Fixland Football News

March 18th
Breking Fix news are no longer news

What did we talk last time about the match fixing situation? An update nevertheless. A short one and I am doing my best in trying to avoid spreading any rumours or making innocent men guilty. The local media is all over the fixing scandal, too bad that most of them have no clue what they are talking about, especially when referring to "asian markets" which seem to represent all evil.

It all started with the arrest of a known Singaporean match fixer Wilson Raj Perumal on his way back from Rovaniemi a few weeks ago.

There were big market moves in RoPS matches, but this is really no news at all. It has been happening for years and it has been known that there are/have been rotten apples at Rovaniemi. Some of them have been kicked out earlier without a trial, all players in question origniate from Eastern Europe.

This time Perumal´s  connections at Rovaniemi were found - a Zambian player, one of many in the club.

4 other RoPS players got arrested a week later, one Georgian, the rest Zambians.

Two brothers - also of Zambian origin - got picked up by the police for questioning. Today they play at OPS and HJK respectively but last season their club was AC Oulu. Well, looks like these fellows are not going to be playing here never again.

Tampere United are questioned of their connections with this Singaporean mastermind - did they receive surprise funding all of a sudden? At least the Hungarian test players they had for example at Lahti Cup seem to be connected to Singapore as well. TamU owners say they have no idea of anything - which can not be all true.

There is a lot of talk, assumptions, guesses and accusations in the air. Some of them wrong, some right.


The good news out of all is this that the season 2011 is going to a clean one. The main culprits are under investigation or arrested, and with all this talk and surveillance fixing matches is unlikely to be a very attractive option. I have said it before and I repeat, not all big market moves in Finland in the past or in the future mean that the match is fixed, it is more of a question of a less liquid market with only a few team news in any understandable language. I can tell that by analyzing the results of the matches where there was a big lump of money invested on one of the teams. In many cases the "wise" money appeared to be unwise or very unlucky. They had just been following the rumours and then each other.

Season 2011
Of course it would be soon nice to know which teams take part in the league and which ones at lower levels. The case of AC Oulu has been going for months, it should had been decided in January whether they can play in the league or not . The FA and the League are very toothless organizations, they pretend to follow their own rules but when talked back they rather hide and hope all bad things just disapperaring. Hey idiots, the league starts in next month, any chance of making up your mind some day? At the moment it is basically cristal clear that Oulu will be at Ykkönen instead of the League, which would mean that both top leagues consist of 13 clubs each. Nice.

There will be new names in the match fixing scandal sooner or later, but I would like to concentrate again in the core business and analyze the games. Tomorrow league cup quarter finals in the afternoon, and I will come up tomorrow with match previews and possibly betting ideas if the clubs still exist tomorrow. I have an idea of a valuable bet and a strategy for a couple of matches but of course need team news and odds to see if my insight is right.

HJK - KuPS
Honka - Jaro
TamU - TPS
JJK - Inter.

Enjoy your Friday and weekend!