Mikel, who speaks perfect English, claims he didn't hear anything. Ramires, who speaks poor English, claimed he heard Clattenburg say "Shut up monkey". Ramires then asked Luiz to translate this for him Clattenburg insisted, and was backed up by his miked up assistants, that he said "Shut up Mikel" In the same game, Clattenburg said "it's not my fault" to Mata, which Torres claimed he overhead as "you Spanish twat" It does show the FA's ridiculous inconsistency with regards to these things. Evra has an altercation with the Chelsea groundsman. Phelan claims he hears the groundsman call him a ****ing immigrant, Evra claims he didn't hear this. Mikel has an altercation with the referee. Ramires claims he hears the referee call him a monkey, Mikel claims he didn't hear this. The FA claim Phelan is an unreliable witness, slander him in the media as a liar, and ban Evra for four games The FA decide Ramires is a credible witness who was acting in good faith, and Mikel gets off scot free after barging into the ref's dressing room, threatening Clattenburg and trying to attack him Also interesting to see that Clattenburg later admitted he wished he hadn't sent Torres off after the allegations against him and the four match suspension he effectively had to serve. So it looks like Chelsea got their way with another ref - Clattenburg will definitely think twice before sending off another Chelsea player in his career.
Why cant football be like Rugby. Rugby refs take no ****, and can actually do their jobs. Football refs are too easily intimidated by these rich kids. And please shut up about a Chelsea conspiracy to accuse a ref of racism. A chelsea player came forward with a claim of racist abuse and like any employer, Chelsea had to treat the claim seriously and act accordingly. The club only followed procedure. Whether there was any malicious intent by Mikel or Ramires I dont know, but the club certainly didnt set out to do anything of the sort.
No they didn't. Nothing in the procedure says you have to publicly accuse a referee of racism in a press statement, and make his life hell for a month. Not even Chelsea themselves say that: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/20507362 Chelsea acknowledged that making the allegations public immediately after the game led to unwelcome press attention towards Clattenburg and his family. "The club regrets not having given more consideration before issuing a statement on the evening of Sunday, 28 October. The club also regrets the subsequent impact the intense media scrutiny had on Mark Clattenburg and his family." Basically, 'we ****ed up and an innocent man and his family was hurt as a result'.
That is why for many the Chavs represent the worst in football. Poor sportsmanship, cheating, intimidation, money power and corruption are just a few of the things typical of the Chavs. The lowest points were certainly the club's statement which made life hell for the referee. I also remember the swedish ref who had to retire after death threats. Whether Maureen encouraged these or not, we can never be certain. The irony of the racism issue is that their own captain is himself under a cloud. How he must endure being in the same dressing room as some of his team mates! As for cheating, they are the worst. The blatant cheating of Torres by diving in a dangerous area gave them a free kick and a goal. Which secured their victory.
So, you are sitting here and telling me that the Chelsea board said to each other, "lets release a statement accusing this guy of being racist so he gets death threats Muhahahaha. One Miiiiiiiiiilion dollars!"
Hahaha...surely a joke. Torres was 3 metres from that leg so there was no contact unless coming within spitting distance now constitutes contact.. The season has barely started that Maureen gets his players to cheat.
indeed. So SAF was a massive cheat too, considering all those times he ordered Ronaldo to dive. Rafa too, He trained Gerrard to dive on command. A player never dives off his own back! Its always on the managers command, right? Which pretty much means every manager in the history of football EVER, is a massive cheat.
Wow, this threads nice and all over the place isn't it. Regarding the Chelsea, Mikel, Clattenburg Racism incident Chelsea acted poorly in releasing that statement, there is no question about that. But it's silly to suggest that the Chelsea board conspired to screw up Clattenberg and his family. They probably believed Ramires too strongly and acted rashly because of that. As for diving, there's too many factors to detrmine if a dive was a dive or not. Torres dived the other night but he's been diving for years since before he came to England. Ashely Young dives enough and I cringe every time he does it. I think you can only say it was a definite dive when there was no contact. If there's contact it's too hard to say. If your running fast then it doesn't always take much to bring you down. Also some players go down easier to avoid the risk of trying to stay on thier feet and thier studs sticking in the ground which is very dangerous and leads to broken legs. Sometimes they go down easy to get the free kick / penalty, but if their's contact, or I should say contact to the legs, then it's really hard to say if it's a dive or not because their are too many factors we can't possibly know. I have seen players dive when another player has put his hand on them without pushing, that's a dive too imo but again it can be hard in some cases to tell for certain if there was actually a push or not.
