Consistency from Referees

Today we saw a referee who was far to happy to hand out cards and to send players off, thus destroying ANY competion in the game. Today I accept that we were very poor but things were not helped by the card happy referee.

Whilst he may have got the decisions right, I dont argue that they were fouls, but I really dont think any of them were worth a Yellow barr a couple which would have saved us having two players getting sent off and removing any chance of us even getting back into the game.

I then watched Maure vs Chavski, hardly any yellow cards handed out even though some of the fouls made were just as bad. The one yellow I can remember was Ashley Cole almost breaking Hernadez' leg, the foul was in the box, it was a high tackle with studs showing and yet only got a yellow and wasnt even given as a penalty.

So where is the consistency between Referees, a couple of soft tackles leads to us getting players sent off yet in a different game a potentially nasty tackle only gets the same punishment as Adam tripping a player.

 

Consistency is a massive problem in football today. The referee was card happy, but I'm not one to start blaming them for our issues and hide behind. There were 2 poor decisions in booking Adam initially and Skrtel's second, but other than that it was our performance I'm more concerned about.

 

It did seem like there was a barrage of drastic decisions by the referee when it came to decisions against us.

 

Compare today's game, where we committed 9 fouls, got 6 yellows and 2 reds, to last week's game - 25 fouls between the two teams, 1 yellow (not for a foul).

Now, it may be argued that last week all 25 fouls were innocuous (what are the chances?), but since I actually watched the game, I know that they weren't (Delap's challenge on Suarez, for example).

Today it did seem like it was a yellow for every foul. Any player committing 2 basic fouls is generally unlucky to be booked for both. What I do think though is that had both Skrtle and Adam made their 2 challenges in reverse order, they'd have stayed on the pitch. For one, they may not have made them (Adam's second booking was a genuine attempt to play the ball, but worthy of a booking regardless - even though it could be said that Parker saw it coming and played for it - whereas the first was entirely avoidable) and secondly they're the sort of challenges we see people get away with without a booking every week. They're the ones you generally get booked for if you make a couple of them (persistent fouling), not for each one.

Since the ref was all too happy to punish the first offences, he left himself no option but to send them off for the second, and slightly worse, offences. It seemed to me that he was trying too hard to stamp his authority on the game and subsequently ruined it. Nobody wants to see players getting hurt, but nobody wants to see their team go down to 9 men either.

 

Spurs were better today and not many would argue that they weren't , but the ref wasn't good and I think he had a significant influence on the scoreline but not the result!

 

Did it??

Not in my eyes. We can't keep blaming the ref. The only really poor decision he made was giving us a free kick when Suarez dived.

 

I do agree that that last weeks ref and today's ref were very different in the way they performed. But that's no excuse, we were **** and Spurs were excellent, simple.

 

Skrtel first yellow wasn't a yellow.

 

Tbh there will never be complete consistency between refs. They're only human, and different refs will always see things differently. Even with technology and replays you'll never get complete consistency cos there will always be judgement calls to make. After all, with all the replays etc I bet if you polled all fans, neutrals included, you'd get a split between those who agreed with the red cards today and those that didn't.

 

See what I mean? Even two Liverpool fans can't agree over that decision.

 

From were I was sitting it looked a yellow to me, maybe a soft one I agree.

Anyway why are people mentioning the ref again? when it 11 vs 11 we were getting battered.

 

Whilst we were poor and there is no escaping that fact let's not go overboard about Spurs. Yes they were better than we were. However, having conceded so early we were still in the game even into the 2nd half. That does not disguise our problems but that is for another thread.

As for the referee. I'm not into consipiricy theories but by the 2nd half I was begining to wonder if the referee was applying his own interpritation of Kenny's call for the application of the letter of the law i.e. you want it - you'll get it! When even the tv commentators can see that Parker kicked lucas off the ball and not even a freekick is given, then you do start to question the consistancy of that application.

 

I agree that Spurs should of been more clinical. But lets be fair, they played very very well. If we had had played Utd or City we probably would of lost 10-0.

That is realistically how poor we played.

 

For me that's just excuses. The worst decision for me on the day was the free-kick awarded to Suarez just out side their box, blatant dive. That's my honest view of the game.

 

No Sky it's not excuses. If you re-read my post I held my hands up as to how poor we were before I even mentioned the Ref. So I'm not making any excuses we were beaten fairly and squarely.

When it comes to the performance of the Ref then the stats alone would indicate that there was probably some form of discrepancy. I also disagree with you about the worst decsion - that was clearly Parkers off the ball kick on Lucas. However you may also add the foull on Carroll in the box.

We lost and that's not going to change.

 

We were so bad...Even Chris had a drink today...that's how ****ing bad it was!

 

FFS, there's no argument about that.

My comments were about the performance of the Ref

 

That comment had nothing to do with what you or Sky said, just Random.

 

No way... Did he?

 

He did, you can tell he had a pint...His spelling was all over the place.