Picture, if you will, the following scenario.
When watching a Premier League game, aired on BT Sport, you have an inkling that Team A, let’s say Chelsea, are gaining the upper hand. So you head to the relevant football betting market and back them to score next.
Five minutes later and your hunch proves correct, but wait a minute because VAR has intervened, casting your good fortune in doubt. It seems the goal-scorer was offside in the build-up but at this juncture it’s hard to say for sure.
As uncertainty mounts BT dutifully head over to their analyst for such moments, Peter Walton, who confidently asserts that the goal will be ruled out.
On hearing this you celebrate, knowing the goal will most definitely be given and you’re quids in.
Given how often Walton’s advice and opinion has been sought by his employer down the years, it is reasonable to expect that he gauges the situation correctly most of the time.
After all, here is an ex-Premier League referee of nine years standing. Here is an individual who purports to know the rules of the game inside and out.
Even if we’re being generous in our estimation, it’s absolutely fair to expect the 63-year-old to be accurate in his assessment some of the time. After all, even a stopped clock is bang on the money twice a day.
Yet bafflingly, staggeringly, and to some considerable and legitimate annoyance on our part, this well-paid expert someone manages to be hopelessly wrong virtually all of the time.
Indeed, it’s almost admirable how consistent he is in being proven wrong and you suspect his strike-rate would improve significantly if he simply flipped a coin off-camera.
A sizable reason for his constant wrongness derives from Walton repeatedly backing up the decision made by the on-field official, even when that decision is clearly an error of judgement.
In fact, there is an advert that Walton appears in, where he sends himself up in this regard, for his default bias towards his former colleagues.
Let’s pause for one moment and consider this.
BT’s football coverage is subscription-only meaning viewers shell out a set fee each month to watch games they air. To provide the best coverage and offer value for money, BT then employs an authority on such matters to help untangle the complicated process of officiating and VAR to the laymen masses.
Only he’s not an authority on such matters at all. He is an anti-expert, there to simply defend his profession, often when colliding head-on with conclusive logic.
Walton is then further remunerated by making fun of this fact in an advertisement.
That Johnny Rotten line springs to mind. The one about getting cheated.
Even on the very rare occasions when he sides with the studio over the referee, Walton’s success rate at being unsuccessful persists.
In early 2021, Manchester City scored a contentious goal that saw Rodri come back from an offside position to relieve an opposition defender of the ball. It was an important goal too, shortening City’s betting odds in the title race..
On witnessing this perceived transgression Walton was as outraged as the panel, claiming the decision to be farcical and just plain unfair.
That was until the Premier League contacted the BT studio during a commercial break to explain why the goal was very much within the laws of the game as it stood.
Cue a dramatic change of heart from Walton, and if this was fair enough in context, here’s what he had to say during his pious reappraisal.
“The rule has been in for a while now so for managers and players to not know it…they need to.”
So do experts, Peter. So do well-paid experts.
*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to AP Photo*
FIRST PUBLISHED: 6th March 2023
