Duncan Wright

The FA have provided an update on the Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Luke Ayling verbal altercation from last night Following a review of the referee's report and speaking to Boro, the player (Ayling) chose not to pursue the allegation so the matter is now closed #Saintsfc #Boro

With David Coote now bringing child-porn shame on PGMOL, it is high time to bring to the fore all the reasons why it is an illegitimate organisation that must be replaced as the on-field judiciary of English football. Enough is enough. 1) No diversity of personnel, to the extent all are white, middle-aged men from the same regional population centre (see first picture below) run by “one of their own” without any effective external oversight (see here: x.com/matt5cott/stat…); 2) A former Managing Director who spent 12 years in the role, far in excess of all reasonable term limits for a position with such supreme responsibility (and a man whose own refereeing career was questionable at best - see here; x.com/_arsenalmuse/s…); 3) A current “Chief Refereeing Officer” with a particular penchant for/envy of money (see here: x.com/dailyafc/statu…); 4) No effective media scrutiny (see here: espn.co.uk/soccer/insider… and second picture below) due to self-censorship amid understandable concerns over expensive litigation defence and access 5) A membership drawn from low-calibre narcissists (contrast the teachers, doctors and lawyers on the UEFA roll with a former abbatoir worker like Mike Dean); 6) At least one competition protagonist allegedly engaged in widespread corrupt practice involving the financial subversion of that competition’s integrity (see here: bbc.co.uk/sport/football…); 7)(i) a betting market turning over in excess of £1bn a year in liquidity on matches through one legal exchange operator alone and 7)(ii) an illegal betting market with untold other billions at stake in competition outcomes; 8) an offshore financial system facilitating unseen flows of money that stems from secrecy jurisdictions such as that where the sovereign-wealth-owned permachampions of England are based (see here: insideworldfootball.com/2023/02/07/mat…); 9) routine appointments of match officials with clear and obvious conflicts of interest (see third picture below); 10)(i) a remote decision-making entity beyond all scrutiny (premierleague.com/en/news/1297446) and 10)(i) which repeatedly ignores its own competition’s central directives (see here: premierleague.com/en/news/4082251) 11) referees (previously) permitted to take lucrative side hustles in jurisdictions belonging to the sovereign-wealth owners of certain Premier League clubs (a practice even PGMOL now recognises is a conflict of interest too far - see here: nytimes.com/athletic/49227…); 12) a history of being targeted for match-fixing (see here for chilling details of just one of very many alleged plots: sportbible.com/football/premi…); 13) Morally bankrupt match officials (e.g. Coote) whose egregious off-field conduct is either unmonitored or ignored; 14) An absence of an integrity unit (consider the Tennis Integrity Unit and the cricket's Anti-Corruption Unit in other sports that acknowledge the problem; 15) The presence of kompromat for officials (see fourth and fifth pictures below and pictures in my reply to this post). Together these factors (and others) represents an egregious governance risk when it unilaterally oversees the on-field justice system in football. There is so much at stake, financially and reputationally for the participants of the Premier League, and financially for those who bet on it (the unregulated Asian markets being important money-laundering centres for international OCGs), that there are enormous incentives to subvert the integrity of the competition. And the weakest link in it all is the look-at-me man in the middle who gets paid a pittance relative to the players he officiates. Other sports (tennis, cricket) face up to this reality and have integrity units to combat it. Where’s the PL’s? It doesn’t even have external oversight of the referees. This litany of governance failures is appalling. Make no mistake, the link between bad governance and corruption is explicit (see here: unodc.org/e4j/en/anti-co…). Under these circumstances, it is vanishingly unlikely that corruption would *not* thrive. This is not "conspiracy theory" (as I am frequently accused of for being a Cassandra to this cause). It is a sacred duty for us all: to apply necessary scrutiny to a powerful and unaccountable organisation. The very foundations of English football are at risk due to the integrity threat PGMOL represents. It is high time we rise up and demand change. We all owe it to our game. “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” John Stuart Mill