United fan in peace, but the following needs considering. If the Suarez biting incident had been spotted by the referee, the little scrote would have been sent off, and more than likely Chelsea would have gone away with the three points. Bearing in mind that the 2 remaining champions league places are being fought out by Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal, if at the end of the season, Chelsea miss out by 1 point, then the blatant foul that was missed by the referee could cost Chelsea 30 million in lost TV revenue. Any comments from Chelsea fans?
Those are the breaks unfortunately. Very annoyed about it of course but what can we do really?! We just have to expect the players to work even harder to ensure wins in our remaining games and better what Spurs do.
Very good point, but it is always the case that the punishment is not intended to compensate the wounded, but to deter the offender from repeat offences. The only way to address this miscarriage of justice is to deduct points and award them to the offended, which in turn opens up a whole new scenario regarding referees decisions. Let's just leave it the way it is for now or God know's what might happen.
Unfortunately, referees mistakes like the one you're referring to are vital to a club like Chelsea! If they happen in the Sunday under 15's local leagues they can all get showered and go about life as usual! At the front end of the Prem it can have calamitous results! Normally I'd be against the idea of ref's having access to camera playback like they have in top level cricket and tennis, but its things like this that make me wonder!
In this case it is not a referees mistake, he did not see it and was looking at the play/ball which had moved on from said incident, no one can blame the referee for this. There is only one culprit, only one victim, and as I have said before the only outcome of this, on a positive note is that the punishment is of sufficient magnitude to deter this, or similar happening again.
There is an extremely simple solution to ensure ALL possibility of such mistakes or missed offences EVER again happening. Bring in Technology. Rugby, Rugby League, Cricket and Tennis have it. Only the ludites at FIFA stand between justice and injustice. The question is why ???????????
The responses to the OP have been sensible. Aside from Suarez being on the pitch or not, Chelsea have another 37.5 games of football in which to make their claim for Champions League qualification. It is a common fallacy that referee mistakes towards the end of the season are somehow worse than those at the start of the season.
Agreed...if we complained that the terrible refereeing display v stoke last (he allowed a handball in the first goal stoke scored; refused a penalty for the most blatant shirt pull; sent off a spurs player and disallowed a goal for offside when the scorer was at least a yard onside) cost us 3rd place and ultimately cost us a CL place it would ignore the horrendous win less streak we had towards the end of the season.
Or a more direct comparison would be the 3-2 loss against City where Balotelli won the penalty and scored it in the last minutes of the match after he should've been sent off and Lescott somehow got away with a blatant elbow too. It's absolutely gutting but as others have said there were many other significant factors in our finishing 4th, mainly our midtable form in the whole second half of the season. What is more unacceptable is that after the FA judged that Balotelli's head stamp was deliberate he only got 3 games for it(+1 for it being his second red of the season). A DELIBERATE head stamp!!! Frankly I was surprised he didn't get away with it altogether but if Suarez's bite is 10 games so is stamping on another player's head!
