What I find interesting is that the mistakes those 'human beings' keep on making are consistently favouring the likes of Man United. Funny that, isn't it.
Could it be that Man U spend most of their time attacking the opposition 18 yard box, while Sunderland set up a defensive system even when playing at home? Rednapp was too embarrassed to say that to the Press on saturday but his body language was a picture.
I suppose its a lot easier to find yourself attacking for most of the game when the referee is booking the opposition and giving fouls in favour of the 'bigger team'. These decisions don't stop at penalties and sendings off, they expand to incorporate, free-kicks, bookings and allowing one team to let their players put themselves about wheras the other team has its players booked. That tends to assist the direction of the attacking play. You don't often see a player sent off against Man United when they are leading 3 or 4 nowt. You do see it happen when its 1-1 with 20 mins to go. A few free-kicks here and there, the odd booking... Infact, the refs tend to give the odd penalty against Man United when United are winning 3 or 4 nowt because that helps to 'balance' up the dodgy decisions. As far as Sunderland are concerned, we have to play to whatever strengths we have got. At the moment, we lack the quality to play the type of football that we will be playing in the next couple of seasons. Against Tottenham, we had 11 corners and they had 4. We had more shots on target. Neither Tottenham or Sunderland turned up for that game, it was a poor game and the state of our pitch certainly doesn't help because it's a mess.
As I said before, a ref telling Tottenham players to go away while allowing Rio Ferdinand to stand nearby and have his say on a discussion between ref and linesman says it all
It's pathetic that our 'defensive formation' created more shots on target and 11 v 4 corners in our favour? We must be the only club that creates nearly 3 times more corners than the opposition playing an extremely negative formation. Have your moment in the limelight, you will be back in the championship within 2 years.
That's not the point (I am all for not letting refs screw us over) The FA and referees can't insist that they are impartial and have a Respect campaign when they allow that sort of thing to happen
PGF I'd suggest you pick your battles better because at the moment you're disagreeing with everyone about everything. You really are on to a loser if you think that Young's dive... okay "fall" was the result of a tap on the side. please log in to view this image It's nothing to do with being a referee, anyone who's played at a decent level and/or watched Premier League football knows how fast the game is so don't act superior by hinting at some refereeing experience. Firstly as you can see from the replay contact is minimal, the referee has a good position but he assumes a bigger contact than there was because of Young's reaction. That's totally wrong and **** refereeing. Back to the point of this thread, the biggest disgrace though is that the FA still thinks it's a ****ing foul. As for knowing how people fall, we all know that you don't fall like that when you're put off balance. You might slip as you plant your landing foot or stumble and use your arm on the floor to keep balance but you don't leap with both feet off the ground hanging one back in the attempt to get more contact.
The main issue for me is that Young was cheating and the ref fell for it. Changing the rules to stop this is very easy but FIFA and the FA are too conservative. The FA have painted themselves into a corner because of their (and FIFA's) insistence on upholding the law that a referee's decision is final, so they can only overturn cards or impose additional punishment with the ref's agreement. This, coupled with the lack of technology to help refs, is bound to lead to this sort of outcome.
By that standard you shouldn't question my comments, as I'm a moderator and you're not. It's a ridiculous statement. Young's action was totally unnatural. He's going over before there's any contact. I spoke to an actual league referee about it this morning and we shared the same opinion. The linesman was in a great position to spot both the offside and the ludicrous dive. Missing both was very poor, but everyone makes mistakes. Failing to address those mistakes on review is what truly deserves criticism in this. It's amusing that you don't think that there's any bias towards certain teams, though. Give it a few years in the Premier League and you might change your mind.
Officials this season have been absolutely dreadful. If would be interesting to see, at the end of the season, what difference these bad decisions would have made to the table.
I can understand the Ref interpreting it as a foul. However, from what I saw, the Lino was directly in line with the play. It was clearly offside. I'm sorry, I know it's a difficult job, but these guys are supposed to be professionals, and if he can't see such an obvious offside, then he shouldn't be doing the job at this level. This isn't the first time recently that blatant offside decisions have not been given against the home side, either.
PGF is what is wrong with referees..hes obvious a ref,probably at grass roots so like all the arrogant refs we see on tv who cant accept that they did wrong..PGF also eats out of the same bowl
A large percentage of Referees and Assistant Referees are either.... A. Incompetent B. Inept C. Scared of upsetting Ferguson D. Closet Man Utd and Liverpool fans E. Weak enough to crumble under derision from a large crowd. or F. Corrupt (in Chelsea`s case).
you think pl ref's are bad'you should see the non league one's!,the bad new's is they are the next batch of pl ref's so unless they bring in professional ref's it will only get worse
Sorry you can't argue that officials should be more "professional" because regardless of how good they get it will be impossible to completely rule out human error. As long as mistakes are made there will be a suspicion (IMHO completely justified) that important mistakes favour certain teams. Surely these teams should also support technology as it will ensure that people are unable to say that mistakes favour them! ;-). We must have technology as the decisions are made that are wrong have a huge impact on results and consequently who wins what and who is relegated. We should also consider these myths sometimes trotted out during such discussions: > It is completely unfounded in fact, and a very tired excuse that "things even themselves out" over a season. This is statistically rubbish and relies on completely independent events affecting each other. You could just as easily have a whole season of bad decisions or good decisions as evenly divided decisions. > It would not slow the game a lot to refer a decision to a "video ref" or whatever you want to call them. The info about this incident for example would have been known in a few seconds. Remember how long the game stops when a ref goes over to speak to the lino face to face (like that mad Utd v Spurs game last season when the Spurs players weren't allowed to participate in the discussion). > It's also said that you can't have video technology as the game has to be the same in the Premier League as it is (for example) on Hackney Marshes. Well I've never played a game on Hackney Marshes with any linesmen, so that's a rather big difference from the Premier League anyway! Sadly until France (for example) lose a World Cup based on a bad decision that technology would have spotted, nothing is going to change.
I don't entirely agree with the bolded statement. Whilst it is not statistically true that decisions "even themselves out over the course of a season", what you have said is similar to saying that its equally likely to get 100 H, 100 T or 50H 50T if you flip a coin 100 times. If events are mutually exclusive, and assuming that the referee is unbiased, statistically speaking, on average, 12-13 teams will have decisions that lie within 1 standard deviation of the mean (if the mean is 50/50 split), 6-7 teams between 1 and 2 SDs and 0-1 team between 2 and 3 SDs (sort of). For most teams, decisions might not even themselves out, but they are pretty close to it. Most people say how Man Utd get all the decisions, but they have had 2 significant decisions (that has cost them at least 3 points) this seasons: the "penalty" against Newcastle, and the "corner kick" against Wigan yesterday. With regards to Ashley Young, it was offside and never a foul, but as a foul it can be given a yellow or a red. Not surprised by the red. However, they should have rescinded it as it is clear that contact was minimal and no where near enough for him to go down.
The bad luck yesterday was evened out within the same game, as Wigan had a perfectly good goal chalked off. Not sure what side that puts me <hmm>
i dont believe in Karma it surprises me that half or more of the people who analyse ref decisions all of a sudden find a spiritual involvment. a decision can never ever even itself out because the consequence of a bad decision might be confident loss..anger..distraction...a bad run..so regardless of 7 months down the road you get a decision that you didnt merit..it does not balance out the wrong done to you earlier as now some other team will be cheated and could be effected in many ways and your decision that you didnt merit may have got you a point today but 7 months earlier you may have got 3...etc etc...Karma is bollox...yes human error is a stark reality but it errs me when the human error usually only occurs in favour of certain teams more than others and even that depending on which ground etc etc. vdeo technology or accept that humans will make errors and be biased.
