A little story I heard from a reliable source was that, around late 2007/early 2008, a dossier was put together and presented to the PL highlighting the actions of certain referees and suspicious betting patterns. This was just after Clattenburg officiated at that notorious Merseyside derby so I assume it was funded by Everton or sources close to them but that's just a guess.
Clattenburg was suspended at the start of the 2008/9 season and stayed suspended for virtually the whole of that season. In fact his only domestic appointment was for the Glauber Berti/pigeon game v Bolton on the last day of that season. Someone mentioned bookies earlier in connection with Clattenburg and they weren't wrong. The only problem is that the bookies were alleged to be mates of Thaksins and Clattenburg was quite kind to us up to the point Thaksin was finally fucked off by ADUG. After that, it was open season on us by him. Check the records and you'll see I'm right.
Funnily enough, three other leading referees either retired or announced their retirement at the end of the 2008/9 season. Styles (who was as bent as the proverbial nine-bob note) just retired, even though he didn't need to, citing the pressures of the job. Mike Riley was appointed head of PGMOB, even though there wasn't a vacancy at the time and Keith Hackett, the incumbent, wasn't best pleased. Steve Bennett also announced he would be working for the English Cricket Board equivalent to PGMOB in 12 months time.
Fast forward a few years to early 2012 and Mike Riley is about to come up to The Etihad to present a pilot for a roadshow that the PL are planning to do. The day before that, I got a phone call telling me that another dossier has been presented alleging referee corruption and this time I know for sure who funded it. At about the same time, Peter Walton (a ref we always had trouble with) went mid-season to the USA and Lee Mason was withdrawn from 2 of our games. 2 years later, well before he was eligible to, Howard Webb retired and went to PGMOB. I believe all three were named in that dossier, along with another referee who I've written about in this thread who retired last season, Chris Foy. I'm happy to name these because the person who compiled both those dossiers, a man called Jerry Bullivant, named them in his blog Football Is Fixed.
Read his entry for February 1st 2012 here:
http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co....pdated-max=2013-01-01T00:00:00Z&max-results=6
Incidentally, over three years on, that proposed roadshow has never taken place.
