Mugatu said:
Oh good, another new "Clattenburg is bent" thread. We've not had one for 4 minutes now.
I agree with you that knee-jerk 'blame the ref, if we lost he must be bent' threads aren't really helpful, but you are somebody who has reffed in the game, so let me ask you this: do you think that Premier League football is compeltely free from corruption?
We know Clattenberg has had financial difficulties. We know he gives odd decisions, we know that there was some very heavy last minute betting on Chelsea last night when, to a man, the press box thought it would be a 3-1 win for us. Suspicious, maybe, but I would agree that to conclude from this alone that Clattenberg was nobbled is not so much getting 2+2 to equal 5 as saying 2+2= 3,527.
But whilst there is no actual evidence of anything more than ineptitude on Clattenberg's part last night, we do
know as irrefutable fact that corruption closely linked to bettinghas deeply infected international cricket. Three pakistani cricketers have just been convicted and jailed for precisely that. We know in the past that referees have been bribed - Leeds were cheated in the final of (I think) the Cup Winners Cup in the 70s by a ref who had taken bribes. We know what happened in Italy.
Why is English football immune? Why are English referees immune?
Myself, I have an open mind on the issue. I don't think there is any actual evidence of corruption, but I don't think it is overly cynical to accept that it may take place. Where there's brass, there's muck, and there's a lot of brass in the PL at the moment. But if you are personally convinced that there is no corruption, as a poster who can string together an intelligent sentence I'd be interested to know why.