With Mike Dean being the incarnation of Beelzebub himself with his Arsenal hating bias, fans of all teams have a particular referee that they dread seeing officiate their games or a particular bug bear when it comes to decisions that they feel go against them. Whether it's Man Utd's no12 Howard Webb giving penalties to every team in the league with the name Man Utd, to the now defunct Fergie time. To the Spuds claim that Bale never dives and they never get any penalties, despite narrowly scraping through their first two games with two suspect penalties. To overzealous tackles that go unpunished, flying elbows, players who should have seen red stepping up to score a penalty etc This is the thread to vent your spleen at the men in black and discuss whether those 'decisions balance themselves out in the end' or whether certain teams do actually gain a points advantage / disadvantage over the season with favourable / questionable refereeing decisions.
I'll start: Ref vs Villa Second pen was wrong, changed the game completely, Kos got an unfair booking for it when he got to the ball first. He then saw red for another yellow card offence when it should have been the first, completely killed the game for us at that point. Vlaar, who had been booked earlier then escaped another yellow when he should have seen red. Result - at least 2 points unfairly taken away from Arsenal, possibly all three
I could mention the two incorrect penalty decisions on the weekend, both involving Sp*rs. One that should have been given and another which shouldn't.
That is an example of 'balancing out in the end' but the point is that the ref shouldn't be trying to atone for earlier errors with another error. He made two errors instead of one, poor officiating.
I've never understood that myself. Two wrongs don't make a right.... they shouldn't have a bad decision in the first place.
It was very amusing to see Paul Lambert complaining of poor refereeing in the game at Chelsea.....another example of the "evening out"?
I was out of the country for this so I've not seen the incident but 'getting to the ball first' doesn't mean it wasn't a foul. The Laws were changed several years ago on that. The Ref just needs to judge the tackle as 'careless' for it to be a foul
I think one of the MOTD pundits managed to concoct a cock n bull story to justify it but to any neutral observer it was a perfect tackle, Kos managed to get to the ball first, alter it's path out for a corner before the Villa player tumbled to the turf. Even the Linesman who was ten yards away gave a corner. **** knows what the ref was thinking to be honest.
I think you're going to get dodgy decisions all the time. But I'm a firm believer that you make your own luck. If you play ****, then you won't be making any.
If you play at any level, you get to know your local referees. You get to know what they like and dislike and you will find refs that just don't like the way you or your team play. If you are a small light side and they allow a lot of shoving and pushing then you aren't going to win. If the other team is fast and they demand "Perfect" contact with the ball on a slide tackle, and no contact with the runner (before or after the ball), you are in deep trouble. It has nothing to do with luck, referee's don't make calls at random, they are entirely subjective. The only thing that might be random is the selection of the referee, but that doesn't guarantee that you will get a referee that calls in your favour, or that there is a referee in the pool that likes you.
That's true, it does bring up a lot of banter. Of course we should have a good level of Refs. At least we have goal line tech which will help to eliminate one type of problem.
Dodgy refs come up a lot in youth football and the "It balances itself out" argument is used a lot there. It seems to be considered a "PC" thing to tell kids. I think it seems to create a bit of a victim mentality, in that, if you think that way, you just have to put up with it. But like the weather, I think you can adapt your game depending on the referee. Football ultimately is about making thousands of decisions very rapidly. You can change your frame of reference in making those decisions based on the referee, just like you can for a different weather condition, or a different opponent.
My mate and I were only discussing the other night which WNO production we were going to see this year
