A few thoughts on this "fixed" match

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"An expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he had "not seen anything like this in 10 years of working in the industry" and expressed concern for "the integrity of the English game"."

I'm not anonymous, but then neither am I an expert, but I doubt very much that the Asian markets have been taking bets on English second tier games for 10 years. So I doubt this claim is dramatic as it seems.

"In this case the handicap made an enormous, unexplained swing"

Maybe so. But how big was the market? I haven't seen anywhere how much money would actually be needed to create this "enormous, unexplained swing".

Looking at the match itself I didn't see it as fixed in any way. And, remember, the claim is that the money (however much it was) was on Norwich to win. Lita was going to score and Carroll made a decision to stop him. Surely if his purpose was to "let" Norwich win he would have let Lita score, and kept himself on the pitch to carry on with his dirty work. The idea that the best way for Carroll to "fix"the match was to remove himself from the action as soon as he could seems bonkers to me.

The only other incident of note was the Derby winner. The money says that this was not part of a "fix". Quite the reverse. And what happened? Marshall came out of his area to clear the ball - something he has done several times this season - including in the first half of that very match. And got it wrong. That's all - he was probably trying to get the ball back up their end as quick as he could. No fix there.

Because actually no-one has showed any evidence of a "fix" at all. So what caused the swing in the markets? Norwich City are very much a second-half team this season. We have taken, if you like, 7 points in the first halves of games, 13 in the second (before the Derby game). Even MK Dons got their winner in the first half. Looking at the odds that have been quoted in the papers (4.5 - 1, or favoured by 1/4 of a goal) they seem to me to be overly generous. Recognising that some (and we don't know how many) punters have spotted value and enough money (but we don't know how much) has gone on to us.

Based on what's been published so far, I don't see any "fix".

Posted By: Reg Presley on October 18th 2008 at 08:48:02

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