Yes particularly if you think the world is out to get you. For any rational person they would just think he has forgotten a ref. I even discuss City players sometimes and have completely forgotten about them. Peter Beardsley for example.
Peter Beardsley was two decades ago; Peter Walton two years (thus post-takeover). There are many players, few PL referees, and fewer dreadful ones. To never bring a bit-part player to mind is one thing: it is quite another to confess ignorance once that player has been named with context, especially so where the context has a putative resemblance to a stated and demonstrated interest. As you bespeak a fixed interest in the question at-hand (which is not the relative decline of Milan fashion houses, farming methods in Kamchatka, or Wayne Rooney's taste for Weetabix and jam) you can understand - as a rational person - the cocking of an eyebrow vis-à-vis ignorance of Walton who was no bit-part referee.
In any case, you
are late to this and your posting demonstrates that
clearly. You conflate the influence of gambling (especially in-game), the development of FFP (you recall the Abramovich-Platini meeting when it all began) and our presentation through the various means of communication yet fail to see that all the actors - despite cross-cutting and conflict - do have a commonality and that is
management - management (or
steering if you prefer) of MCFC as is and presented.
It is unfortunate that the question - the real question - "is MCFC the subject of steering by outside actors who have complimentary and conflicting motives" has from the off been posited as a grassy-knolled affair of interest only to the childish and delusional when what underlies the steering is nothing more and nothing less than
corruption of heart, and surely that is of interest to every man?
I do not like corruption. I like it even less when it feigns naïveté or assumes noble airs to bewitch or relies on the inherently good nature of man as a defence to its own wickedness.
This is
not a zero-sum game (the
most obvious of straw men) but the
management of a participant in the most extensive game yet known to the planet where that participant is in the most popular and richest sub-set. There are men a-plenty willing and able to skim a little here and there by placing their fingers on the scales of
this global industry, and that most certainly includes those tasked with the collection and dissemination of information.
