Just seen the Highlights and it appears you were robbed against the Spammers today, I can only offer sympathies as we've been there as well. He's an awful and totally inept referee. I can only hope you'll be able to recover those points and have a successful season, it has completely rocked us and we never recovered but hope the same doesn't happen to you.
No chance, the ref got all the decisions correct, the pen was clear shirt pulling, the handball if anything was a foul to WH and the other penalty shout was a result of the Norwich player cheating Holt style by running across the WH players path to initiate contact rather than going direct for the ball.
robbed as in getting outplayed for 75 mins? but as you only watched MOTD you wouldn't have a clue about the game...
Ok. I'd like to start off with a basic question. What is a penalty? In my opinion, all a penalty is is a free kick in the penalty area. If a free kick would have been given anywhere except for the penalty area for an infringement, then a penalty must be given for any infringement in the penalty area. Simple as that. None of this rubbish about whether is was serious enough to be a penalty or not. Just basic common sense. Now my opinion is it was a penalty to West Ham and the ref got it right. However, we all knew what Clattenburg was like as a ref, and so must the players and coaching staff - I presume. If we know that Clattenburg likes the limelight and the controversy, then the players do, which begs the question, why the hell do something that will give him the chance of his moment of glory? Yes, the decisions could be described as 'dodgy', but did we really help ourselves by giving him the chance to do his strutting and be noticed?
the major issue with the opening minute decision was not whether it was a penalty but whether the referee would then be consistent with his decision making based upon that fairly soft early one. inevitably he failed to clamp down on any other shirt tugging in the area, of which there were numerous incidents by both sides. he missed a blatant foul of tettey in the build up to their second goal. he missed an obvious handball in their penalty area. he missed a red card and penalty when kane ran clear through (what flyer is talking about above is idiotic - any good striker worth his salt is told to run across the path of a defender so that they a) can only foul them and b) get a clear run on goal - flyer is clearly not a knowledgeable chap when it comes to striking). i read one west ham fan say it would have been a soft red card and penalty. what soft like your penalty you mean? basically, all norwich fans are furious because the referee played a major part in the game and all his decisions went against us. west ham fans can say they deserved to win the game (and they did under the circumstances) but would they have settled so easily had they not been one up after 2 minutes and all our players felt aggrieved? it would have been a totally different match. likewise had their 2nd goal not stood it would have been different. likewise had we won that penalty for handball, even allowing for his earlier cock ups etc etc etc. the list is endless for things which would have played out differently yesterday. the ref was the centre of attention for a reason and not a good one. west ham were the better side on the day, no question, but they had a lot of help from the officials. an awful lot of help!
(1) I can see the penalty being given for the final shove, although they were both grabbing each other. (2) Play should have been stopped for the injury to Tettey (and it just sums up West Ham that they didn't put the ball out of play for the injury). (3) I don't think a penalty should have been given for the handball, as it was ball to hand. (4) The detailed MotD replay showed that Kane was knocked on the knee in the area and a penalty should have been awarded.
