Yet More Stuff From The Madhouse

Blimey, what a week that was for refereeing issues. The Premier League quite rightly grabbed the headlines but the nonsense all started as Stoke City beat Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Referees-Jobs was at the game and was staggered by how poor Tel Aviv were. Even the sending off of striker Cameron Jerome didn’t alter the game. Indeed Stoke were so much superior to their opposition that, really they could have won with a 5 a side team.

It was disappointing then, that Tony Pulis, the Stoke manager, decided to waste his post match interview having a go at the referee Anastassios Kakos.

Kakos was a trifle officious and sent two players – the aforementioned Jerome and Tel Aviv’s Yoan Ziv, and Pulis said after the game: “"I didn't see a bad challenge all night - 24,000 fans have come to

watch tonight and you have to show some respect to them," added Pulis.

"I think we have to be very careful that we don't spoil what we have got in this country, which is honest competitive people, who want to make challenges.

"That is the big thing about professional football - it is a game of challenges.

"It is not netball, where you can stand off and try to stop them without touching them.

"If we take challenging out of the game, I don't think it will be anywhere near as good as it can be."

These comments were widely reported in the press, but neglected a couple of perhaps really important facts about the evening. Ziv was sent off for petulantly kicking his boot at the Assistant

Referee and Jerome was sent off for a second bookable offence.

The first booking that Jerome received was for dissent. In an ordinary Premier League game it probably would have been allowed to go, but once the referee has shown the yellow card you know that he won’t tolerate anything more. So less then 10 minutes later when the Striker elbows Ziv (there wasn’t a lot of contact but there was an elbow) he can’t have any complaints. And by the way, Robert Huth was booked for dissent in the second half, proving that sometimes, lessons just can’t be learnt. It just seems to be the default position of all Managers’ – blame the refs first, think later.

Two more were at it at the weekend. Andre Villas Boas is being investigated by the FA for his comments about Chris Foy after Chelsea v QPR. Villas Boas claimed that Foy hadn’t been fair (you will recall he had sent Jose Bosingwa off for a foul when he was last man and Didier Drogba received a red for a two footed lunge.) And Villa boss Alex McLeish - and Garth Crooks on Final Score - were incensed at Phil Dowd for giving a Penalty against Chris Herd, who was duly sent off.

This view of events also neglected the two really important facts. First it was Linesman Darren Cann, who essentially gave the red as he “saw” the foul and not Dowd. And second, you didn’t see Alex McLeish moaning the other week at

Loftus Road

when Villa were given a penalty that nobody apart from Ref Michael Oliver saw.

The first rule of these things is decisions often even themselves out over the season and the second is sometimes, just sometimes, players are in the wrong. And Manager’s would do well to remember that.

Bleating Bleating and More Bleating

Another week, another manager blames a referee for his team losing.

This week’s culprit was Kenny Dalglish.

The Liverpool boss was in a tizzy last Saturday night after his team lost at Stoke. It was all Mark Clattenburg’s fault apparently – nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that his team gave a whole new meaning to the word “profligacy” as they wasted chance of after chance.

No matter, faced with this Dalglish said after the game: "We would like to be respectful to referees - and I'd like to think I have been - but more importantly than being respectful to the referees is having respect for my football club," he said.

"If I feel they are suffering in any shape or form I will need to go the same route other people go and see if we can gain some benefit from that.

"The first four league games have had contentious decisions in them and every one has gone against us.”

Now, that’s his choice, of course. And I assume we can take from his pronouncements that he plans to be vocal in his criticism of the officials. It won’t be long, I am sure, before his wittering on about “respect being a two way street etc etc.”
I
t is surely one of the most unedifying things in football. Manager-loses-game-must-be-referees-fault.  And they are all at it too. Lets not forget that “King Kenny’s” opposite number in the dugout last week, Mr. Pulis is hardly a shrinking violet when it comes to the “the referee cost us” type Press Conferences.

But there is one point that, in all the bluster, seems to have been forgotten. The referee actually, probably, got them all right. Stoke’s penalty, although soft, could have been a foul, the second handball, the one that saw Luis Suarez booked for dissent, was never a penalty – and the Rory Delap one (although definitely the most obvious penalty), could be seen as accidental and tellingly the Liverpool players closest to the incident don’t seem overly fussed at the time.

No one is saying that Refs don’t get anything wrong. I am not even saying that managers shouldn’t question officials if they so choose (albeit there must be boundaries, surely?) but really this constant bleating is boring everyone, and doing no one any good.