You always look for black and white Frank, when in reality there are usually just shades of grey. So there's no men stroking white cats and plotting the demise of Manchester City. Fine. There are however, individuals whose integrity is such that they're prepared to be disingenuous about which team they support, and who pass themselves off as "fans" of minnow clubs in neighbouring counties in order to then render themselves eligible to referee the teams they supported as children. There are also (I would imagine, as I cannot prove or disprove it) individuals susceptible to the subliminal pressure heaped on them by the head of the FA touring the world and announcing that a weak Manchester United is bad for business, and by the media whose advertising revenues are adversely affected by United, the Dippers and the Arse not being top of the tree, and by the foam flecked managers of those clubs who pressurise and pressurise and pressurise and use that compliant media to humiliate and denigrate those officials that dare to give big decisions against them, to the point that those individuals may not give those decisions unless they are 100% clear cut at one ground (ie the Swamp), but will give them when they're clearly only 50% certain at other grounds. And then there is the level of personal ambition to consider. Officials are doubtless no different to anyone else in their desire to rise to the top of their profession and manage the truly big games at the truly big clubs. Just like politics, refereeing is show business for ugly people. So when they watch one of their colleagues get ostracised from the Swamp for 15 months (as once happened to Martin Atkinson) for daring to give the opposition (Portsmouth if memory serves) a penalty at Old Toilet and causing Whiskey Nose to tear him to shreds in the press, do you think that might render them more or less inclined to give unpopular decisions when they themselves get the gig?
There are many factors that common sense must tell you are likely at play then, but nothing that you can point to and say with cast-iron certainty, "Yeah, wham, there it is, corruption!"
What I do know for sure then is that while adverse decisions do get given against United and Liverpool and Arsenal, a great many more do not, whilst the reverse is true of City. When was the last time we got a 90th minute game changing penalty of the type Arsenal got today? At home to Spurs 5 years ago? And even then it had to be so nailed on as to be preposterous not to give it. And then there was Sterling last year against Everton in injury time not given, the ludicrous penalty involving the same player against Spurs last season, the non-sending off of David Luiz, the 4 (count them, 4) clear red cards that should have been shown to Rojo and Big Nose in the space of 6 weeks, the Feghouli sending off, or going back further Phil Dowd sending off 2 Newcastle players for nothing at Klanfield on the final game of the season in 2014 to try and help the Dippers snatch the title from us when they were losing, or yesterday when Andre Marriner didn't book Song for the EXACT same offence he booked Aguero for at Burnley 6 weeks earlier, I could go on and on, but suffice to say when was the last time City got a huge decision like that in our favour? Whether you're dealing with intentional or unintentional bias, the result is the same. The team that espouses the best football and enjoys greater possession than any other in the league, somehow top of the red and yellow cards table (and the same thing happened to Pellegrini in 2015 I think).
Yeh, there probably aren't hordes of officials deliberately out to get us (although I will never include Taylor or Mason in any list of the innocent), but equally there's plenty of evidence that City routinely get the shitty end of the refereeing stick compared to any team that plays in red. Let the scales fall away mate......
