Clattenburg allowed Spurs to self destruct!

Mark Clattenburg: I allowed Tottenham to self-destruct against Chelsea in 2016
Former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg says he "allowed Tottenham to self-destruct" when he refereed the 2-2 draw with Chelsea in May 2016 as Spurs conceded the title to Leicester.

Spurs needed to beat Chelsea to retain any hope of winning the league.

Clattenburg says he "went in with a gameplan" so he could not be blamed by Tottenham for losing the title.

He booked nine Spurs players in the bad-tempered match, but now says he could have sent off three players.

Chelsea and Tottenham received record fines from the Football Association following the game, while Tottenham midfielder Mousa Dembele was banned for six games for violent conduct against Chelsea's Diego Costa.

Speaking to NBC's Men in Blazers podcast, he said: "I allowed them [Spurs] to self-destruct so all the media, all the people in the world went: 'Tottenham lost the title.'

"If I sent three players off from Tottenham, what are the headlines? 'Clattenburg cost Tottenham the title.' It was pure theatre that Tottenham self-destructed against Chelsea and Leicester won the title."

Asked if he helped to "script" the game, he replied: "I helped the game. I certainly benefited the game by my style of refereeing.

"Some referees would have played by the book; Tottenham would have been down to seven or eight players and probably lost and they would've been looking for an excuse.

"But I didn't give them an excuse, because my gameplan was: Let them lose the title."

Clattenburg took charge of the Euro 2016 final, as well as that year's Champions League and FA Cup finals.

In February, he left his job as a Premier League official to become Saudi Arabia's new head of referees.

Clattenburg says he had to change his style of refereeing when he took charge of European matches.

"The English style of refereeing is different," he added.

"I had to referee differently when I went into Europe because none of the top players in Europe would accept some of the physical contact that went on in the Premier League - but that was the theatre, that's what people loved.

"They love a tackle, they don't want it punished."

 

Mark Clattenburg: I allowed Tottenham to self-destruct against Chelsea in 2016
http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/42219327

In this article from the BBC website Clattenburg admits he allowed Spurs to self destruct by booking 9 players instead of sending any off , so he wouldn't be blamed for them not winning the PL title. FFS!!

 

So no comment about allowing Chelski players to tackle dirty. It almost sounds like he is saying he took joy in dishing out the cards and even encouraged it. Of course, we all know that we didn't lose the title in that game.
He is also admitting that refs are not consistent in their officiating and sometimes they don't send a player off even if he deserves it. (Mignolet, last week) because they don't fancy.

 

I guess we should consider suing him for loss of earnings then...

 

Clattenburg proving once and for all what we already knew - Articles like this should not be given coverage in the mass media by people like the BBC its complete and utter garbage,

 

It should be if we decide to press charges.

 

I don't think any sane Spurs fan is going to blame Clattenburg for losing the title. Even if we'd gone on to win that match Leicester were 5pts clear with 6 to play for.

This confession opens up a can of worms that is long overdue a serious inspection: the notion that referees are directly influenced by public opinion and their own reputation vis-a-vis headlines they may generate as a result of doing their job. This, coming from someone widely (no idea how) regarded as one of the best in the business, strips the institution of its impartiality and brings the whole sport into disrepute. Clattenburg is clearly saying that a ref sees it as his duty to conduct a narrative, not a balanced sporting event in which millions if not billions are at stake. The whole industry is reduced to a pantomime.

If Levy does respond to this, he needs to make it much, much bigger than one ill-tempered game at Stamford Bog.

 

He let Chelsea get away with murder early on, which caused the whole atmosphere of the game to boil over.
He's contributed to a reputation that we're still having to deal with now and will continue to hang over us for years.
The media narrative was bad enough, but a ref's narrative is ridiculous.

What a ****ing incompetent moron.
Goes into the game with a self-fulfilling prophecy ringing in his head and ruins the game for everyone.
Could have sent off three Spurs players?
Should've sent off three Chelsea players in the first half, you ****.

This is the **** we're up against.
He wouldn't dare say this about some other clubs.

 

I don't care what any ex-referee says in specific terms. It's their retrospective story that's been bought and paid for. I don't read biographies of most modern sportsmen for the same reason. It's likely to be sensationalised for the same reason. Old timers like Greavesie or Gareth Edwards are a different matter.

The game is eating itself. It's sad to see. Referees must be subjected to post-match interviews. I am not sure that it's possible to stop this stuff but getting them 'on the record' immediately would slightly limit later re-engineering of the truth.

This stuff gives his successors a great deal of difficulty in claiming that they are supposed to be fair and impartial in interpreting the laws of the game. I'm sure that wasn't at the front of his greedy little mind when he 'let this slip'.

 

He couldn't allow Spurs to score and win at OT.Because people would have said he prevented United catching Chelski

 

And now we have the editor of FootballDotLondon (who by complete coincidence is a Goon) chipping in...

That explains a lot of that site's ****posting, doesn't it?

 

This match was boiling up in the media BEFORE KO,
with the sh*te that the likes of Hazard had been quoted on.

A BIG MAN of a ref would have called manager + captains
in BEFORE KO, and gone along the lines of ...

I know :

- what the pre-match blurb has been.
- what is at stake for Spurs
- there is a lot of needle between the clubs

but I WILL NOT TOLERATE ANY ANTICS that threaten
to make the game degenerate into a thug fest.
Communicate this to your players immediately, and don't
say you were not warned when I start dealing with those
antics.

 

I had a sneaky peek at the BBC's comments section. Pleasingly, these are the 5 most liked comments.......despite football being a tribal game, we all know this bloke's a wrong'un.

15. Posted byThe Rule of Law
on4 hours ago
"Some referees would have played by the book"

Isn't that what you're supposed to do? If a player should be sent off, send them off.

A referee shouldn't have a 'game plan'.

7. Posted bybigsimon7280
on4 hours ago
Had he done his job in the first place, the likelihood of another player acting like he did would have been reduced. He is to blame for not sending a player off in the first place (rose). Had he done that, the others players would have probably toed the line so they didn't get sent off. As for refereeing the game his way, it says it all really as he completely ignored the rules, as they do now.


42. Posted bymymumlookslikenormanhunter
on3 hours ago
If a player does something that a referee admits deserves a sending off, and chooses not to, then that is match fixing. To say that three or four players deserved to be sent off and yet he sent none of them off is him admitting he is a cheat. How are we meant to have trust that referees are applying the rules when they admit that they're not. Clattenburg is a disgrace.

20. Posted byHands up who likes me
on3 hours ago
The 21st century's answer to Clive Thomas (look him up) strikes again. Always had to be the centre of attention; thought himself more important than the game itself. It's not even as if he was a particularly good referee.

Things he is interested in:

1. Mark Clattenburg
2. Money
3. Mark Clattenburg
4. The words "Mark" & "Clattenburg" in back page headlines
5. Mark Clattenburg
etc etc

3. Posted byTipsy Nurse
on4 hours ago
Not a real surprise, Clattenburg was a very competent referee but you always got the impression he thought he had a role orchestrating the game.

Perhaps it is old fashioned but as an ex-referee I always felt my role was to be scrupulously fair but very much in the background, letting the football flow as much as possible. People don't go to a football game to watch the referee.

 

I see he fails to mention that he should have sent off two Chelsea player, Fabregas and Ivanovic, in the first half. We all knew that we weren’t going to win the title because Fabregas and Hazard had said before the game they wanted Leicester to win the league and I would not put it past those two to throw the game.

 

I don't know if anyone remembers this, but I said the other day that Atkinson wouldn't be marked down for his **** up in the Liverpool v Stoke game.
He failed to send off Mignolet for denying a clear goalscoring opportunity, but it maintained the desired narrative and wasn't violent conduct.
Clattenburg's part of the same problem and always was. Overly lenient for much of the game, then overly fussy when it inevitably descended into chaos.
As much as I hated the fake-haired, gurning twat, he's a symptom and not the actual disease.

Our refs need to be overhauled completely. They're not fit for purpose.
Players and coaches need to treat them with far more respect and they need to be told to do their job properly and not worry about narratives.
Football writes it's own stories, if you let it. It doesn't need arrogant, egotistical pillocks directing it from the centre-circle.

 

Three. Costa threw his elbow at Vertonghen repeatedly and put him in a headlock at one point, too. Standard Costa, really.
He let loads of things go and then absolved himself of the blame when it all kicked off.

 

Merged the two threads, which were posted in the same minute. Didn't even know which one was going to be top, to be honest!

 

Referees are surely supposed to referee the game and not the occasion. He is admitting his decisions were influenced by the occasion, which begs the question how many other refs go out there with the same mindset ?

 

At least one per weekend, two or three if it's a bumper weekend for Sky/BT

 

You're going to point out that it wasn't me that wrote

"Clattenberg was a very competent referee"

.....aren't you? I was repeating someone else's comment....Come on.....Have a heart.