The Refs Need Help

The weekends are fast turning into a nightmare for a lot of referees around the world. This is the time of the week when the football fan leave there place of work and head off to see the club they support in various cities and towns around this beautiful planet of ours. These days with worldwide coverage on television with more than twenty cameras in the ground, the poor referee must wake up in pools of sweat the night before they have a game. Every decision they make will be scrutinized by most pundits and if the men with the whistle get it wrong the TV, will show it over and over again. Mind you some of those guys who are sitting on the TV panels have not got a clue about the laws of association football. I actually see lately that one of the stations has introduced Howard Webb to their panel to make a call on all the big decisions that the boys with the whistles are making. I have been a longtime admirer of how Mark Clattenburg and Martin Atkinson officiate, so on Saturday it was the centre piece of my day to sit down and watch the guys perform in the Spurs v City game and the Newcastle v Chelsea match. Let me below have a look at what I thought of there performances and ask did they get it right or drastically wrong ?.

I am a great believer that for the top games you should appoint the top referees. I was delighted to see that the powers to be got it totally correct in appointing Mark Clattenburg to the game on Saturday at White Hart Lane between Spurs and Manchester City. What I was not expecting was for his two assistants to let him down so badly. As we know there main job in the game is to assist the referee and help him out at all times. The amount of the mistakes by his two assistants was incredible. I am not talking about small little ones like giving the throw ins the wrong way, but to miss three clear offsides which led to goals is unforgivable. I can possibly allow for the City goal as it was so tight and De Bruynne just hung enough so as to give the official a real problem. Spurs equalizer was disgraceful, Walker was not a foot but a good yard off and more annoyingly directly under the assistants nose, this one should not have been missed. The repercussions of the official not giving this could have led to all sorts of problems. When Mark blew for halftime he was surrounded by the City players as they knew, even if the assistant did not, that Kyle Walker was in an offside position. This led to the City centre half Michelis picking up a yellow card for his dissent. This could have been a lot worse for the City centre half in the second period of the game if the referee had hit him with the full letter of the law and cautioned him for a bad challenge, but the referee in my opinion took a lenient view as I expect he saw the highlights of the first half in his dressing room at the break. To put the thin hat totally on the day in my view was that Harry Kane goal,no matter what season or what instruction they guys are given,this was another horrendous decision. Things need to improve and I have been saying this now for a while. On this occasion the referee was badly let down by his assistants and these two guys should be given a rest next weekend to re focus on their game.I do hope Jake Collin and Simon Beck learn from this as both are suppose to be the tops, but after that performance I would not use them in Hackney Marshes.

My focus for my next game was firmly on Saint James Park for the Newcastle v Chelsea game. As we all know mayhem was in the air at the last Chelsea game and the FA needed to appoint a strong referee to deal with any messing. The last thing the league needs right know is more hassle involving Chelsea. It was important that the game went well for the referee and who other should get the shout from the FA but Martin Atkinson. I have said many times in my blogs for the boys at Pitch Talk that I think Martin is one of the top two referees in the country. On the day he was superb and kept things very tight so as not to give the so called " Special One " anymore reasons to moan. Mind you on that, Mr Mourinho in my opinion should be renamed the " The Moaning One ". Overall in the game he made nearly every call correct which is all you can ask from a referee. One decision which he made was for a tackle by the Chelsea defender Ivanovic, I have seen red cards given in other games for such a challenge, but on Saturday, Martin was totally in control and there was no need to produce a red card. All in all he was excellent and I am sure his bosses at the FA would have been, more than happy.

It is becoming an incredibly bad season for refereeing decisions and I can not see it getting any better unless their is a huge shake up and new blood is introduced. I will sign off this week with my usual message, if you are heading out to see your team in action I do hope the officials get it right in your game and you're not fuming when you leave the ground. Until next week enjoy your football. As a footnote to all this I am now hearing the two assistants involved in the Spurs v City game have been dropped this weekend.Well done their bosses.

The Game is Crazy

The football over the weekend has been superb with plenty of incident and outrage. I always have reported that there are three teams on the pitch when it comes to association football. The home and away teams and of course the referee and his assistants. It is fast becoming this season a case of the referee has now become a ring master looking after the animals, yes animals. It is so disappointing that grown men are now cheating and trying to con the officials. I know they have been doing it for many years but this season it seems to have become even more noticeable in the beautiful game. I would like to this week have a look at two incidents involving two of the best referees in Europe. I want to have a look at Mike Dean in the big Premiership game of the weekend at Stamford Bridge and I feel I can not let this blog finish without talking about the horror challenge on Luke Shaw in the game against PSV which looks likely to have finished his season. The man in charge on the night was none other than World Cup Final referee Nicola Rizzoli, a man who I have praised on many different forums over the past season or two.

I have been saying it now for quite a while that Diego Costa is a disaster to referee. The guy is everything that is bad about professional footballers these days. With this in mind I was very interested to see how Mike Dean would handle him in the game between Chelsea and Arsenal last Saturday. To my disappointment Mr Dean was led a merry dance by the player and instead of the referee being in control, Diego ruined the match for him with his antics. Where the referee failed to stamp his authority all over the game was when Costa was fouled early on in the game and had the audacity to make the imaginary yellow card sign to the referee, Mr Dean should have stamped out any nonsense there and then and in fact should have yellow carded the Chelsea forward. Once he missed this opportunity his game was going to be an uphill struggle and eventually Costa was going to drop him right in the brown stuff. Having failed to see the Chelsea player slap out at Koncielny, matters got worse as again Mr Dean failed to take control of a situation which ended up with Arsenal defender Gabriel been sent off. I will agree the Arsenal defender was stupid to get involved but the referee let the two players walk half the length of the field abusing each other and he should have sorted it long before it needed a red card. In my opinion there was only one way this was going to end. Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho thought after the game that Diego was man of the match, well he certainly caused enough problems so as to cause havoc for the referee and yes he did win Chelsea the match by conning the referee into sending off a fellow professional. In my opinion this is exactly the sort of stuff that is ruining our game. I would like to think the FA will have a look at the whole incident early next week and hopefully slap a ban on the Chelsea player.

During the week Manchester United went away to play PSV in the Champions League. It unfortunately was a bad night all around for the Manchester club, not only did they lose but the game saw Luke Shaw pick up an awful leg break after been involved with a tackle from PSV player Moreno. I actually thought on the night that referee Rizzoli made an awful mistake by not giving a penalty and sending off the home team player. My phone was hopping on the evening with many of my contacts asking how could it not have been a red card. The only answer available to me was the referee made a huge mistake as the tackle ticked every box laid down in the rules to see a player dismissed. One thing I will say in the referee's defence is that nobody claimed the penalty or the red card and this could have swayed his mind. I spoke with two FIFA referee's the following morning and both were in agreement that the referee got it wrong but they could understand why. It just goes to show you that even the best referee in the world is human and can make a mistake.

It was an interesting week and very controversial all around. Maybe next week things will improve and controversy will be thin on the ground, but I would not hold my breath on that one. As I always say if you are out and about watching your team I do hope controversy stays far away from you. Until next week enjoy your football.

The Controversy Continues

Last weekend we returned to all things football after a short break for the international matches. A break in my opinions, which should have given everyone time to have a look at early season form and put the little things right that were going wrong. I include the referees in all of this because there has been to much controversy involved in a very short space of time since the season started. Mistakes happen, but so far this season the referees have been making them on a much regular basis in the Barclay's Premier League.

In fairness it was a breath of fresh air to see the best referees from Europe, perform in various international games around the globe as teams battled it out to qualify for the 2016 European Championships. I decided to take a lot of these games in on TV to see if the European referees were doing anything different from their British counterparts and I was not disappointed by any performance. So as we went into last weekends game I was hoping the men in the middle in the British Isles could get their act together.It was another weekend of controversy and bad decisions and surely things need to improve drastically and quick. Their we're quite a few incidents over the weekend and as per usual I want to have a look at two that jumped out at me immediately. Below I will have a look at an amazing error in the Championship and a tackle that I think, should have seen a player sent off for a tackle on Manchester City's Aguero.

First I want to dip into the Championship and have a look at the incident in the Fulham v Blackburn game where the away side had a clearly good goal not given. Their is no doubt the ball crossed the line and a goal should have been awarded.Blackburn manager Gary Bowyer was fuming after the game and I for one agree with his frustration.In my opinion an assistant referee should never miss such a simple task as seeing that a ball has crossed the line.

It is one of the most important parts of his job. Without going into how we think he missed it, let us have a look at the bigger picture and the bigger picture is Goal Line Technology, or the lack of it in the leagues below the Premier League. The clubs at those levels deserve the same playing field as the so called top clubs. I know it is a matter of finance but we can get around that by introducing the way it is done in the Champions and Europa Leagues, bring the refereeing team on the day up to six and at least it would give some sort of help to solve these problems for teams. Something needs to be done to give everyone a fair chance and I know the feeling on the ground is action must be taken and quick, to stop these sorts of blunders been ruled out so no other team suffers. I just hope Blackburn do not miss out on promotion at the end of the season by one point.

I can not sign off this week without mentioning the performance by referee Mike Jones in the Crystal Palace v Manchester City game. The game will be remembered for City bagging all three points with a excellent gritty performance for the whole ninety minutes. From a refereeing point of view the referee got it horribly wrong when he showed a yellow card to Scott Dann for in my opinion a disgraceful tackle on Sergio Aguero. The Palace defender caught the Argentinian with a tackle high to the knee when the ball was nowhere within playing distance. It was a clear red card for me and the decision to show a yellow was disappointing to me.Mind you, trouble seems to follow Mike Jones around. The tackle by Dann led to Aguero having to limp off after a while and also put him out of the City v Juventus match in midweek.Mike Jones needs to have a look at his decision and make sure he corrects the error of his ways. 

I will finish off this week by wishing everyone involved in our game, has a good upcoming weekend following your side. Let us hope next week I am not blogging for the boys at Pitch Talk about a poor decision against your club. Until then do not have nightmares, enjoy your football.