Lazy media sucked in by Riley's propaganda

One could be forgiven for thinking that refereeing was brilliant and at its best ever, that is if one lazily believe all ones reads that is written by some rather lazy journalists out there.  Many of these so called journalists appear not to have time or brainpower to do any decent investigative work or analysis of their own, so they are being sucked in by the same old tired propaganda from Mike Riley's PGMO.  The headlines read:


 "Referees winning the percentage game whatever managers and media say"

Apparently we just have not right to question these 'impressive statistics on officials' accuracy' and anyone doubting them must be cooking up  a 'half-baked conspiracy theory'.  Interestingly the claimed statistic of 99.3% of offside decisions being correct is not backed up by UntoldArsenal's analysis of these decisions.  UntoldArsenal's referee statistics make for far gloomier reading that Mike Riley's.

One can see just how weak Riley and the PGMO's case is by the claim that the 'Respect' campaign is working because bookings for dissent are down!  This was perfectly demonstrated yesterday by Mark Halsey complete inability to punish Liverpool for some really blatant dissent and intimidation of officials.  It is clear that dissent bookings are down because referees have stopped punishing dissent on the whole, things are so bad that if dissent were punished we would sometimes not see a single player left on the field.

I have already done a fair amount of research on Mike Riley and the hidden non-transparent workings of the PGMO.  It is clear that whatever ones theories on referee selection or referee performance, the workings of PGMO are hidden from public view and their propaganda cannot be trusted.  Apparently 92% of the 'major' decisions are correct, but the important thing is according to who?  Well, it's apparently down to the match delegates who watch in real time from the stands, this system is obviously entirely useless and the very opposite of objective in judging the performance of referees.  UntoldArsenal have done an excellent review of how flawed these statistics from the PGMO are, it's well worth a read.

The great irony is that so called 'professional' journalists are invariably quick to criticise amateur bloggers, yet these 'professionals' are repeatedly caught with their pants down around their ankles reproducing propaganda from various official bodies as if it were unquestionable fact.  Anyone with a decent brain and a bit of training can tell you that you should always be sceptical of data, one should always look at where the date has come from, the methodology of its gathering, its interpretation and any flaws in this whole process.  The mainstream media have yet again been caught producing some very lazy and shoddy work, and then when this is pointed out to them they don't like it.

It is clear that so much done by Riley, the PGMO and referees is completely hidden from the public and the media.  Whether anything dodgy is going on is unknown, it is just rather obvious that we cannot know either way, too much has not been revealed about the inner workings of the PGMO.  The latest round of PGMO propaganda adds nothing to the arguments despite what certain lazy hacks have trotted out in their columns, referee selection and standards in the Premier League are a story that will simply run and run.