Pigeonho said:
My own cat meme. I've made it!
Those stats prove absolutely zero, too. Like i've asked a thousand times before, have each of the refs who have given those decisions been given a letter, email, (can't be that, too traceable), or any other form of communication which states 'make sure those ***** fail'? Were they given it last season, the season when we won the league? What about the season before when we won the cup, and this season too when history is likely to repeat itself? If there is an agenda, it's not working well is it? And please don't say look at the league table, because we only have ourselves to blame for that.
The margins between those stats are quite slim anyway.
Can only admire the effort gone into it though, (genuinely).
I've saved that meme ;-)
The problem with this opinion is that it only allows for two options: either there is a full blown conspiracy where there is a specific, concentrated and concerted effort to thwart City's progress or there is no bias whatsoever and it is all a figment of everybody's imagination and the product of paranoid delusion.
I think the number of serious posters who take the view that Mr Big (whoever he might be) sat down in a room filled with cigar smoke and came up with a 10 point plan to derail the City project which was then widely circulated to FIFA, the premier league, the FA, UEFA, the media and the referees association is zero. The fact remains that the evidence that the rags get preferential treatment to us in a variety of ways is overwhelming and incontrovertible.
I take four points from the OP to illustrate this:
(a) not a single penalty has been given against the rags in over 2880 minutes of league football this season
(b) not a single rag player has been sent off this season even though we have players sent off every 930 minutes, Chelsea every 1440 minutes and Arsenal every 720 minutes
(c) not a single referee has awarded City more free kicks than the teams we are playing. By contrast 9 out of 15 referees have awarded the rags more free kicks than their opposition.
(d) although we are 4th in the table of number of yellow cards given for fouls against our team (60), and top of the fouls per yellow card table in that a yellow card is shown to the teams we are playing for on average every 5.9 fouls, only once has a second yellow card has been shown to one of our opponents in the games we have played (Pienaar at everton - the other red was the straight red shown early away at arsenal).
If the accusation that the rags get preferential treatment in a number of ways (and we get the opposite) holds water - and the evidence for it is overwhelming - there are a number of plausible explanations. Personal grudges, match fixing, bias, fear of giving controversial decisions, vested interests, career advancement and so on have all been discussed. Probably different instances of bias or preferential treatment are the effects of different causes - there may be some instances of referees being influenced by match fixing but it is quite unlikely that they all are, whereas for some personal bias on the basis of the team they support may be the explanation but it is unlikely that that is always the explanation. For some it might be a question of not wanting to antagonise vested interests and powerful forces. The pisscan regularly berates officials that make decisions he does not like. You never know what goes on behind the scenes but last season after Clattenberg sent off Evans in the 6-1, he didn't referee the rags again. Most referees want to take charge of the big games, like the Manchester derby, or Rags v Dippers/Chelsea/Arsenal and if you give too much against the rags that seems to limit the chances you will be appointed to one of those games.
But the implication that there is no bias, no preferential treatment at all is just ostrich like, and the further implication that anyone who thinks otherwise is paranoid and deluded is just insulting - especially given the time and trouble taken to research the issue, and to provide and evidential platform for their opinions.
