Having seen Man Utd's 2nd penalty last night, does anyone else feel it was exactly the same as the lambo one which wasnt given in the first half. I know refs have a tough job and i dont envy the,, however some of the decisions are beyond a joke. How the lino didnt even see it as he was perfectly placed. When the foul was committed I didnt even think there was a chance it WOULDNT be given as thought that obvious! Shame as I feel if we scored first, I really believe we would be sat top right now! COYR
Referees aren't perfect and to be fair we've had our fair share of debatable pens this season - the "handball" v Watford and the first pen against Brighton spring to mind. These decisions tend to even themselves out over the season so maybe we will get a soft pen against Birmingham.
yes very true, just frustrating in such a big game. didnt see the watford one i was on holiday. fingers crossed for saturday, gonna be mahoosive!!
The Watford one was a joke, and as for the Fonte one against Brighton ... I just fell about when that was given. BUT refs have to give what they see. I don't think I've seen a bent ref, just ones who miss stuff. Remember a classic once when Hypia jumped above Beatts at the Kop end and handled the ball twice and nothing was given. I was in the Anfield road with some scouse mates and even they were amazed. But the fact is that neither the lino nor the ref saw it. Last night, I was forced to listen on Saints Player rather than being there, and Merrington thought both the Lambert and Lallana calls were open to debate. Had I been there, I'd have been screaming at the ref, of course, but we have to remember that there is no system in the world that will guarantee a consistent approach from refs, so blaming the ref will remain a favourite sport. Remember big Ron - "I never criticise referees, and I'm not going to make an exception for that prat".
It is well known that I have called many a referee's parentage into question. I do sympathise with some despite this because I know from experience how difficult it can be at times. What I fail to understand though is their inconsistency in making duplicate decisions. For example how he can book one player for a fairly innocuous foul but not book another for exactly the same foul. Not just similar, exactly the same. Why is it that goalkeepers are allowed to handle the ball so long......the ref yesterday is obviously not conversant with the law about the time the ball is handled by the goal keeper? Why did he allow the opposition players to stand in front of the ball for a free kick preventing a quick one? Why did he constantly allow the opposition players to kick or flick the ball away or even throw the ball away without at the very least having a word with them? Even took his time standing over the ball arguing with the opposition players rather than letting the Saints get on with the game. He is clearly inexperienced as Cardiff were doing all these things to waste time. He is certainly not up to the grade required for Championship football in my opinion at best maybe 2nd division lower end or even conference. He was very very poor.
We should have had THREE penalties and their goal shouldn't have been allowed. They were absolute stone wall penalties! Hopefully our luck will change soon.
Aren't there two things going on here? First, no two situations are ever identical. Second, if a ref thinks he might have missed something he goes out of his way to get it right next time. I did wonder whether when Rickie fell over a blade of grass against Brighton whether the penalty was given because the ref had thought about his decision not to give one when their defender should have been arrested for assault a few minutes earlier. Of course the third thing is that getting one decision wrong doesn't mean the ref should get it wrong a second time. Every decision has to be considered in isolation. Was the ref right to red card Rickie at Brighton? I have not seen it, but if Rickie raised his hands then, sadly, he has to go regardless of provocation or whether the ref missed a straight uppercut from a Brighton player in the same game. Refs are human. There simply is no answer to the question of consistency, we just have to learn to love it as part of the game.
Sorry but that won't do. If all football matches were friendly games with no rewards or titles on the line then that might be OK, but that isn't the case here. When you consider the fortunes at stake in a promotion-deciding match, human error on the part of the referee can't be one of the deciding factors. Just about every other professional sport has some system of referral or review for disputed decisions, such as Hawkeye in cricket and tennis, or the TMO in rugby. Why not give each manager 3 challenges in each match, when if he sees something he disagrees with he can throw a flag on the pitch or something, tell the ref what needs to be reviewed, and if he's wrong that's one challenge gone. If he's right then the decision is changed and he keeps the challenge to use again. You can argue that it might stop a game flowing, but I would rather ref's got the decisions right at the expense of a few interruptions rather than have a free-flowing game with loads of rubbish decisions.
NO, NO, NO. I will accept some mistakes rather than have the game I love ruined. Do you really want the power to stop games in the hand of Ferguson or Wenger? It would become tactical beyond belief. There will be time outs, four quarters to allow for adverts, rolling substitutions, and all that tosh. I;m going to lie down now as I have a tension headache.
Why should football be different from every other sport Fran? Just allow one challenge if you like but something has to be done. It's not just human error we're talking about, it's human error applied inconstistently. That's the problem.
Football is not other sports. I watched the final of the tennis the other day (better than revision), and wondered if the system they used would work in football; it seems obvious to me that it wouldn't. Here's why: 1. Every decision made by hawk-eye was based on whether the ball crossed or didn't cross the line. In football those incidents don't happen very often and are correctly called almost every time (as they are in tennis - the challenges are rarely successful). How does a camera decide whether a handball was deliberate, the contact was enough for the player to be fouled, the tackle was worth a yellow card or a red? 2. The challenge is always made when the ball is dead. If the player thinks the ball is out and plays on anyway, he can't challenge. So he has to decide whether to risk forfeiting the point over the challenge. Now take this to football where the ball can be in play for several minutes, and could go up the other end. Now the ref is deciding which team gets a penalty. Not exactly ideal. 3. In the deciding game of the whole match, Novak challenged a point that he hit well out. The commentator said, pretty dismissively, something like "he knows this is out, he's just using it to buy some extra time before the next point". Fair? We can talk about goal-line technology, different versions have been tested by FIFA in various youth tournaments. They didn't work.
Cricket is the other game about which I care passionately. We have reviews, hot spots, hawkeye and god only knows what. And still "poor" decisions are made. Fran, come back from your lie-down. I am totally with you. Technology and challenges would not mean that errors would be eradicated. Don't get me wrong, Chilco. My blood pressure goes through the roof when the ref makes what I see as a howler, but if we don't accept this as part of the game the alternative is too great a price to pay. Take the Lampard "goal" against Germany. My guide dog could have seen that was in, and the howl comes that we must have goal-line technology. Yes a camera would have picked that one up, but would a camera at Brighton have picked up Lallana's goal? Wrongly positioned it wouldn't have and so we would have had an inconsistency. And that's the simple decision. Off-sides (was he active, whatever the **** that means?); did the defender play the ball or the man; was it a corner. In a game of high intensity where players will argue over a throw in on the half way line you have to have someone in charge, not constantly asking for TV re-runs.
OK I can see I'm in a minority here! The thing is, good as your arguments are, they still don't address the fact that games, promotions, titles etc. can hang on one man's split-second view of a situation. Most of the time they get it right, but sometimes they are wrong, and inconsistently so. There must be some way of minimising the error rate without ruining the game we all love. One point you make, Channon, I completely agree with, and that is that arguing with the referee is unacceptable. Unless and until a challenge system is brought in, any dissent should be punished by moving the free-kick etc. forward 10 metres.
I'm with Chilco to a degree, I think technology should be used in very strict circumstances. The 'did the ball cross the line?' scenario is regular enough, and important enough, that it's worth having this there as an objective, quick, yes/no system. Not sure it could work with penalty/red card calls though as, as my thread about the cardiff ref shows, these are so subjective even given the benefit of replays. Whatever system they go with, I think it should be the referee's call, no appeals by players. If the ref's not sure he will want to check anyway and I don't want the ref's authority to be undermined further.
Read a few peoples opinions on here about whether Davis was fouled last night. We see that exact same thing week in week out and 9 times out of 10 the time a foul is given to the defending team. So why not last night, in a big game that could of cost us promotion ? I think it was Fonte or Lambert who jumped with Marshall last night which they are perfectly in their right to do so, but the ref blew up for a free kick. Also for anyone who watched MOTD last night will have seen Lescott stand in front of Tim Howard ( Identical to Miller) only for Howard to jump into him from behind and hit him to the floor and still gain a freekick That did make me chuckle. The consistency is starting to piss me off now with these types of decisions. Rant over
It needs to be ruled on, we need clear guidelines. I think goalkeepers are given too much protection generally though and I've got no problems with Cardiff's goal last night. On the other hand, Howard could have had a foul given against him but you never see that.
If you really want to be naffed off, be a Man City fan. Lescott was clattered and it should have been a penalty. But the goalies union always seem to win out. Kelvin should have hit the deck and claimed Miller had hit him!
The Lescott and Howard incident was no different to the Miller one apart from David didn't punch Miller to the floor.
Trouble is where do you draw the line with this technology. I don't necessary disagree with bringing it in, my biggest worry is if they bring it in for goal line scrambles. It won't be long before they are asking for instant replays on practically everything. That will destroy the game as we know it. As much as I/we moan about referee's in reality there is no other option in my opinion for decisions on the field of play. An alternative might be for penalty decisions and the like for the two officials to monitor the respective area's from the goal line. However you still have this problem with the assistants not wanting to point the opposite way to the referee. Which while understandable is why you do not get the consistency that is ideal for penalty area incidents.
