Is the PL fixed?

Pitchside - Football Forum
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I don’t want to get into trouble with my old chum @cynicaloldgit, but I do want to know how many people agree with his belief that the Premier League is fixed.
Firstly, I’m not entirely sure what he means by ‘fixed’. Is it an organised plot by the PL itself? Is it just the referees? Does it involve the Government? How wide does this scheme reach? How is it organised? How is it kept secret? Why would we be the victims of it?

I’m also confused about how we have won so much under Klopp despite this plot.

There are genuine questions about the standard and even-handedness of refereeing which Klopp has mentioned repeatedly. There are many on here who believe that there is a concerted effort to do us down. How systematic is this? Why would it be? How different is this to similar theories among fans of other clubs?

So, without wishing to cause conflict, can proponents of this theory explain in detail why they believe it to be true?

Let’s keep it calm and civil please.

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Does a bear shit in the woods …

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We won silverware under Klopp because we were miles better than whatever was thrown against us. We had to be better. We had to overcome biases.

We missed out on two PL trophies with points tallies that would win most seasons, whilst Man City disregarded financial rules without hinderance. They won those leagues. Throw in some awful point costing decisions in addition to financial duping and you see we should have more success. Thats not counting the season with Rodgers.

All clubs can claim dubious decisions against them, including Arsenal last night. But the litany of poor decisions against Liverpool is quite staggering. In this season alone, the VVD red card, the MacAllister red card, the Odegaard hand ball, the non Nunez foul vs Burnley, the entire Spurs game, our only PL loss.

Tomkins is obviously biased, but look at his stats regarding fouls (or lack of) on Mo Salah? Look at Saka, Grealish, Sterling and the amount of frees they get and ask why Mo is not protected?

I dont see a conspiracy at PL level. But there is a definite bias by some referees and officials against Liverpool. And it is costing us.
We could/should have points from the Spurs match. Imagine a tight league where we miss out? Imagine City getting a pen for less obvious handball vs Everton…less obvious than our claim vs Arsenal.

@jaffod has produced a number of posts which catalogue the unfair decisions taken against Liverpool. Title costing decisions. His detail is much better than mine, but a few really poir decisions spring to mind. Kompany on Salah? Had VVD done the same to KDB it would be a red card. We all should recognise that.

The PL is fixed insofar as the greatest financial dupers ever are playing unhindered and awaiting an investigation that may never happen. Clean houses keep their houses clean. The PL are not.

Not certain its fixed as you suggest.
But, the bias suffered by Liverpool by officials has led to City winning two, maybe three leagues.
The unwillingness to curb financial thuggery has led to City winning loads.
The unwillingness to curb financial thuggery allowed Chelsea to prosper.

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BTW
This type of thread led to polarised views and difficulties in TIA.

I agree about keeping it calm and civil, but it may turn sour when people look for “evidence”.

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Cheers, yeah I’d really like to discuss this without acrimony and insults as I’m genuinely interested in people’s views.
Personally, I’m agnostic and could be persuaded either way.

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Why would refs be biased against us in your opinion?

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For me there is enough evidence that there are individual referees who will officiate our games differently to how they would for other teams and in general there are other rules for other clubs than there are for us.

Even if it’s just that whole, ‘Harry Kane hasn’t had a lot of cards so I won’t give him one for that tackle’ - well, we don’t have a single player who that applies to. If in doubt, they will give the card, while other teams can hack our our players for 98 minutes and get nothing.

No yellow for Saka yesterday for diving, Salah would probably have got one.
Speaking of Salah, well, we all know how many free kicks he wins even when players are literally hanging off him.

Virgil’s extra game ban for swearing, but nothing for Haaland. No action for that linesman elbowing Robertson. John Terry getting half the ban of Suarez for ‘racism’.

For the Club World Cup, United were allowed to ditch the FA Cup, City had no games, while we had to play two games in two days in different continents.

VAR is not used consistently across games and nobody is asking why.

Anyway. I don’t think these things add up to an actual secret cabal, envelopes under the table , organized vendetta. But there is stark evidence that EITHER some specific refs have it out for us and shouldn’t be allowed near our games OR some specific refs are consistently shit at their job and shouldn’t be allowed near our games.

For the rest of it, I’m not sure, is it jealousy of our dominance in the 70s/80s,? has it grown from the lies that the s*n was allowed to tell for so long?is it modern day xenophobia that Rafa, Klopp and Salah get treated differently to British managers/players? Is it a perfect storm of all of the above and then some?

And it’s perfectly set up so that anytime someone speaks out against it…“oH iTs nEVar yoUrE faUlt!!£”

I don’t believe that it’s across the board because as you say, we wouldn’t have won or even got close to winning if there was a real actual organized agenda against us. Sadly these days, with City’s money, it only takes a couple of refs with a beef against us to rob us of a couple of wins and that is enough to leave us short at the end of the season.

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I’ve posted at length about this in the past, both here and on TAN, so I’ll keep it simple:

  • In the 1980s, the Tories hated the city of Liverpool for standing up to them (Derek Hatton and the “loony Left”)

  • Liverpool fans were blamed for Heysel, damaging the reputation of English football, such as it was

  • Hillsborough and the lies of the Murdoch press exacerbated the divide

  • Murdoch set up the Premier League to “knock Liverpool off their fucking perch”. While this statement is almost always applied to the football club, it was equally applicable to the city itself

  • Man Utd, a club Murdoch had previously tried to buy, suddenly started getting every decision their way and, purely coincidentally, winning the league nearly every yerar

  • The process of the club with the most influence (ie throwing the most money at the government) being the most successful domestically has continued under Abramovich’s Chelsea and now Abu Dhabi’s Manchester City

  • Interestingly, the domestic domination of United, Chelsea and City has never been replicated on the European stage. Wonder why that is?

  • It’s easy to fix a few games here and there to achieve the desired outcome over the course of a season: you don’t need thousands of minions keeping their lips shut but just a small number of officials pulling the strings

  • Any fool can see how we have been affected more than other clubs by bafflingly incomprehensible decisons

  • @Quicksand has got one thing wrong: we have been robbed of three league titles. 2013/14 is probably the one he forgot about.

  • Our league success is 2020 was due to the fact that we were simply far too good for the opposition and, coming thirty years after our last championship, had an element of “tossing them a bone” about it, especially as it was in the Covid season.

That’s the basic summary.

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I didn’t forget the 2013/14 season, I think there is a higher threshold of evidence in the recent losses.
The financial doping bit was there, so yes we were robbed of 3 titles.

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Ferguson
Heysell
Hillsborough
Webb

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There are probably many levels to it all.

Some personal - i.e. Paul Tierney has a dislike for Klopp.

Some bias - Kane and Saka get away with red card tackles, foreign players/others (not just our own) don’t get away with it. These have been exacerbated with the advent of technology first (replays) followed by a misuse of technology (VAR). The misuse of VAR is really frustrating as you can clearly point to moments - Rodri’s non-handball etc.

Then there’s the financial doping element of it - 115 charges to one club, with no punishment as yet, whilst Everton (see @cynicaloldgit’s first few bullets on Liverpool the city) were charged and punished quick fire.

Doesn’t help that the government are in bed with the big money investors from other nations - half of London is owned by Russia or Middle Eastern oligarchs and the sort - and that geo-political manoeuvring is way above sport - selling arms etc. We saw what happened when Russia invaded Ukraine. I also read that Saudi now owns a large part of Heathrow Airport - we don’t even own our own biggest assets in this country anymore.

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And let’s not forget that Richard Scudamore admitted that there was a perceived benefit to the Premier League if Manchester United were winning and it was an issue when they weren’t.

If that kind of thing is allowed to influence your thinking, ie profit being more important than a fair competition, then I wouldn’t be suprised if things were put in place to try and change the outcome of specific matches.

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Fixed implies, to me, that the result is determined before a ball is kicked.
There are clearly biases, as have been listed, but I’m still not convinced that there is a group of people who decide the outcome of the league in advance.
Heysel and Hillsborough were both a long time ago and Ferguson is a fading memory. Are these really factors nowadays?

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At the start of the season, the objective is (at the moment) for Man city to win the league.

That doesn’t mean every game has to be fixed, as that would be far too obvious. All that needs to be done is for enough contentious decisions to go for them and against their main rivals for the final outcome to be achieved.

In my opinion anyone who believes that the Premier League is decided on the football pitch is incredibly naive. Football is now a multi-billion pound industry and a geopolitical tool; it’s no longer the simple game that many of us enjoyed in our youth.

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You know this for sure?

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Here we go. :roll_eyes:

Nobody is going to actually come out and say this publicly, are they?

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You just said it though! :roll_eyes:

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It’s fixed.

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This is a very interesting point. It somewhere boils down to both in my opinion - The refs being more competent and the likes of City not allowed to bully teams that they pre decide their fate and do not go all out at them. Players like Fernandino escaped tons of second yellow cards and that worked perfectly in the favor Pep prefers playing football by breaking momentum by shoves that goes unnoticed. That didn’t work in Europe.

On the topic, I feel we can never officially call out it’s fixed till evidence comes out it is and the thread would be moot anyways in that case. But there’s definitely a feeling of us somehow always being the underdogs and having to bypass every thing thrown at us from in game nonsense decisions to larger competition not being a fair ground itself. And it shouldn’t be the case if it’s just talent, the game and overall club structure and functioning goes by. We should be running away with titles for the past few years but it’s just not happening for all the above stated reasons in other posts.

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