Am I Mystic Meg?

For those of you who read my regular blogs for the guys at Pitch Talk, you will know that I have been saying it all season that the referees will have a big say in who and who does not win the league. Over the past few months the men in the middle have been making mistake after mistake with their decision making. It is something that should not be happening as the refereeing standards should be so much better than what we have witnessed. There are only a few games to go now in most leagues around the world and errors are still been made. What is more worrying for me is the fact that these bad decisions are not just in one league or even one country, but right across all leagues throughout the world. Maybe it is the fact that the games from around the world are readily available to watch no matter where you are on this planet. It is a system now that highlights all the problems involving getting a decision correct. Refereeing has always been a hard job to do but with the coverage the games get now it has nearly become the impossible job. Having written all that, this week my microscope falls on two officials who had a tough weekend as they blew the whistle. Jon Moss and Craig Thompson came in for a lot of stick over the weekend after their performances on the field in Leicester and Glasgow. Let me unravel a few issues below that happened to the guys.

Leicester City have been the sensation of the decade this season. Every neutral and so called pundit want them to win the league and any referee who makes any sort of an error whilst officiating the Foxes will be hammered. Jon Moss was the man in the middle for their latest clash which last weekend was against another team having a super season, West Ham United. Jon had three huge calls in the game and got two of them spot on, unfortunately the one he got wrong could have a huge impact on the final outcome of this seasons Barclays Premier League. The Jamie Vardy sending off was in my opinion 100% correct, in fact it was downright cheating. The regular readers of my articles for the boys at Pitch Talk will remember I have highlighted Vardy’s antics before. This time he has been caught out and hopefully the book will be thrown at him, his reaction to his sending off was outrageous. Let us be honest Jamie, you were caught out now take your punishment. If you look at the West Ham penalty it is very easy to see why the referee gave it.  Before the corner had been taken the referee had reason to pull out a few players and warned them about holding. It obviously fell on deaf ears and it was a good and brave decision to give the away team a spot kick. So having got two good decisions under his belt the referee went and blew it in the final moments of the game. All he had to do was see out the game and the plaudits would have come his way. Instead he decides to give a penalty for a challenge by Andy Carroll. In my opinion it was just a coming together of players and never a penalty. In the big scheme of things if referees are going to blow for incidents like this every week, we may just turn off our televisions. So Jon in my opinion has now left his mark on this seasons Barclays Premier League with such a huge call. Mind you it is just another black mark against the officials who have screwed up.

We have waited quite a while for an Old Firm Derby and finally we got one last week in the Scottish Cup semifinal. For such a huge game, who better to referee it than arguably the best official in Scotland, Craig Thompson? It was always going to be a tough game for Craig and I cannot believe how he made a mess of it by the simple awarding of a throw in. When a referee and his team get together they need to be in tune with each other all the time. The more experienced guys learn this over the years. So when referee Thompson over ruled his assistant on the simplest of decisions like awarding a throw in, I knew we were in for problems. It not only showed me that Craig had no trust in his assistant Alan Mulvanny but was quite prepared to leave him out to dry. The incident led to a second Rangers goal and effectively knocked Celtic out of the cup. I know that Rangers only went two one up after the goal but who was to say that they could have got a second once, Celtic got their,s. As we all know now Rangers went on to win the tie and progress to the final and good luck to them. But in my opinion it was an awful decision and for the life of me I cannot understand what came into Craig,s head. One explanation been thrown out by a lot of my refereeing colleagues around the world this week is possibly he was fatigued. I cannot agree with that opinion at all, in fact if this was the case he should have totally left the decision to his assistant. The knock on effect has left Celtic with no possibility of a double and today manager Ronny Deila has decided to step down at the end of the season a decision I am not sure he would have taken if his Celtic team had done the double. The fallout from a bad decision by Craig Thompson has led to more than just not appearing in a cup final, but far further than that. It was a poor decision by a referee who after all is a FIFA man, in my eyes this is not acceptable.

So there you go, another very bad weekend for refereeing decisions. I am scratching my brain to remember when I did not have a weekend were nothing has gone wrong. Having said all that, we have a few exciting weekends ahead and I expect the top referees to be getting things correct. So until my next blog for the boys at Pitch Talk enjoy your football and I do hope your team does not fall the victim of a bad decision. CIAO