In Switzerland Fifa is on the edge of being blown up. In England….?

As you can see, any home team would be happy with Atkinson, Oliver, Pawson, Moss or Attwell, overseeing their games since they are most likely to get a win under such referees.   Any away team will be hoping for Marriner or Friend for their matches.

Of course, if each Premier League team saw each referee twice, once at home and once away, this wouldn’t matter too much.  But Arsenal had some referees five or six times.  Get Marriner for away games (57.9% of matches are away wins) and life is good.  Get Atwell (20% of games are away wins) and your away form can be screwed.

And why does this system continue when it would be so easy to have a few more referees so that each team only got each referee twice per season, once at home and once away?

It is a subject the English media ignore.  Just like it ignores the dramatic court case happening in Switzerland in terms of Fifa and what appears to be the corruption of the entire Swiss legal system by Fifa.

Now here I cautiously say “appears to be” because a) we are still waiting for the case to come to an end, b) once more there is no coverage of it by the English media and c) quite honestly the level of corruption that appears to be alleged of the entire Swiss legal system, seems so overwhelming I can’t quite get my head around it.

But some people can and Süd-Deutsche Zeitung (part of a network of investigators who did lots of work on a number of scandals of our time including of course the Panama Papers) really are on top of it.  So when they ask the question, “Did the Swiss legal system deliberately prevent Michel Platini from becoming Fifa president – and thus put Gianni Infantino in office?” Europe takes notice.  Although England doesn’t.

We are awaiting the answer on that one, and beside it, the issue of why there is no balance between the home and away wins of different referees seems trite and trivial.

But there is a point that links them, which we have often covered in the past: that of Gaslighting.

What the incredibly complex court case in Switzerland is about is the alleged absolute corruptive power of Fifa is so vast that Fifa appears to have corrupted the entire legal system of one country.

What the referee figures are about is either the corruption of the entire refereeing system in the Premier League or the gross incompetence of PGMO – and in England we don’t talk about that we talk about either.

Instead we talk about transfers, 97% of which will never happen.  It is called Gaslighting.

Even the repeated failures of the FA, from its failure to keep proper financial records (which is why we now have the Community Shield and not the Charity Shield) to its inability to organise a safe Euro Final at Wembley, are never talked about.  It is above the law and it is not to blame for anything.

And that is the core issue here: the refusal of the media in England to deal with certain topics.

The court case in Switzerland is reaching a conclusion and the result could be explosive for world football although I have my doubts as to whether even then the English media will cover it.  As for referees – apparently like Covid it is just a fantasy subject.

The agreement that certain football topics will not be talked about in England is all-pervading.  Gaslighting is winning.