"FORMER referees' chief Keith Hackett says he was "shocked" that Swansea City failed in their appeal against Lukasz Fabianski's West Ham red card. Fabianski was sent off for denying Diafra Sakho a clear goalscoring opportunity at Upton Park last weekend. But ex-Premier League ref Hackett, who later served as general manager of the Professional Game Match Officials Board, reckons Chris Foy was wrong to give the Swansea keeper his marching orders. In his You are the Ref blog, Hackett wrote: "So the Football Association elected to reject the appeal by Swansea City following the dismissal of their goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski by referee Chris Foy. "Like many other referee experts around the world, I was shocked and a little confused by this decision to support the referee. "The rejection of the appeal creates confusion for referees at all levels of the game, when clearly the criterion for the denial of an OBVIOUS goalscoring opportunity (DOGSO) was NOT fulfilled. "So let's examine the incident in more detail: did the attacking player deliberately use his arm to propel the ball forward to maintain possession of the ball? "The answer is yes and at that point the game should have been stopped and a free-kick awarded to Swansea. (The referee must have failed to see the deliberate handball) "Did the Swansea goalkeeper, who came out the penalty area, commit a foul challenge? A collision did take place and it is evident that the referee decided that a foul had been committed. "It was a careless action by the goalkeeper so I support the award of a free-kick. Immediately the collision took place the referee stopped the game by blowing his whistle for the free-kick. "In doing so, he now has to consider the following criteria for denial of an OBVIOUS goalscoring opportunity â the distance between the offence and the goal, the likelihood of keeping or gaining control of the ball, the direction of the play, the location and number of defenders, the offence which denies an opponent an obvious goalscoring opportunity may be an offence that incurs a direct free-kick or an indirect free-kick. "The offence was outside the penalty area and certainly in shooting distance â so point one is fulfilled. The likelihood of keeping or gaining possession of the ball was carried out illegally and not seen by the referee so at this point the review panel should have supported the appeal. "Remember the panel looks at the DVD evidence supplied by the club. The direction of play really is quantified by the direction of the ball itself. It was travelling not towards the goal but parallel to the penalty area line and parallel to the touchline. The player managed a shot on goal because of his action of unsporting behaviour by deliberately handling the ball to gain an unfair advantage over his opponents. "So it is not DOGSO because the criterion has not been fulfilled. Swansea City has cause to be disappointed." It does seem that the current officials have closed ranks on this one - but it's not just Keith Hackett that has criticised the decision but also former ref chief Mark Halsey has come out in support of Fabianski! We have always moaned about refs here at Swansea but on this occasion it may be justified and I feel that there is a definite 'it's only Swansea' attitude adopted by the games officials! Monk's recent complaint about refereeing may have actually worked against us; with 'idiot in charge' Mike Dean thinking 'we can't possibly overturn the Fab red or it will look like we have indeed been unfair to SCFC'! The whole thing stinks in my opinion - OK, we would probably have still lost to West Ham but that is not the point - referees are not being held accountable for bad decisions but being backed by their own old boys network! As far as the stats are concerned we are the dirtiest side in the Premier League - we all know that is not true - but those that govern the game couldn't give a toss because it's only little old Swansea 'so let's all stick together chaps and if one of ours makes a big mistake then just back him - it's not as if we are punishing a big club!' Will be getting on the refs back from the start on Sunday and hope the rest of the Jack crowd do the same because the 'red card' issue will be at the front of his little brain - a nasty precedent has been set and I would hope that whoever the ref is on Sunday won't let it affect his decisions but, on the evidence of the season so far, I'm not holding my breath!
Still appalling. It's plain to see what happened from the tv coverage. There is no reason other than skulduggery on behalf of the FA for them not to overturn that decision.
Sorry Taff - my mistake, got a bit caught up in the rant and to make things worse we have bloody Robert Madley reffing tomorrow!!!
Awarded a penalty for a supposed Routledge handball, that never was, that gave Stoke an undeserved point and a 3-3 draw! Madley will always be near the top of a Swans 'ref that is a twat' list!
Seems as if Madley was picked purposely,as he had disappeared of the circuit for a while.He's pretty close to the top of the list of useless referees as far as we are concerned. Regarding Foy sending off Fabianski,guess who was the 4th official that day,another anti-Swan,the horrible Mike Dean,who after the match was reported as saying it was a nailed on sending off! So this is what we are up against,there is no consistency in their decision making,and big club bias,it's about time we took it out of the ref's hands and brought in video playback of controversial incidents.
Clearly we are being dealt a bum hand deliberately here, and it's up to our team to play the cheating referees out of the game, that's the only way it will work, time to score shed loads of goals, that way the cheating buggers cannot get a foot hold!............
