Warnock's Sideswipe At Johnson

This bloke Warnock never gives up, 4 years on, sacked and out of work,he is still having a go at Gary J about losing out to that goal, now I know Gary is no longer our manager but I for one wish him all the best and Warnock can get stuffed.




'It's not that often that Football League Managers will directly attack their opposite numbers. When they do, it tends to be done in the heat of the moment, with any frostiness dispelled by the time they get as far as their next press conference. Not so with out-of-work manager Neil Warnock, who appears to still hold a grudge against Yeovil Town manager Gary Johnson, over four years after an incident involving a Bristol City home match against Crystal Palace, who Warnock was in charge of at the time.

That August 2009 game at Ashton Gate saw referee Rob Shoebridge and his assistant Chris Knowles commit a blunder that was shown on TV highlights throughout the weekend, and led to the pair being withdrawn from duties for a couple of weeks, having failed to notice a goal from Palace striker Freddie Sears being scored after it ricocheted off a back stanchion.

Warnock claimed after the game that Johnson's side should have given him a walk-in goal to atone for the refereeing error, branding Bristol City as 'cheats' for accepting the referee's decision, in a game that City won 1-0. At the time, Johnson said that he was under the impression that the officials had awarded a free kick following an infringement, and thus saw no reason to intervene.

Now four years later, he has resurrected that incident in a column for The Independent newspaper, labelling Yeovil Town's Tuesday night equaliser against Birmingham City as "obviously ungentlemanly conduct" - one of the first football pundits to come down against Johnson's side in the review of Byron Webster's controversial goal.

The incident at Ashton Gate happened at the start of Gary's final season with the Bristol club, with him eventually departing seven months later in March 2010. Warnock bizarrely infers that incident sparked Johnson's demise at the club, and spitefully suggests that history might repeat itself with Yeovil Town:

"I'll never forget walking off down the touchline with all those City supporters jeering, all of us knowing we should have won the game. I told Gary, "You'll regret it, what comes around, goes around', and told the press I was disappointed but it wouldn't surprise me if everything went wrong for Johnson afterwards. I was right, he ended up getting the sack. I wonder what will happen with Yeovil now."

Johnson actually outlasted Warnock in his management position, with the latter being at the helm when Crystal Palace went into administration, leaving shortly after their financial collapse. Since then, he's been and gone at Queens Park Rangers and Leeds United, and has been out of work since April 2013.

The reaction from most football pundits to Tuesday night's goal has either been to blame the so-called convention of kicking the ball out of play, or to point out that teams should primarily play to the referee's whistle, and not to any gentleman's agreement. Meanwhile Sky Sports have pointed out that Birmingham themselves tried to score a near identical goal against Watford on the opening day of the season, only to be thwarted by a Hornets defender's last-ditch tackle, criticising the Blues for their players own double standards across the two incidents. '

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