City games allegedly fixed

Alf Grey - 36 years on and it still winds me up. Bent as a £3 coin.(for the less ancient fans it was the 1981 League Cup semi-final 1st leg against the dippers).
 
In the Champions league semi against Real Madrid we only needed a goal to put us in the final.
My friend and I still wonder to this day why Pellegrini didn't throw everything at RM for the last 20 minutes or so. We both felt that we might as well get beaten by 3 as to meekly surrender the chance to get in the final , a final which we probably would have won!
Then there's the inexplicable performance in the FA CUP Final against Wigan....
So many odd results in so many matches, it makes you wonder .....!
I'd say that was more our beloved typical city factor :D
 
my twa penneth:

you can't promise to fix exact scores in the PL, it's far too involved; too many players and officials to drag in, not all will have an interest in earning some on the side of their 200k a week etc. Far too many variables, odd goals, slip ups in defence.

What you CAN do (as a ref or player) is your utmost to stifle a team with weak free kicks, hand out yellows, receive yellows, score a penalty, get sent off, give a red card etc etc. Id say individual instances such as cards and penalties are bang wide open for abuse, especially from refs as they want to look to the future financially or may be in financial trouble. When you couple the sheer number of opportunities for a ref to give a ropey decision with the breadth of betting markets in Asia, legal or otherwise, corruption begins to look more likely on the balance of probability.

Anecdotally, look to Le Tissier who admitted in his autobiog that he tried to make money illegally from the time of 1st throw in only for Neil Shipperley to accidentally scupper it.

I can believe in exact instances being easily manipulated and corrupted, but exact scorelines is too much. Refs & individuals can also try to influence the home/draw/away result but would have to act alone or in very small groups. Exact scores and orchestrated 20 man scams in one game? no.

On the other end of the spectrum, you can see how entire seasons, or a team's trajectory over multiple seasons, could be gently massaged with 'friendly' refs, review panels, rules etc. Extraordinarily hard to prove.
 
My thoughts are that there are probably some games that have been bent or rigged but I don't think it's as prevalent in the top flight as many do. Lower league games though? It's probably bent as fuck.

I think a lot of the examples in the blog are down to just complete incompetence from the officials. The rags naturally will have benefitted over the years because of pure pressure from media outlets, players, manager and the fact that we're all constantly told just how huge a club they are.

Humans in general will take the easiest option. The one where less aggro is involved and giving manure a penalty late in a game when 70 thousand are screaming for it and a camera is on you is an easier option than not in a lot of instances.

Video refs will take a lot of this conspiracy away.

Depends who's controlling them.

The FA want independent assessors to work with PiGMOL in that role. Reilly wants full control. You'd think out of transparency he'd be happy with that...?
 
Jeez that's a bit harsh. What's the fucking point in supporting the club and going to the games then?

We've been very successful since 2008 too, if it was as bent as you suggest then we'd not have won what we have and finished above the rags as many times as we have in recent seasons.

I'd say we've been successful since 2011 when we won our first trophy in 35 years and qualified for the European Cup (Champions League) for the first time in 42 years. Whenever we have won though i'd say in was in spite of officials decisions, not because of them.

Easily 15-20 pts better than United in 2011/2012, they kept getting leg ups to stay with us then they f**ked up with a loss to Wigan and a draw with Everton.

If you watch the Liverpool game from the 2014 season you might notice only 1 team was gonna be allowed to win that game and with it the title, but thanks to Stevie G and them imploding at Palace they f**ked it up too.

Oliver in the League Cup final against Liverpool should have gave us a penalty to put the game out of reach. Good old Willy had him over.

As for the Rags they have been on the whole quite shit since baconface left until they won 3 'titles' last season and even then they finished 6th.

Quitting is what they would want City fans to do. If you think everything is cool and fair then that is up to you but if you are a City fan I can't see how. I believe something stinks but I love City too much and also live in the hope these biased/corrupt bastards will get outed real soon to f**k it all off.

Just my opinion and don't let it get in the way of your rosy view of things.
 
Looked to me more like some of the players downed tools to put the nail in Mancini's coffin



check some of the half-hearted tracking back and lack of pressing

That is a reasonable possibility.
All I know is that after a lifetime of waiting we made an old man, Dave Whelan, very happy that day.
 
The Wolves game in 2011 was the first time I've watched a City match and thought it wasn't straight. It was the week after the 1-6 and it was impossible to explain some of the decisions that were made in that game. It got to the stage that season when it was just a case of waiting for the ridiculous match changing decision. Since then it's been a succession of ridiculous red cards which are always justified by the 'letter of the law' (Clichy v Chelsea in 2011, Zaba v Chelsea in 2014) but rarely replicated elsewhere or obvious penalties missed by the ref. It was only Michael Oliver who stopped City from having two pens and the rags being down to 9 men in the derby in 2015.

I sometimes wonder if its the prep that ref's do before games that leads to these decisions. Rather than simply instructing refs to be cheat it seems more plausible that refs could be told to look at for certain players who dive (Aguero) feign injury (Silva), look to injure opponents (Zabba) etc, etc. None of its true (in fact its the exact opposite) but if you sow the seed in someone's mind and that person knows they are being marked by the people who help them prepare then who knows?

Last season at home to Burnley was bizarre. Fernandinho's red for a foul which earned Ashley Young a yellow the following week (uncannily similar offences) the Burnley goal which resulted in a cut lip for Bravo after Vokes elbowed him were the main events. However, the most obvious example was at the end of the game when we won a corner and Mason forced us to take it even though two Burnley players were within 5 yards of the ball.

I sometimes wonder if Pep has clocked this from day one (or even before he joined). He was brought up at a club in Spain it suited everyone if they didn't win and, on occasion, things were engineered so it turned out that way. He'll know the signs.
 
That is a reasonable possibility.
All I know is that after a lifetime of waiting we made an old man, Dave Whelan, very happy that day.
I think the Nails were firmly in Mancini's coffin by then.

In the previous couple of seasons we had a number of fixtures where we struggled against teams that played with wing-backs and 3 in the middle. Rather than downing tools our tactics failed us. We'd only just scraped past Wigan at home a few weeks earlier and were rarely convincing against them before that.
 

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