Ok I'll just get the shit pun out of the way now: two teammates from Hull City brawled with each other in a casino last week, "like snarling animals." Hull are of course nicknamed the Tigers. Tigers snarl, and also behave like animals. Sometimes I despair.

Anyway, the on-loan star Marlon King is said to have head-butted fellow striker (and STT messiah) Dean Windass in a rumble that ended with the pair having to be pulled apart by other Hull players. Click to continue reading...

Remember when Rio Fedinand "forgot" to go to his drug test? That won't be happening again. And not just because Rio seems to be a new man these days. As of next season there's going to be a new Premier League anti-doping system in place. Here's how it will work: Thirty Premier League players will be [. Click to continue reading...

Declan Hill's book The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime details the Canadian journalist's investigation of match-fixing in some of the world's biggest competitions. An excerpt of his book ran in the Sunday Telegraph and is available here. Hill spoke on the CBC television show The Hour. His interview is here. Click to continue reading...

Saturday, 25 October 2008 Everton v Man Utd, 12:00 Poor David Moyes. All he wants is for Everton's season to turn around so he can start enjoying that massive new salary. But the damn Premier League fixture computer keeps pitting The Toffees against teams with bigger and better squads. Better luck next week David. Click to continue reading...

There just might be. There's an investigation going on right now into Derby County's 2-1 win over Norwich City at Carrow Road on October 4th, and the suspicious Asian betting activity surrounding it. I'd say it's suspicious for anyone in Asia to be putting money on Derby County winning a game of football, even if The Rams [. Click to continue reading...

Last night's 4-0 destruction of a decent Schalke side (goals in the video vault on the right) confirmed what I had long suspected, that the other team in Madrid are more than worth paying attention to this season. Betfair currently have them at 26-1 to win La Liga and 2-1 to win it with a 12 [...] Click to continue reading...

Last night's 4-0 destruction of a decent Schalke side (goals in the video vault on the right) confirmed what I had long suspected, that the other team in Madrid are more than worth paying attention to this season. Betfair currently have them at 26-1 to win La Liga and 2-1 to win it with a 12 [...] Click to continue reading...

Betway has once again published their odds for the Ligue 1 2008/2009 season. Lyon are the favorites to win the championship, which would make it their eighth straight title. But unlike last season, an upset isn't as far-fetched.

From Betway.com:

Le Championnat 08/09

Lyon 1.

Click to continue reading...

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. Click to continue reading...

Anybody who placed their gambles based on the "knowledge" of Statto will be feeling both revenge and a disturbing sense of historical gullibility this morning. News broke yesterday that Statto, "real" name Angus Loughran, has been declared bankrupt and, although he claimed that the debts were related to council tax non-payments, it is believed that the man's finances are, shall we say, a touch "delicate". Click to continue reading...

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. Click to continue reading...

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. Click to continue reading...

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. Click to continue reading...

Today, there are two posts in that broadsheet bastion of the bookmaking fraternity called The Guardian that focus on Sabermetrics. This prompts us to produce an overall assessment of the value of such "science" in modern day football.
To the uninitiated, Sabermetrics is a statistical evaluation of a sportsplayer based on selective and historical match data together with current training ground measurements. Click to continue reading...

Sepp Blatter joined with the FIFA executive committee on Saturday to reintroduce a ban on matches played at altitude without "adequate time to acclimatise" - a version of this ban was proposed in June but, on that occasion, FIFA repeatedly backtracked before shelving its little ruse in the face of popular unrest at the decision. Click to continue reading...

"Its the biggest load of nonsense and its doing my head in" was one of Harry Redknapp's statements regarding his current legal situation. The "it" in question is the law and 'Arry evidently feels he exists above the confines of such restrictions.
And, its a family affair. In The Sun, ex-model son Mark squealed: "Someone is out to get dad". Click to continue reading...

Trading strategists focus almost exclusively on the process of determining a mispriced asset to an extent where little attention is given to the equally key area of exposure tactics. No matter which strata of the football trading pyramid one occupies, the vast majority of one's efforts are spent on the decision of whether to trade or not, leaving probably no more than 10% of the time to address the correct staking level for your selection. Click to continue reading...

- Just when it looked as if Italian football was convincing everyone that they were cleaning up their act, another match-fixing scandal has reared it's ugly head. This time Lazio coach Delio Rossi has been charged with attempting to influence an opposing team in April 2006.
According to that article, "The Italian Football Federation (FIGC) alleged Rossi tried to ask club president Claudio Lotito to contact Lecce officials and discuss tactics before their match. Click to continue reading...

One club is sponsored by a brothel while a whole soccer federation sells its soul to a betting firm, which gets more news? Welcome to sensational, stupid society.

Trento Calcio 1921, a Serie D club, has signed an advert agreement with an Austrian-based brothel, Casa Bianca or White House, to display the establishment's name on the club's website. Click to continue reading...

Probably the most disturbing aspect regarding the corruption of sporting sectors worldwide is the omnipresence of the shadow of criminality. It seemingly makes not an iota of difference whether one looks at horseracing, football, cricket or the Olympics, the distorting influence of malignant money upon both the administrative hierarchies and the event outcomes is increasingly the normal template. Click to continue reading...

Néa Dhimokratía outrageously won yesterdays Greek elections despite being responsible for everything that is malignant in the country. The 42% of the population who made the choice of self rather than anything approaching altruistic concern for the erosion of a true bottom-up democracy should feel nothing but shame.
The rampant corruption that degrades many aspects of Greek society inevitably spreads over to football. Click to continue reading...

Out of the first one hundred Premiership matches this season, Sky Television have selected just one Arsenal game for live coverage (against Portsmouth) and, taking the data up to the December limit of Sky's disclosures, only the minnows of Wigan, Fulham, Birmingham, Derby, Reading, Blackburn and Middlesboro are shown less than the Gunners. Why so?
Global betting turnover on live Sky Premiership games is markedly higher than the other Premiership games. Click to continue reading...

Britain's new Gambling Act came into force at the weekend. This piece of legislation was established by Blair's manipulators at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, particularly the odious Tessa Jowell who is now wasting taxpayers money on behalf of the white elephant London Olympics, together with the Gambling Commission which is an organ effectively controlled by the gambling industry. Click to continue reading...

Leisure punters should be aware that leading London-based bookmaker Premierbet is no longer in business and, although visitors to their website are being told that the site is "unavailable for essential maintenance work", the truth is that the company is not available for the essential payment of its debt obligations to clients.
Football Is Fixed have warned readers about this company previously (see: http://footballisfixed. Click to continue reading...

At a first glance, there might not appear to be much in common between the bookmaking and insurance industries. Think again. The two sectors are virtually identical.
The basic foundation of the business models for bookmakers and insurers involves the accurate analysis of risk assessment and management. These market makers have an aversion to risk and create strategies whereby any exposure is diversified and/or hedged away from the risk profile of the company. Click to continue reading...

Great news for the defences of Israel and Russia - Michael Owen made his long-awaited comeback for Newcastle last night by successfully failing to score during the hour that he spent on the pitch against non-league Blue Star.
Only the casinos of Europe have seen more of little Michael than the Newcastle treatment room since his arrival in the north east following a conspicuous lack of interest in his playing abilities from the G14(18) clubs after his debacle of a spell at Real Madrid. Click to continue reading...

With just over a week to the commencement of the new gambling season, the initial influx of the summer transfers have arrived and an early assessment of the impact of both the increased television money and the incoming breed of hyper owners may be made. The positive configuration of a non World Cup/Euro summer with a massive new television deal and lots of hot money from interesting sources sloshing around has yielded informative patterns. Click to continue reading...

Richard Scudamore continues backtracking, covering over his and the Premier League's trails, in an increasingly desperate attempt to emerge from the various scandals that slosh around his/their ankles with a modicom of professionalism still in place.
Having only supported the publication of the Quest inquiry after the arrest of the still unknown 61 year old in May for money laundering, Scudamore has lost more control of the whole bungs process with the City of London police raids on Glasgow Rangers, Newcastle United and Portsmouth. Click to continue reading...

The absence of a close season state of uproar in Serie A has been most conspicuous by its absence this summer so it was somewhat comforting to hear of the bans announced on Monday for four players who have been found out betting on match outcomes.
And these aren't just any old players but four of the senior statesmen of the Italian game. The Italian Football Federation (FIGC) has handed out medium term bans and fines to these players plus fines for the clubs involved in the match manipulations - Udinese, Vicenza and Mantova. Click to continue reading...

A tale of two totalitarian corruptions involving the mafia and sports people...
Tim Donaghy has left the NBA basketball world in a state of considerable turbulence following his prosecution for influencing professional games in the US. Donaghy is a referee who has been found guilty of rigging large numbers of basketball matches over a two year period although he had officiated for thirteen years prior to being forced to resign. Click to continue reading...

We warned you that the Barclays Asia Trophy was likely to be a hot competition when the participants were named several months back - Hicks, Gillett, Gaydamek and Al-Fayed at one event was always likely to engender a creative little affair. And, so it has proved to date.
This is the third of these pre-season bookmaker benefit tournaments. The fundamental structure requires a number of Premiership teams to take part in a four team pre-season event based in a key gambling location in the Far East - this year, to celebrate ten years without British rule, Hong Kong is hosting the event. Click to continue reading...

As absolute power corrupts absolutely, there must be concerns about FIFA and, in particular, Sepp Blatter. At the recent FIFA Congress in Zurich, Blatter was reelected unopposed for a further four years of omnipotence as president of the world governing body.
Blatter exerts a vice-like grip over FIFA with a number of his own men in charge of the regional affiliations (think Jack Warner at CONCACAF or Michel Platini at UEFA, for example) and his strategic planning, in that such planning exists, purely targets the maintenance of control by buying off just enough of the FIFA family with his complex and often contradictory edicts. Click to continue reading...

Being in Glasgow on the day that Ibrox is raided by the City of London Police is, as a Celtic fan, a proper grin. The fact that Newcastle, Souness and Portsmouth are also being rightfully and properly investigated only adds to a general air of slightly malicious good humour. Undoubtedly, the raids are scratching the surface of the corruption endemic in the English and, to a lesser extent, the British game. Click to continue reading...

The idiocy of the average Manchester City fan seemingly knows no bounds - City supporters, unable to deal with words of four or more syllables, have taken to calling new owner, Thaksin Shinawatra, Frank (after Sinatra - geddit?). Evidently the level of humour which leads to the City of Manchester Stadium being one of the very few grounds where incredibly humourous chants (sic) linking Tottenham fans with the genocide in nazi gas chambers, remains strong to this day. Click to continue reading...

Magical Thinking is a behavioural disorder or style that is very common among leisure gamblers. It should not, therefore, come as any surprise to know that Magical Thinking is targeted directly by those that would wish for you to gamble.
Every gambling sector incorporates this fallacious mode of "analysis" into their structure.
In Hong Kong and elsewhere in the Far East, the number 4 is regarded as extremely unlucky while the number 8 is full of harmonious resonances to the extent that, if you are trading the horseracing markets it is vital to take account of the market imbalances created by this illogical thought process ie there is generally only value to be found in opposing horse number 8 while backing horse number 4 is a good thing (obviously with all other factors taken into consideration). Click to continue reading...