I'm getting fed up with all the ridiculous decisions being made recently, some of which are completely contrary to the laws of the game. Yesterday was a case in point. First the Man City goal. Shorey was standing in the penalty area doing nothing much when Barry launched hinself towards the ball and clearly pushed him in the head before making contact with the ball. Pushing an opponent is explicitly banned by the laws yet no foul was given and the 'pundits' on Match of the Day agreed apparently because Shorey didn't jump. What law says he has to? Then the Arsenal match. First the Wigan player who stood over the ball at Arsenal free-kicks lining up the wall. A clearer example of a yellow card offence could hardly be found. He did it twice but nothing was done. Wilshere wagged his finger at the ref after one decision - this is clearly dissent but nothing was done. Then the penalty - there was lots of discussion on Match of the Day about whether there was contact and whether Walcott was entitled to go down. But none of the laws makes contact a foul, nor do they say anywhere that you have to go down on being fouled to get a decision. There was an even more absurd decision when Oxlade-Chamberlain pulled his foot back to take a shot and accidentally caught the leg of the defender running alongside him and was given a free kick. And handballs are now almost randomly either given or not depending on some unknown criteria as far as I can see. Two examples from the Wigan-Arsenal game: A Wigan player was challenging for a high ball - he completely lost the flight of it and it fell and hit his out-stretched arm - which he hadn't moved. This was given as handball. Whereas when Arsenal players in the penalty area twice clearly moved their hands towards the ball in flight nothing was given. When discussing these incidents the pundits keep going on about unnatural positions of the hands but the laws clearly say that this does not mean there is an infringement but specify it is the movement of the hand towards the ball that is the issue. Incidentally Bale being pushed in the penalty area yesterday was 'clearly not a penalty' according to the commentator and not even worthy of a discussion by the pundits which is odd because it was much more clear cut than the Walcott one. I think the laws on fouls need to be changed to make it clearer to everyone what actually comprises an offence. The current wording of 'careless' is worse than meaningless - it actually implies that a deliberate trip is not a foul (because it can't be careless if it is deliberate!). IMHO a foul should not include tangling legs when players are running close together. The rule on handballs should be very different in my view. I think any time the ball hits the hand it should be an indirect free kick and any time the hand moves towards the ball or is held away from the body and not withdrawn it should be a direct free kick. And refs should strictly enforce the 10 yards and dissent rule with yellow cards.
The standard of Refereeing is a footballing lottery these days, and such is the intense competitiveness of the league, championships, top 4 places and relegation can all be decided by inept, incompetent (and possibly favourable) Referees. We saw a 4 point swing between Spurs and Arsenal yesterday due to poor Refereeing decisions, a tale of 2 penalties, 1 given for Walnuts dive that shouldnt have been and 1 not given for a push on Bale that should have been. Add to that Carzorlas dive to win another penalty, then Arsenal have be gifted 4 extra points out their last 9 by Referees falling for diving. We saw it last year, had Spurs not had the comical Chris Foy refereeing their match at Stoke they would have comfortably won 3 deserved points and finished 3rd. Anybody who claims these things `even themselves out` is talking sheite.
The Barry goal? I'm not convinced that it's a foul, to be honest. I was surprised that it wasn't given as one, though. The Arsenal penalties? I honestly felt that Wigan's 3 claims were all more convincing than the one that was actually given. Very true about the inconsistency on handball. Bale v Walcott? Not sure how one's supposedly a clear-cut penalty and the other's not even worth debating. Neither was one, for me. Disagree about handball being indirect for non-intentional contact. Ref's need to pay more attention to unnatural position and come to some agreement on it. The rule's fine.
I would say the current rules are fine, but the standard of refs employed to force them are not upto standard. Also the human element of having to make a split decision with 30-70,000 fans watching you, millions on tv, 50 camera angles, means there is huge pressure on refs, too much pressure, which results in these inconsistant displays. If the rules are changed to make certain aspects clearer then players will take advantage, players already do whatever it takes to trick a ref, so is it any wonder we see so many dodgy decisons? As for the shorey incident, i agree it was a foul but because he bottled it, turned his back and invited the foul, none.of the pundits want to defend him....YET these same pundits say " if the player gets touched, he has a right to go down"........mixed messages and views from idiots with a mic.
I agree with everything you said PS It's all about consistency and when you can't even get that from one ref in one game, hoping for refs to show consistency across the board is futile. Personally I don't think Barry's goal should be given as a foul but it is a foul in the rules and they usually get given. As for Walcott and Bale, it reminds me that the media and pundits need to get their stories straight when they're talking about diving. If you think that a dive is when a player goes over when and could have tried to stay on their feet it's a dive, this happens several times in every game but if you want to criticise it fine. If you think it's only a dive when the player goes over before the contact or without contact then that's fine too. What annoys me about people talking about diving is that they'll say on one situation that they "have a right to go down" and then "he went down easy there" for another, you can't just change your mind either both are a dive or neither are. Personally I though that whilst Jerome was running a risk by trying to make a challenge there Bale went over more because he lost his own balance and the appeal was frustration more than anything else, whilst Walcott went down like he was shot after he basically mule kicked Beausejour. No foul in either case for me.
And I can just imagine the discussion on here if we had had a player sent off like either Cole or Gibson in the Spammers game. Totally ludicrous refereeing as neither 'offence' seemed to have any element of intent or premeditation. Another thing that bugs me is the number of referees who chicken out at post-match review situations - compounding their original (honest) mistakes in the belief that to admit an error will count against them.
One thing that really annoys me is when these pundits say something like "it all evens it out over the course of a season"... which is so lame but usually goes without comment and is spouted so often that it is taken as true by most if not many. There is absolutely no "rule" that this happens and most certainly it doesn't. When leagues are decided by the odd point or three, any poor decision which changes the result of a match should be rightly condemned, not written off as "well they'll get one in their favour in some other match" because patently it isn't true. What is true though is that decisions don't balance out and that affects the final league positions and has consequences, but nobody wants to deal with that because it's either too complicated or too likely to upset the FA's favourites (or those they haven't got the bottle to go up against). As an earlier poster said, Arsenal have caught us as much by refereeing decisions as any footballing reason and that can't be right.
The disallowed Swansea goal today is another daft one. The Manu U defender clearly ran into Michu on purpose when he saw De Guzman was getting through. Never a foul in a million years.
As long as I can remember (and that's a long time) refs have been the butt of criticism. I don't think I have ever been to a game where the ref is not lambasted for some reason or other. It's always been a difficult job because it can never be an exact science. In the PL it's even harder because of the pace of the game the cynical cheating by players and as others have said by the massive spotlight. The media loves referees because it is so easy to look smart in hindsight over many decisions and they just LOVE controversy. I was shouting at the ref yesterday for what I perceived to be a bias against Spurs. I doubt that it was it was just his decisions in a split second of time, and NO replay. The best referee I have ever seen is Pierluigi Collina he was truly amazing. Kept the game flowing was not taken in by diving and very very few errors in judgement. Others have tried to follow his example. Webb and Clattenberg both try to let the game flow and are therefore at greater risk of making mistakes. I agree with your OP, PS some clarification of rules would help they tend to be interpreted by people like Platini with an agenda. The more complex the rules the more difficult the job, so simplification has to be the answer.
Collina was a great ref, but even he started to believe his own press towards the end as I recall and he became bigger than the games he was officiating. Agree about the subjective nature of our opinions but as mentioned above, I think that the failure to more readily admit mistakes is their biggest error of judgement and one that does more damage to the general reputation of officials.
that was a foul, Evans wasnt even running at the time and Michu blocked him off, not to mention RVP was fouled before their goal and wasnt given. Rooney could have been sent off though
Just to clarify - I didn't mean to criticise the refs - its more that I think they have to enforce ambiguous rules with little help from the authorities which puts them under too much pressure and leads to mistakes.
I understood you to be saying that, my post was just trying to look at the difficulties faced by refs. Relayer don't forget there was a time when the ref said; I am always right even when I am wrong and that was accepted as part of the game not without a few moans of course. The media has turned refereeing in to part of the show, and more and more refs are starting to believe that they are.
That's not really a recent thing Spurf although it has accelerated in recent years, but years ago we had guys like Clive Thomas eager to bask in the limelight. Do you remember Roger Kirkpatrick, a ref who looked like someone straight out of a Dickens novel.
I completely agree with the sentiment of your post, but I particularly agree with the point made above. The whole nonsense row over diving, has now encouraged pundits and the media alike to claim that contact = a foul. Have they forgotten what the game of football is? A contact sport. This particularly infuriated me with the Torres incident earlier this season. Torres was booked for diving, and for some bizarre reason, when the referee has made the correct decision to clamp down on diving, the pundits decide it was a foul because 'there was contact'. Absolute nonsense, in a time where cheating needs to be stamped out, we should have been applauding that referee. On a side note, has anyone noticed how we rarely get awarded penalties? When was the last time Spurs even had a penalty? Yet teams like Arsenal and Chelsea seem to get 2 a game.
It would help if we occasionally got into the box!!! How many shots from range did we have yesterday??? lol
Now you remind me, the long sideburns. Recent is relative OS but yes I suppose as soon as they were on television it all changed.
so its okay for swansea to defend nearly all game but when stoke do it we all moan. swansea came for a point aganst us and today secound half they just sat back
