Inside the FA’s shambolic spot-fixing case against Lucas Paqueta – and how David Moyes tore apart the feeble investigation, writes IAN HERBERT

Tempting though it might be to infer that Nick de Marco, a brilliant Blackstone Chambers KC and scourge of the British football establishment, has masterminded another extraordinary acquittal in the case of the FA v Lucas Paqueta, the case’s written findings reveal that immense intellect had certainly not been required. 

You and I could have driven a coach and horses through the FA’s feeble case ourselves, armed with a laptop and access to a few basic football data sites.

Take your pick of the holes in this case, because the entire flimsy apparatus had the qualities of a sieve. A little like the one the FA put to an arbitration hearing with Nottingham Forest^[1] which they had lost 24 hours earlier, in what has been a desultory week for the supposed custodians of integrity in our national game.

The FA’s experts went to a go-to stat source for many journalists, Stats Perform’s Opta database, to attempt to demonstrate that Paqueta was committing more fouls than the general average – and so prove that he had deliberately secured four bookings and was a spot-fixer.

A cursory examination of multiple free-to-view football stat websites could have told them that he was actually picking up yellow cards less frequently in the main season under suspicion than at other moments in his own career. I estimate it would have taken MRKT Insights, the analytics firm Paqueta’s lawyers employed, a morning’s work to establish this fact – which, of course, they did. ‘Many suppliers offer data. We offer data analytics,’ the firm tells us on its website.

I really can’t speak highly enough of Stats Perform, the data people used by FA, who regularly supply me and many of my colleagues with information on patterns of play and individual performances in football, under a commercial arrangement. But enhancing the work of sportswriters like me is one thing. Supporting a legal case which could effectively end a player’s career – and halted Paqueta’s anticipated 2023 move to Manchester City^[2] – is something else entirely.

Lucas Paqueta was sensationally cleared in July of four counts of deliberately picking up yellow cards to influence betting matches

As revealed by Daily Mail Sport, the Brazilian is in talks with his legal team over suing the FA over the damning flaws exposed in the case

Stats Perform’s ‘Integrity Services’ operation (SPIS) – which used the familiar basic metrics of fouls committed, average tackles, defensive duels and fouls – was ‘looking for statistical evidence to fit the FA’s case’ and had fallen victim to confirmation bias, the written findings declared. 

But it was the FA’s unfathomable decision not to call independent witnesses for the most important parts of the case which has most astonished those I have spoken to who have built and presented cases in high-profile FA disciplinary hearings like this one.

‘It shows the lack of quality of investigation at the FA,’ one former FA disciplinary hearing member tells me. ‘Every person involved in a financial investigation of this kind knows that every document and statement must be independently corroborated. It requires independent expert witnesses who, if something is put to them which doesn’t help the prosecution, can deal with it. If the FA had done their job, they would have had that expert in place. An investigation like this must be beyond reproach.’

As their key witness, the FA used their own employee and betting integrity officer Tom Astley, who was clearly motivated to get Paqueta convicted of deliberately picking up yellow cards.

For my source, and others inside the game, the absence of an independent expert witness exposes a complacency within the FA disciplinary system. ‘They’ve got a point where they think they’re invincible,’ he says. ‘The whole thing reeks of complacency.’

The humiliation of being ordered to pay substantial costs to Nottingham Forest, having been found to have re-appointed a barrister ‘biased’ against them, Graeme McPherson KC, for a second appeal hearing about the club’s allegations about a VAR official, seems to support the disciplinary court member’s case. Forest asked that McPherson, one of the FA’s panel of lawyers, not be used. The use of this rotating panel of self-selecting judges is too cosy, some insiders feel.

For some supporters of West Ham and Forest, the FA’s determination to pursue their clubs smacks of bias against lower sides. They feel that the FA would not be so determined to go after Manchester United or Liverpool, for example.

Insiders tell me they don’t see it this way. ‘I don’t subscribe to the argument,’ another source who has played a part in hearings tells me. He believes the loss of managers who instill fear into the governing body has changed a previous reluctance to go after the big teams. ‘I do think there was a time in the past when the FA hierarchy were scared of United and the “Fergie factor” and United got a sweeter deal, though I think it’s less the case now.’

David Moyes successfully took the case against Paqueta apart when he was West Ham boss

The manager the FA disciplinary department came up against was West Ham’s David Moyes – who, though superficially less fearsome than Ferguson, took the case against Paqueta apart. 

‘He plays in a high-risk, high-reward way and he does, therefore, have a tendency to give the ball away,‘ Moyes said in his written submission about Paqueta which explained why he was booked a lot. ‘He would work hard to get it back but sometimes make a poor choice or be a little rash.’

Testifying orally, Moyes was indignant to be asked by an FA lawyer to read an SPIS report from one of the games under suspicion. ‘I don’t see any point in me reading something if it’s from people who are only analysts and have no football experience,’ he said.

Moyes, the star witness, was being widely acclaimed by West Ham fans on Thursday for a cool, intelligent, analytical, professional approach. Qualities scandalously missing in a governing body which could be millions of pounds poorer – to the potential detriment of the grassroots game – because of their ineptitude.