I don’t believe it’s fixed but as has been said,i do think there is bias on the part of some referees .
The idea that they can be brought out to UAE,paid handsomely ,wined and dined without there being some form of "appreciation " is ridiculous .
Add to that the obvious financial cheating that has been going on with city for a decade,which i don’t believe will result in the titles being taken back,means we are going to feel that we’ve been up against more than just another football club.
Hopefully the cheated titles are taken from them and maybe we can then see that at the highest level of football it was more incompetence than conspiracy added to those few “appreciative” refs and dodgy bookkeeping which has caused to miss out on titles we should have been awarded.
Liverpool were blamed for English clubs “not winning” the European Cup, because they thought that during the ban was going to be their time. There is a residual bitterness over this.
The victims chants surrounding Hillsborough have been allowed to fester, without sanction for decades. This creeps into the psyche of football, the victims tag sticks. It now manifests in food poverty shaming. Feed the Scousers from supporters of clubs in similar socio-economic locations.
Again, for the most part without sanction. Hence this victims tag taking hold, and effecting bias against the club.
Ferguson dictated the agenda for referees. He demonised Suarez when Liverpool were on the rise. The Evra affair was incorrectly handled by the club, but the punishment was twice what John Terry got for similar offences. Wonder why?
The funny thing with conspiracy theories is that they sometimes exist.
Think about the mass surveillance by the US, before Snowden it was clearly a conspiracy theory, then ow it’s just the reality.
If you are in a sport where margins are everything, then every little bias nudge toward the desired outcome. (Insert here a quote of Ineos cycling guru)
What I really found flabbergasting this year, is the fact some officials refereeing here are also working in the middle east, being paid by nations also owning teams in the Premier League.
It’s hard to bite the hand that feeds you. Even unconsciously.
This puts me closer to the edge of “it’s all fixed” than I’ve ever been.
Who knows? All I know is that when the sport’s worldwide governing body has been proven to be corrupt and rotten to the core, and got away with it, and that City have been proven to be corrupt and rotten to the core and got away with it after they nobbled CAS, then it’s not much of a leap to wonder if the odd ref can be bought during their 5-star jollies to the oil states to officiate third-rate matches.
I’m not sure that “fixed” is the phrase that I would use. Institutionally corrupt is closer to it. That’s not to say that every official is bent, but the one’s that have biases and conflicts of interests are well protected rather than weeded out.
I nearly gave up watching our game against Burnley. I certainly derived no enjoyment from it even if the result goes our way. But it’s not just our games. It happens to most teams and has rendered the whole league largely unwatchable.
I don’t think the league is fixed, as in the narrative worked out ahead of time like the wrestling.
But I think it’s hard to argue that within the PGMOL there isn’t a systemic bias against our club, and a bias towards certain other teams, and one in particular.
It’s really staggering to find out, as we did just after the Spurs incident, that certain refs are routinely paid astronomical fees to referee games in the UEA, by the owners of Manchester City. It’s incredible that they think this is OK, and that it doesn’t create a conflict of interest. They are either so brazen they simply don’t care, or they are so stupid they don’t see it as a problem.
Did you want to back this up with something? Anything? I don’t really quite understand why certain ref complaints persist when the stats suggest otherwise. I mean, there is a big enough body of referee shithousery against us by certain refs that we don’t need to add to it with made-up rubbish.
Salah has been booked once for simulation in the PL while playing for Liverpool - back in 2017/18. Harry Kane also has been booked for simulation back in 2018/19. Saka has at least 2 bookings for simulation (Sheffield and Soton).
Same here. Tierney did everything humanly possible to deprive us of three points that night. And while I don’t subscribe to the ‘fixed’ narrative , it’s impossible not to actually watch the games and see some refs (the aforementioned and Kavanagh in particular) positively look for opportunities to fuck us over.
And that’s why the same group of officials is involved in our games and some referees you see in other PL matches never getting appointed to our matches.
(Would love to see a list of all the current PL refs to see how many of them never officiated one of our games this season)
We had our problems with Tierney but instead of doing the right thing and keep him away from our games they keep sending him.
It’s similar to the 12:30h thing. Klopp speaks out against it and they keep giving them to us.
We all know what happened in the last few years but for me the shit that happened this season alone - things that went against us and in the favor of other teams - tops it all.
Anthony Taylor 2
Michael Oliver 2
Andrew Madley 2
Chris Kavanagh 4
John Brooks 1
Paul Tierney 2
Simon Hooper 3
Stuart Attwell 1
Craig Pawson 1
Thomas Bramall 1
So there are 15 ref who haven’t been involved as ref in our games yet
I don’t believe that the PL is out to specifically down us. I strongly believe that a few refs among the PGMOL have a strong bias against us. I also believe that Man Cheaty have fixed the league in their favour by influencing refs at times, and by influencing the venues and the dates and hours of games. I do also believe that Saudi Arabia will shortly follow suit.
And before anyone tells me that I’m paranoid, match-fixing has already happened in many other leagues, Serie A being the prime example, but by far not the only one. The PL has currently the most money circulating (before that, it was Serie A), and that’s why I also believe that this league is the most prone to fixing and cheating in the whole of Europe.
Also, don’t forget the huge sums of money circulating around the betting system. That too is an open invitation for match-fixing. An advice for Liverpool fans would be not to bet anymore on LFC winning games. That might make a difference.
Agree. And it has everything to do with the revenue produced by what league higher ups consider to be “in the most interest of the viewing public”…i.e. television. With the incredible worldwide interest in the PL, and the associated worldwide coverage, it behooves to have a more predictable “narrative” for the eyeballs watching. And especially for the sides who regularly win.
Nothing is new and different here, unfortunately. Over here, the NBA and NFL have routinely created similar narratives, in order to produce the favored outcomes for the national interest. For many years, if one watched a game involving the Los Angeles Lakers or the New England Patriots, a “thrilling last-moment win” was virtually a lock. Much of it resulting from referee calls/non-calls, and the various versions of VAR.
There are ways around the narrative. The players and coaches are not involved in “fixing”, so an exemplary team effort can sometimes override the narrative. It does happen…not real often, but it does. However the games are generally predictable.
There will be some that we will never get because they are associated to the Liverpool FA or have other connections. However, we seem to get more than our fair share of what they regard as their “top officials” which almost always seem to be individuals that I would regard as being incompetent, biased or having an antagonistic personality.
