This season the Barclays Premier League is the competition that keeps on giving. Every week now we are looking at incidents that are deciding the outcome of games. It has become a battle of wits between clubs and officials. The man holding the whistle has to be right on his game because managers are just waiting to point the finger elsewhere if their teams lose. I have always been of the opinion that the top referees should get the top games and rightly so. High profile games need to be refereed with as little fuss as possible and more importantly, when the game is over a referee has put it to bed with as little fuss as possible. One such game this weekend was Saturday,s match between Chelsea and Liverpool at The Bridge. The outcome of this game had so much riding on it that the last thing we needed was any controversy. So when I got the list of officials for the weekend I knew the appointment of Mark Clattenburg to this game was the correct one. Like many others I tuned in on Saturday lunchtime to watch, if rumours were to be believed Jose's last game in charge at Chelsea if his side suffered another defeat, I was not to be disappointed. What unfolded was a a superb match and a brilliant refereeing performance by Mark Clattenburg. Mind you with an up there is always a down and Anthony Taylor had a few problems at The Hawthorns. Let me below take you through how the day unfolded for both men.
From the moment Mark Clattenburg blew the first whistle on Saturday lunchtime, he was in total control from start to finish. All his big calls were perfect. Of course I am presuming Mark saw everything on the day. He seem to just let Skrtel and Costa have a battle and let them get on with it. This was not a bad thing to do, as he seemed to have control of the pair of them. In the incident were Costa kicked out at the Liverpool player, Mark seemed to react as if he had seen it and was prepared to let it go. This was excellent refereeing in my opinion as both players just seemed to be up for a good old battle. The one main talking point that seemed to annoy Chelsea was when Lucas was not shown a second yellow for a challenge on Ramires. In my opinion I feel the referee got this one correct, because I do not agree that every foul has to be a yellow card. The challenge in no way warranted a yellow and I was glad to see none was given. The reaction of the Chelsea players whilst Mark was making his mind up on the incident in my opinion was disgraceful, they actually surrounded the official and tried to pressurise Mark into producing a card. The usual suspects in the gang were Terry, Costa and Mikel, and if I was to be critical of the referee I feel he should have at least shown one of them a card. Players surrounding referees pleading for their fellow professionals to be sent off is disgusting in my book. Overall the officials on the day had a superb game and I know their bosses at the FA will be happy, but you very rarely get problems when Mark Clattenburg is in charge.
At The Hawthorns, West Bromwich Albion manager Tony Pulis was left fuming with referee Anthony Taylor after his sides game against Leicester. The referee missed two clear penalty calls for the home side according to Tony. In my opinion he actually only called the one wrong. The challenge by Huth into the back of Fletcher was a penalty all day long, how the referee did not give it is beyond me. The claim by the West Brom manager that Johnny Evans should have had a penalty in my opinion was wrong, to me I thought the referee got that one right. Holding shirts in the penalty area is going on now quite a while and it just seems referees are not giving penalties for this type of infringement. It just seems that is the way at the moment, but yes it should be a penalty if the law was applied properly. I did not think Anthony covered himself in glory over the weekend and will need a good game next week to keep his bosses happy.
So there we have it, another weekend of big decisions involving match officials. They got some correct they got some horribly wrong, I just hope if your out and about watching your team this week that you are not going to suffer because of a bad refereeing call. Until next time enjoy your football.
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