How do you view this? To me this is sowing the seeds of dragging back the game from a slow and painful submergence into a totally cynical world where the ONLY thing that matters ids money. It seems some fans (and it shouldn't take you long to figure which given what happened yesterday) are up in arms about the number of yellow and red cards being shown. To me this is a good sign. A sign that the officials have said enough is enough and that it is time to treat fair play and the authority of the officials with the respect they deserve. Hopefully this will just be part one and soon we will see managers balling in fourth officials faces, waving imaginary yellow cards in their hands, players rolling around on the floor as if they'd been shot or kicking their legs out in penalty areas to deliberately catch defenders in order to go down and "win" a penalty etc etc etc being punished with red cards. It may well produce farcical situations in the short term, but in the long term it will benefit our game when the word "respect" means something real and not some kind of stage-managed charade like the forced shaking of hands before kick off that we have at the moment.
That would be fine, if the referees realised that when they want to be shown respect they have to be respectful to others themselves. Taking NP's sending off as an extreme example, although it's probably correct according to the rules ("probably" because I don't know what was actually said), the incident was in the Leicester dressing room. From a respect point of view the referee shouldn't be going in there twice while a manager is trying to give his team talk. Now I'm thinking about it, I'm not even sure if the officials are supposed to be alone in a room with anybody (or group of people) from one side during the game without somebody from the other side being there as well. The FA should also stop supporting bad decisions in the aftermath as well. Why is it ok for them to penalise players for violent conduct the ref has missed, like Ballotelli the other week, but it would undermine them if they said that the referee saw something from a bad angle and made a wrong decision so they were rescinding the card? We don't get many red cards, but for an extreme example the time Myhill was sent off for handling the ball outside the area at QPR, and when the video evidence showed he was inside they still wouldn't overturn it. And Barton against Norwich getting sent off for headbutting someone when he'd never yet the card stood.
The FA seem reluctant to go against a referees decision, probably because they believe it could affect the standard of refereeing. It's a farce. If a decision is made by the referee, but is prove to be a mistake, I.e red cards, yellow cards. Rescind/reward the card afterwards. It is sort of like getting arrested by a police officer for one thing, but then CCTV proves you innocent of it, but then the court saying "well, your guilty despite the CCTV because we don't want to upset the police officer." These are supposed to be the best officials in our country. They aren't. These are the people the FA want us to believe are the best. There are probably better officials in lower leagues who are overlooked. Don't give us water but tell us it's wine? So they might upset a few of their officials, removing the mistakes, rather than covering them, will improve the standard of refereeing, clearly. It is difficult to respect a campaign with such obvious flaws. And until this is fixed, nobody will truly respect the officials, how could you?
you dont have to shake hands before the game. thats a mis-no-ma of a rule. it is very fake and stage managed and for what ? respect should only be given when earned. what i want to see it the divers punished and retrospectively if required. persistant offenders/teams should have points docked. that would stop it. imo.
I think we are the only country in the world where diving is completely unacceptable, that's why it will never be stamped out, given the number of overseas players here. I remember Jurgen Klinsmanns ironic celebrations for Spurs when he scored, he was probably the most infamous diver of all time, will have a look and see if there is a video of it, thing is he used to get away with it abroad!
Yep have no sympathy for them after Maradonas Hand Of God- another cheat who would make a mockery of any respect campaign!
