No apologies for bumping up this thread. I should be excited about the resumption of Premier League football, but I fear the next set of bad decisions to further skew the table away from the relative merits of the team toward the relative merits of the referees ability. Will we again have penalties that one ref gives in one match that seem weak at best and others with a strong case don't get them? You bet. And at the end of the season some pundit is going to say 'it all balances out over a season' when clearly it doesn't. And I'm not even pointing to decisions that have gone against Spurs here, but decisions that go in favour of our rivals are obviously as important, and when final placings are one point about, how can we sit back and say that bad ref decisions aren't important?
Vim, do you remember the decisions that go our way? As much as the decisions that go against us? That question can be adjusted for any fan of any team.
And they've gone 2-1 up. Chelsea players won't have won this game, the ref will have won it for them. Utterly disgraceful.
Well in order to "balance out over the season" Chelski will have to lose some games by ref decision. Anyone think that is likely? And Boss, of course I am interested in listing any mistakes in Spurs favour, and I take your point that every team will see such decisions only against their own team. But I am convinced (at the moment) that Spurs in recent seasons have not had the benefit of refs decisions whilst our rivals have, hence a thread like this where evidence can be listed.
No worries Vim, I like this thread but we should try and remember to post decisions that go our way, just to see if it really does balance out!
It takes talent to make a worse decision than Chelsea's first goal, but a German ref managed it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24589671
Pen on Palace was a very blatant handball that will always get called (except for us, and maybe a handful of other teams). Pen on Swansea was a dive, but came right after a blatant pen that wasn't called. Don't quite know how to rate that one. Pen today I've always seen called as a pen, but it was not "hand to ball", so if that's the standard, then it was a bad call. What I don't remember are the ones that weren't called against us. And yet, three for, none against, I do have to wonder. Did someone claim last year was a result of anti-Semitic bias?
I don't think anyone is disputing your penalties were deserved but let's be honest you'd be up in arms if the boot was on the other foot and Chelsea had won as a result of four penalty decisions. I'd rather refs make the right calls. I'd have no problem if say... refs at Old Trafford have penalties because they merited, but half the time it's because they were scared ****less of Fergie and the demotion that followed if refs dared not to give everything United's way.
Four? Three. Chelsea were averaging nearly one every three games for the whole of last season, so we'll need to keep getting them at this rate for the rest of the campaign.
I can understand why you're annoyed and doubtful, but we literally didn't get a penalty at all last season and we didn't get one at home in the previous season, either.
A simple solution would be if it hits a hand it is a penalty. End of story. It would be the same for everyone. The one today the defender had his arm raised and the ref had a very good view so I can understand why it was given, but he had little chance of getting his arm out of the way even if he had wanted to.
I'd be prepared to call our pen today a fairly dodgy decision, but it's one which the ref might always make under those circumstances. After all if the ball hits a raised arm in the penalty area, there's always that chance. It's the sort of decision that would always go for a (Fergie) ManU team at OT and nobody would even mention it twice. Think about it this way - if the defender is doing the same (i.e. ball hits arm but there is an argument he couldn't have avoided it) *on the goal line* then it's a penalty no doubt. Since I don't think the rules distinguish the goal line as a separate special case in the penalty area, in other words it's just 'in the penalty area', then logically it's a penalty. Having said that I would have been upset if that had happened against us, and am not happy to be winning a game that way. Bad luck to Hull.
