SPOOKYISDEAD

▪️ Role in Tottenham's new build-up ▪️ New position that benefits Maddison ▪️ Being a Mezzala, shadow striker and winger @jamesallcott on why Dejan Kulusevski is the Premier League's most unique player. 🇸🇪

Sport has a corruption problem. A helicopter carrying the former South Africa cricket captain, Hansie Cronje, fell out of the sky, killing him, after he tried to stop fixing matches. Tennis has had its scandals too. Cricket and tennis responded by setting up the Anti-Corruption Unit and Tennis Integrity Unit. Football has a betting problem. Look at Ivan Toney. Look at how many players are bankrupt within five years of retiring. Fifty percent. That’s not down to bad investments alone. I happen to know for a fact that a household-name former referee was internally reprimanded by PGMOL for breaching betting regulations. Now we have a PGMOL whose referees make up their own interpretations of the laws from week to week with no regard to consistency. We have a PGMOL that engages in open conflicts of interest like appointing Liverpool-based and Liverpool-supporting match officials in a game involving their next opposition. With inevitable consequences. We have a PGMOL that draws its match officials almost exclusively from the north of England. Almost exclusively - to the point of the exceptions to this rule being tokenism - from white, working-class backgrounds. Contrast this with the teachers, lawyers and accountants who referee in Uefa competitions. This homogenous absence of diversity would be sanctioned in any corporate structure. We have a PGMOL whose once-effective governance function does not function at all after almost a dozen years of no-oversight, one-man rule by Mike Riley. Who replaced him? One of his closest mates, Howard Webb. See: x.com/matt5cott/stat…. Who watches these watchmen? Where is English football’s ACU and TIU? Where is the independent oversight of an organisation exposed to the biggest year-round sports-gambling market in the world? And one whose serial champions are being held to account for more than 100 alleged breaches of financial regulations? I am accused of conspiracy theory. There is nothing conspiratorial about identifying a clear and repeated failure of governance. This cancer will destroy the Premier League and it will destroy English football. Yet everyone cheers it on from the sidelines because it’s Arsenal bearing the brunt of it. It isn’t. It’s all of us. Because the game we all love is dying from within. 🔴⚪️

Sport has a corruption problem. A helicopter carrying the former South Africa cricket captain, Hansie Cronje, fell out of the sky, killing him, after he tried to stop fixing matches. Tennis has had its scandals too. Cricket and tennis responded by setting up the Anti-Corruption Unit and Tennis Integrity Unit. Football has a betting problem. Look at Ivan Toney. Look at how many players are bankrupt within five years of retiring. Fifty percent. That’s not down to bad investments alone. I happen to know for a fact that a household-name former referee was internally reprimanded by PGMOL for breaching betting regulations. Now we have a PGMOL whose referees make up their own interpretations of the laws from week to week with no regard to consistency. We have a PGMOL that engages in open conflicts of interest like appointing Liverpool-based and Liverpool-supporting match officials in a game involving their next opposition. With inevitable consequences. We have a PGMOL that draws its match officials almost exclusively from the north of England. Almost exclusively - to the point of the exceptions to this rule being tokenism - from white, working-class backgrounds. Contrast this with the teachers, lawyers and accountants who referee in Uefa competitions. This homogenous absence of diversity would be sanctioned in any corporate structure. We have a PGMOL whose once-effective governance function does not function at all after almost a dozen years of no-oversight, one-man rule by Mike Riley. Who replaced him? One of his closest mates, Howard Webb. See: x.com/matt5cott/stat…. Who watches these watchmen? Where is English football’s ACU and TIU? Where is the independent oversight of an organisation exposed to the biggest year-round sports-gambling market in the world? And one whose serial champions are being held to account for more than 100 alleged breaches of financial regulations? I am accused of conspiracy theory. There is nothing conspiratorial about identifying a clear and repeated failure of governance. This cancer will destroy the Premier League and it will destroy English football. Yet everyone cheers it on from the sidelines because it’s Arsenal bearing the brunt of it. It isn’t. It’s all of us. Because the game we all love is dying from within. 🔴⚪️