Quite often people ask me why I watch Russian football.

A substantial part of my reasoning is entirely professional - people like The Football Ramble offer me columns off the back of it.

But the Russian league also has plenty to recommend it from a footballing perspective. It´s rare that I ever sit in front of a Russian Premier League game and halfway through begin asking myself - “Why do I do this?”

However, this week I found myself in just such a position.

Sport and betting have made rather uncomfortable bedfellows in the last few days, as the example of the Pakistan cricket team has shown. But Russia has had its own, equally unappetising, sports betting scandal this weekend - and it´s one that really does make you question the integrity of the Russian game.

Let´s begin this unedifying saga. Early last week Russia´s betting companies began offering prices on the 19th round of matches in the Russian Premier League, to be played over the weekend.

Of all the ties, one in particular stood out. Fifth-placed Rostov, riding high under the management of former USSR striker Oleg Protasov, travelled to the Siberian city of Perm to face Amkar, languishing just one place above the relegation places.

Rostov - who made headlines in 2007 after they appointed the Russian league´s first English manager, Paul Ashworth - have been impressive this season, grabbing notable home wins against CSKA and Spartak. They look good for a shot at the Europa League places.

Under the tutelage of vampish Montenegrin manager Miodrag Bozovic, Amkar performed miracles to finish fourth in the 2008 season, entering qualifying for the Europa League where they ultimately lost to Fulham. Bozovic´s departure in 2009 has led to a steady slide in Amkar´s results, and now under Tajik Rashid Rakhimov they are locked in a relegation battle.

And yet despite the apparent gulf between the two sides the bookies had Saturday´s game down as a nailed-on home win. Prices started at 1.28 (about 2/7) for an Amkar victory, 5.5 (9/2) the draw and a whopping 10.5 (19/2) for Rostov to take the points home.

Other bookmakers opted not to offer such ridiculous prices and stopped taking bets on the game altogether.

And so the rumour mill began to grind, as the press and football supporters across Russia asked whether the odds being offered might indicate that the match had been fixed. The Russian Football Premier League (RFPL) and Russian Football Union (RFU), top-flight football´s governing bodies in the country, made clear they would be keeping a close eye on the game.

Finally Saturday´s game came around and - yes, you´ve guessed it - Amkar ran out 1-0 winners in a very lacklustre contest. In fairness to Rostov, who only mustered four attempts on goal in the game, none of them on target, they were without eight first-teamers due to injury or suspension. But it´s difficult to shake off the impression that something about the match in Perm just wasn´t right.

You can make your own judgement about whether the match might have been fixed by watching the highlights here. Or, if you have the time and inclination, you can watch the entire, coma-inducing 90 minutes here.

One thing is for sure - Russia´s footballing authorities will not be taking further action. The RFPL´s Boris Larin told the press that “there is no reason to doubt that the game was played honestly.” He explained that, though Rostov´s performance was “weak”, this was down to the number of players missing from the matchday squad.

Stories such as this, perhaps unsurprisingly in a country recently ranked the 143rd most corrupt in the world (out of 173), are usually met with a shrug. “Eto Rossiya” (“This is Russia”) is the commonest response I get when I ask Russian sports fans whether they are shocked at such hair-raising tales.

For the weekend´s game in Perm is just the latest in a long line of questionable results in Russia´s football leagues. Just a week previously unusual betting patterns were noticed around a First Division game between Volga, a club from Nizhny Novgorod, and SKA-Energiya from the far-Eastern city of Khabarovsk. To illustrate, with home side SKA-Energiya leading 1-0 the odds on a Volga victory actually shortened, while even at 1-1 the odds on a home win were 22/1. Volga ended the game 2-1 winners. See the goals here.

Indeed, in a newspaper interview last week, one betting firm representative stated that he believed around two to three Russian Premier League matches per season were fixed. Moreover, he felt that the results of around 25-30% of matches in Russia´s lower divisions were pre-determined, while in Division 2 “South” (coincidentally - or perhaps not - home to many teams from the unstable North Caucasus region) the rate of match-fixing was as high as 35-40%.

Though by no means unique, the questionable outcome of the Amkar-Rostov game has nevertheless provoked a bout of soul-searching among Russia´s footballing fraternity.

Journalist Slava Malamud, who reports for Russian daily newspaper Sport Express from the United States, was particularly forthright in his opinion on the state of Russian football.

“These two circus troupes conducted this pre-arranged result in front of the watching nation, having long decided what was to happen,” Malamud wrote on his blog. “It´s best not to speak about the view of the nominated officials for the match - their view has always been in accord with the maxim ´See No Evil´.”

Meanwhile respected columnist Igor Rabiner echoed the idea that Russia´s footballing authorities have made it too easy for match-fixing to take place. “For a long time in our football nobody is afraid of anything. Clubs, referees, whoever, do not doubt that whatever the case they can issue the all-important phrase: ´Where´s the proof?´”

And in a seemingly strange twist, some journalists have even expressed the opinion that, with the lack of resolve shown by the RFPL and RFU, the sole remaining defenders of the integrity of the Russian game are bookmakers. Certainly, Russia´s bookmakers are signatories to UEFA´s so-called “early warning system” which alerts the authorities to unusual betting patterns on football matches. But it says much about the depths to which many believe Russian football has sunk that people would rather put their trust in betting companies than in the authorities to root out the game´s bad apples.

It would be nice to think that the bad publicity surrounding Amkar-Rostov might finally force the authorities to clamp down on match-fixing in Russia. I won´t be holding my breath though.