Controversy Once Again

This beautiful game of ours at times can be more controversial than a Conservative government making more cuts to an already struggling NHS. Week after week we go through the turnstiles or take an armchair view of all things to do with our beautiful game.Players, officials and the media are responsible for shaping, after all, what is the most followed game in the world. From the very first time a ball was kicked all those many years ago controversy has not been far away. The 1966 World Cup Final.the Maradona hand of god goal, Lampard scoring against Germany or not as the case was, Henry's handball in Paris are the things that pop up every now and again which fill many column inches in the papers and many hours of pundits talking waffle on TV.  A few of the pundits are better wafflers it has to be said,my favourite is Mr Marmite the former Welsh and Birmingham, Leicester, Derby and Blackburn player. So having laid that all out in front of you, let me have a look at a couple of big incidents in this week,s Barclay's Premier League. I want to focus on two refereeing performances involving in my opinion, the two best referee,s in the UK, Martin Atkinson and Mark Clattenburg.

Let me take you first to The Hawthorns in what was to be a real pressure game between West Bromwich Albion and Chelsea. The Champions needed to put on a good performance and take all three points as their start to the season has not set the world on fire. Mr Mourinho is already getting his annual "Everybody hates us Campaign going " so who better than to take charge of the game than Mark Clattenburg. Mark has so much calmness about himself when he is refereeing that you know he will rarely get anything wrong.There were two huge talking points in the game and he handled them so well.The John Terry sending off was a 100% correct decision. The defender is starting to show he is struggling for pace and even in his previous game against Manchester City he was taken off as a result of this.A decision that did not sit very well with JT.But as soon as he pulled back Rondon by the shirt their was only one outcome.A decision that once again the Chelsea manager had the temerity to question the outcome.In my opinion Jose really does need to take a trip to Specsavers sometime soon.The other talking point in the game was the running battle between Diego Costa and West Broms Yacob. Mark kept a close eye on the pairs carry on, but as it did not make the game more difficult for him to handle, he let them get on with it, an excellent man management decision in my opinion. It was in my opinion a superb performance by Mark and he will surely go on now and have an excellent season.

Saturday saw Leicester v Spurs and in the middle for this game was Martin Atkinson.As we know Leicester have had a great start to the season, so Spurs knew it would be tough. On paper it was never going to be a difficult game to referee,as long as the official did not make silly mistakes and overall within the ninety minutes there was really only one talking point. A huge penalty claim by Leicester was turned down by Martin in the first half.Jan Vertonghen and Leicester,s Mahrez clashed in the box.In my opinion Martin decided that if the two players were going to be pulling each others shirt,well play on.It is something that has crept into the game over the past couple of seasons and I think referees have just decided to let them get on with it.Overall Martin did quite well and no one really suffered by any silly mistakes. Something a referee is always happy with when he is leaving a football pitch.

These are just a few of the incidents that I saw over the weekend and as always, I wanted to bring my views to all the guys at Pitch Talk. So if you are out and about this weekend at a game I do hope your team has a result for you and a refereeing mistake has not seen you leaving the ground in disgust.Until next week enjoy your football.

The Return of the BPL!

THE BPL IS BACK!! It's finally returned to our screens. We've had what seemed like a long break from our regular football fix and finally the long spell without has come to an end. Many of us were wondering what the new season was to bring for us; what were we all going to talk about and debate. So can you imagine how astonished I was that in the first weekend of the new season, we had loads of controversy. Unfortunately the controversy was centred around referees once again. In particular I am talking about Michael Oliver and the new referee to the premier league panel, Simon Hooper. In my opinion the two referees involved were both at the opposite end of the scales in there performances. Michael with his FIFA experience was in charge at Stamford Bridge and rookie Simon got the gig at Carrow Road. Let me below give you my views on the two big talking incidents from the first weekend of the new Barclays Premier League.

Firstly let me take a look at the incident which saw Chelsea goalkeeper Courtois receive a red card for stopping a clear goal scoring opportunity. This in my opinion was not just an excellent decision but it was an example of top class communication between Michael Oliver and his team of officials. As a referee the one thing that is impossible, is to be able to be right up with play when a ball is played from defence to attack in the blink of an eye, so when Swansea broke out on Saturday and set Gomis up for a chance, teamwork by the referee and his assistant had to be spot on. From the position the referee was in it was impossible to say if Chelsea goalkeeper Courtois was in or outside the box when he committed the foul on the Swansea player. 

In these day's of modern technology I am sure his assistant had a word in his ear to confirm what decision was to be given. In my opinion the pair got it 100% correct, a red card and a penalty to follow, well done lads. So needless to say I was bemused to hear Thierry Henry disagree on TV that Saturday night, he claimed it wasn't a goal scoring opportunity. Well come off it Mr Henry you are totally wrong, I don't care how many defenders are behind a goalkeeper, once the forward goes past him there is your scoring opportunity, hence the red card on this occasion. Let us also not forget Mr Henry was right in the middle of his own controversy a few years back when he upset a whole Irish nation with is antics in Paris. I often wonder who picks these pundits to talk about incidents in games of which they have not got a clue about the rules or the interpretation of the rules. Let me just put another angle on this Courtois challenge. He was high, dangerous and out of control when he caught Gomis and anywhere else on the pitch to me it was a straight red. I was delighted that the FA rejected the frivolous Chelsea appeal. In fact once the appeal failed in my opinion the suspension should have been doubled. That last sentence is for another blog and another day, so let us park it.

I would imagine referee Simon Hooper was like a child waiting on Christmas Day to come last Friday night.Saturday was to be his first day waking to the prospect of the fact he was to referee a game in the English Barclay,s Premier League. He had been appointed to the Norwich City v Crystal Palace game and this should have been a game he would be well capable of controlling from the outset. I was lucky to see the whole game live and overall Simon did very well, but unfortunately he made a huge blunder when he disallowed a perfectly good goal by Cameron Jerome, yes it was an overhead kick, but never dangerous. But if you are lucky enough to see the incident again, you will see how the referee was anticipating the Palace defender sticking his head in to clear the ball. There in a nutshell is where it went wrong, you should never anticipate as a referee it will get you into so much trouble. I hope the referees bosses do not dump Simon over this incident as I said earlier he overall he did very well.So there you have it,week one over and controversy already. I am sure we will have loads more during the season and believe you me,I will be all over it for the boys at Pitch Talk, until next week enjoy your football.