutely right, but this is part of why we've been so shit. We are not allowed to be as physical as our opponents. We touch them, they go down, free kick. They touch us, we go down, either nothing or a yellow card for diving. Our players tend to have to get actually hurt to get the free kicks.
When the game stops every 30 seconds for a foul, neither team can play any decent football.
Throw in the big ones like the penalties we can't have, or the red cards we don't deserve, or the goals that only count when they are against us and it builds a picture sometimes of why we're so bad.

This ref talk is pathetic to be honest. Spurs are really shit. Thats why they are where they are.
We wouldn't be half as shit if we got what we deserved.
 
Balls to all that. Football is a simple game and I wish we'd stop coming up with new ways to complicate it.

Scrap the whole fucking thing and force refs to make decisions themselves again. I've had enough.
I think scrapping it gives the refs even more power to influence games.
It needs a major re-think and it needs it urgently.
 
A lot of posters saying we are being persecuted, then I watch us tonight.

Every time a Chelsea player gets the ball, he gets his body behind it, knowing one of our fucking brain dead imbeciles is going to clatter them from behind. And joy of joys, they get exactly what they want.

That’s why we give away loads of fouls and get loads of cards. Our players are fucking stupid cunts.
You're not wrong about our players have the football IQ of jelly babies. The Sarr one towards the end where he is never winning the ball and just goes through Fernandes in a dangerous position was the perfect example to summarise it.

However I will say that it didn't stop Chelsea players coming through the back of our players all game and the same rules not applying.

But your broader point I do agree.
 
I don’t really buy into the whole brown envelopes and outright match fixing stuff, but I absolutely believe unconscious bias exists in officiating, and frankly that still corrupts outcomes whether people like the word or not.

Yes, Spurs have been poor at times this season. Nobody’s denying that. But bad performances don’t suddenly excuse the ridiculous volume of baffling decisions we seem to get compared to everyone else.

There was a graph floating around recently showing touches in the box vs penalties and fouls received leading to yellow cards. Every other club was basically clustered together while Spurs were sitting miles out on their own. At some point you stop calling that a random variance and start questioning why.

It’s not tinfoil hat conspiracy, this is just human psychology. Bias does not have to be deliberate. Tottenham are one of the most disliked clubs in the country, probably because we annoy everyone without actually winning enough to justify the hatred. But that perception absolutely filters into subconscious decision making.

Take any Spurs fan on here. Imagine one of us became a Premier League referee. The league would obviously keep us away from Spurs and probably away from London games altogether. Fine. But they cannot measure which clubs you naturally prefer, which fanbases you get on with, or which clubs you quietly cannot stand.

That’s where unconscious bias comes in. In every 50/50 decision, your brain naturally leans somewhere. Maybe it’s a marginal foul. Maybe it’s whether something is enough contact. Maybe it’s VAR deciding whether something is a clear and obvious error. Humans are not robots. If you already subconsciously lean one way, those marginal calls follow.

That doesn’t mean refs wake up trying to screw Spurs over. But pretending personal bias, media narratives and club perception play zero part in split-second human decisions is just naive.

Fouls received, leading to yellow cards, we are not miles out at all

Before yesterday, we were 0.22 cards per foul given

Chelsea 0.21
brighton 0.20
sunderland 0.20
City 0.19
Bournemouth 0.19
Fulham 0.19

We arent even top of the 'fouls given per attempted tackle table'
 
A lot of posters saying we are being persecuted, then I watch us tonight.

Every time a Chelsea player gets the ball, he gets his body behind it, knowing one of our fucking brain dead imbeciles is going to clatter them from behind. And joy of joys, they get exactly what they want.

That’s why we give away loads of fouls and get loads of cards. Our players are fucking stupid cunts.

That is true however whenever we try to do that this season it has been countless times the ref will go play on and let the opposition take the ball. Something stinks with it all.
 
It's ironic people want to talk about match fixing because we might get relegated, but no one wanted to talk about it in 2015/16, rather just take cheap digs at Poch
 
Back
Top