Clive having his usual dig at Keithy baby....
Referee – Keith Stroud (Toy Town) 5 Standards and expectations have sunk so low with Championship referees, and this plonker in particular, that he can drift through a total non-event like this - with zero competition, aggro, contact or controversy - have one decision to make in the whole thing, stand six yards away from that decision staring straight at it, having issued a warning before it happened, still get it wrong, and I’ve got QPR fans on our message board telling me he did ok. He stood there, and looked directly at this, didn’t give a penalty, but relative to what he’s inflicted on us before, this is ok. This is ok…
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… I’m resigned to it now. You have incidents last week, at Preston, where Tim Iroegbunam bursts through the middle of the Preston midfield, Brad Potts attempts to chop him down at the ankle, advantage is waved, nothing comes of it, and the referee doesn’t come back to book him. “He can’t”, says our resident refereeing fraternity, who I try and listen to and learn from, because… “if the advantage is played and it’s not reckless it’s not a booking now”. I then sit and watch Man City Liverpool in the week, a counter attack takes place, Cole Palmer is deliberately pulled back, the attack comes to nothing, when the play eventually stops, a yellow card is issued. “Oh, well, you see…” Well, you see, nothing. This is bullshit. The worst collection of referees there has ever been overseeing the game in this country are making **** up as they go along. I want everybody reading this to watch the penalty Reading were awarded against Swansea tonight, and then watch that Jimmy Dunne incident from yesterday back again, and explain to me how one is a penalty and one is not, other than one involved Keith Stroud and one didn’t.
This is all fine and well. We’ve got Gavin Ward for Luton on Thursday night, what fun. I’ll do Office memes and Simpson crops and we’ll all roll our eyes and jolly along with this utter, utter farce. Until you’re Huddersfield Town, and you’re in a play-off final, and this incompetent shower give it to one of their fat mates to referee as his retirement party, and he botches it to such an extent that you end up trading a Premier League promotion for a spot in League One. Keith Stroud, like Jon Moss before him, has palpably and obviously not been physically or mentally capable of refereeing games at this level for some time now. That he cannot even get through this,
this, without botching the only decision he had to make, epitomises that. He’s already horlicksed one play-off semi-final, between Swansea and Brentford three years back, and our League Cup quarter final tilt last season. If the EFL continue to persist with the idea that this bloke is competent at this level, then it is a ticking time bomb before it happens to another team in a big, important game again. Look at where Huddersfield are now compared to where they could have been had a proper referee done that play-off final. Stroud, like Moss, is a liability. He cannot get decisions right for trying. A disaster waiting to happen.
