We are six games into the Barclays Premier League and to be quite honest on the refereeing front it has been a bad start. In my opinion there are have been far to many controversies to talk about. It has been one refereeing error after the other which has been totally ridiculous, the standards need to be raised and the referee's need to start getting things right. As we went into the most recent round of games I was wondering where and when controversy would strike and would we be hearing managers and fans once again moan about officials who got things wrong. Those of you that follow my regular article for the boys at Pitch Talk will know I have been very critical of the officials this season. I have been accused by many of being very negative towards the officials, well I am sorry but if the boys are not doing there stuff I will be all over it for the good lads at Pitch Talk. Last weekend I sat down and focused on all the games and the officials involved, I was pleasantly surprised to see two excellent refereeing performances by Neil Swarbrick and Jon Moss. It was great to see two guys putting in a shift and coming out of their games leaving no controversy behind them. I will lay out below a few incidents in their games that they handled so well and left no one in any doubt that they were on top form.
Neil Swarbrick took charge of the Swansea v Manchester City game and in my opinion he put in a top class performance, with possibly only one error to talk about after the game. Swansea can be a very awkward place to go and referee and if you get things wrong the fans have no problem in letting you know. From a footballing point of view you can never tell which Swansea side will turn up and if you had put that together with the start Manchester City have had then you had a recipe for a nice little game. Neil was on top form and very cool in handling any issues thrown at him. The big talking point to come out of the game was the awarding of a penalty to Manchester City which Sergio Aguero scored from to put the blues in the lead at two one. The incident leading up to the penalty was when Swansea defender Mike Van Der Hoorn completely flattened Kevin De Bruyne with an arm across the face. It was a clear penalty in my opinion and Neil was also correct to show a yellow card to the Swansea defender, in fact the player was very lucky he was not sent off for putting his hand on the referees shoulder after the awarding of a penalty. A lot of people pointed out after the game that the player should have seen red, but I totally disagree. Neil man managed the whole situation correctly, all the Swansea players were already up in arms over the penalty been awarded and in fairness to the referee, on this occasion it was right to just leave the shove alone, it would only have made things a lot worse. This in my opinion was an excellent use of common sense by a referee who was on top of his game and knew he was having a good day. It was great to see a referee use common sense as it is something that is sadly and slowly disappearing from our game. So well done Neil your performance was real old school.
Another referee in the spotlight was Jon Moss who took charge of the West Ham United v Southampton game. West Ham have had a disastrous start to the season and had lost three games on the trot. It was imperative that Jon did not have any problems in the game because as you know the managers love to blame referees on having cost their teams defeat to take the eye off their own tactical errors. Over the period of time I have been doing this article for the boys at Pitch Talk Jon has appeared a couple of times, mostly in a good way. His performance in this game was spot on and he got all his big decisions correct in my opinion. Jon on the day had three issues to deal with, I will take you through them now as I review his performance. One issue he had to deal was a penalty claim by West Ham after Saint's player Bertrand appeared to handle the ball from a Sofiane Feghouli shot. In my opinion Jon was correct to turn away claims for the penalty as I felt the ball struck the players hand and he was unable to do anything about it. Jon also had to turn down another penalty claim by West Ham when Zaza went down in the box. This in my opinion was clear cut cheating by the West Ham player and he totally deserved the yellow card he received. It is great to see referees producing yellow cards for players who try and cheat in some cases maybe a red should be used, but that discussion is for another day. Jon sailed through this game and in my opinion his best yellow card was when Payet sarcastically clapped at him after he had blown his whistle for yet another free kick. It was a good days work by Jon Moss a referee who was totally on his game in this match.
So there we have it another weekend over, but we are talking about good refereeing this week. This trend has to continue if we are to have a trouble free season. I have always been of the opinion that if you put the work in off the pitch the results will show on it. It is clear to me after these two guys performances over the weekend they are putting in the hours to get the job done. I will leave it there for this week and hopefully when I write another article for the boys at Pitch Talk I will be praising more excellent performances by the officials. Until then I do hope you enjoy your football and no refereeing decision gets your blood boiling. CIAO
Friday 14 October 2016
Mike Reilly Take Charge
In most walks of life a good manager advises his staff on how to do things. The main reason that he is in that position is because of his experience and his know how, to run things smoothly. Well the manager of the referees in the English Premier League is Mike Reilly a former referee himself, but what I am finding very hard to work out is exactly what does this guy do. Later on in my column for the boys at Pitch Talk, I will do my usual and have a look at two refereeing incidents that caught my eye last weekend. The point I am trying to make is that I have two more incidents this week having had quite a few leading up to this and we are only four games into the Premier League season. It is obvious to me that the powers to be at the top of refereeing do not know how to coach or can not be bothered. First on Mike Reilly,s list for Monday should have been to have words with Roger East and Lee Mason who took charge of the Hull City v Arsenal and Everton v Middlesborough games over the weekend. Just a few words to try and iron out wrong decisions in my opinion that had happened over the weekend.
Roger East was at the centre of things in Hull when he sent off the home teams Jake Livermore. The referee,s decision to send off the player was just another error in a season that is going fast down the pan. In my opinion Livermore did not deliberately handle the ball and in no way did he stop a goal scoring chance. The ball struck his hand and there was no way he could have got it out of the way, not every handball in the penalty area has to lead to a spot kick. When the referee awarded the penalty I was astonished to see him produce a red card, how did he come up with that one I thought. If you get a chance to see the incident again, look very carefully at the positioning of the Hull City goalkeeper, he is directly behind Livermore and it looked to me that the ball was going straight into his arms. Looking at those facts leads me to believe that it could not have been a sending off for a goal scoring opportunity. I know there are times when a player does handle a ball and stops a goal scoring opportunity which rightly leads to a dismissal, but in this case the referee got it totally wrong in my opinion. Overall I thought Roger was poor on the day and when he had to get help from his assistant to award a penalty to Arsenal later in the game you really had to wonder was his mind totally focussed on his game. The incident happened right in front of the referee and it was hard to see how he needed help to get to the correct decision. Fair play to his assistant for been strong enough to give the decision, but really Roger should not have missed it.
Lee Mason was at the centre of controversy in the game between Everton and Middlesborough played at Goodison Park. His problems happened when he allowed Negredo,s goal to stand although it could be clearly seen that he had headed the Everton goalkeeper,s arm as the cross came in. I can not understand how the match official allowed the goal to stand, it was clearly a foul and it was a very easy decision to award a free kick rather than a goal. The Everton equalizer was also very questionable when Ashley Williams dived in to try and make contact with a cross, he clearly impeded the Middlesborough goalkeeper and it was very dangerous and Lee Mason should have awarded a free kick. It seemed to me that the referee tried to even things up after his first blunder. There is a saying out there that two wrongs do not make a right and in this situation in my opinion that is exactly what happened with the official. It was poor refereeing from a very experienced referee who simply should have known better.
Well another weekend over and more silly mistakes by the so called top officials in the Barclays Premier League. It is becoming very clear to me that the standard of refereeing in the top league in England is at an all time low, week in week out there is controversy. The referees and their mentors really need to get their heads together and try and sort out this mess. As I finish off this article for the boys at Pitch Talk I am sure next week I will have more controversy to discuss. Maybe the answer is to try and bring more new referees in, to try and freshen things up. Every week we are seeing the same match officials and it leaves it wide open for problems to mount one on top of the other. For example if we were only to see the same referee once a month it might help things. This would also act as a double edged sword, it would take the officials out of the limelight if they have caused an issue in their previous weekend,s game. It would also give the lads a break to recharge their batteries and have a look at their previous mistake. I can not see their bosses running with this idea so the controversy will continue and I will surely have more to write about again next weekend. On that note I will leave you alone to enjoy your football and I do hope I am not writing about a controversy involving your team next week. It is a very long season and we are barely underway, so let us all hope things calm down a bit. " Ciao "
Roger East was at the centre of things in Hull when he sent off the home teams Jake Livermore. The referee,s decision to send off the player was just another error in a season that is going fast down the pan. In my opinion Livermore did not deliberately handle the ball and in no way did he stop a goal scoring chance. The ball struck his hand and there was no way he could have got it out of the way, not every handball in the penalty area has to lead to a spot kick. When the referee awarded the penalty I was astonished to see him produce a red card, how did he come up with that one I thought. If you get a chance to see the incident again, look very carefully at the positioning of the Hull City goalkeeper, he is directly behind Livermore and it looked to me that the ball was going straight into his arms. Looking at those facts leads me to believe that it could not have been a sending off for a goal scoring opportunity. I know there are times when a player does handle a ball and stops a goal scoring opportunity which rightly leads to a dismissal, but in this case the referee got it totally wrong in my opinion. Overall I thought Roger was poor on the day and when he had to get help from his assistant to award a penalty to Arsenal later in the game you really had to wonder was his mind totally focussed on his game. The incident happened right in front of the referee and it was hard to see how he needed help to get to the correct decision. Fair play to his assistant for been strong enough to give the decision, but really Roger should not have missed it.
Lee Mason was at the centre of controversy in the game between Everton and Middlesborough played at Goodison Park. His problems happened when he allowed Negredo,s goal to stand although it could be clearly seen that he had headed the Everton goalkeeper,s arm as the cross came in. I can not understand how the match official allowed the goal to stand, it was clearly a foul and it was a very easy decision to award a free kick rather than a goal. The Everton equalizer was also very questionable when Ashley Williams dived in to try and make contact with a cross, he clearly impeded the Middlesborough goalkeeper and it was very dangerous and Lee Mason should have awarded a free kick. It seemed to me that the referee tried to even things up after his first blunder. There is a saying out there that two wrongs do not make a right and in this situation in my opinion that is exactly what happened with the official. It was poor refereeing from a very experienced referee who simply should have known better.
Well another weekend over and more silly mistakes by the so called top officials in the Barclays Premier League. It is becoming very clear to me that the standard of refereeing in the top league in England is at an all time low, week in week out there is controversy. The referees and their mentors really need to get their heads together and try and sort out this mess. As I finish off this article for the boys at Pitch Talk I am sure next week I will have more controversy to discuss. Maybe the answer is to try and bring more new referees in, to try and freshen things up. Every week we are seeing the same match officials and it leaves it wide open for problems to mount one on top of the other. For example if we were only to see the same referee once a month it might help things. This would also act as a double edged sword, it would take the officials out of the limelight if they have caused an issue in their previous weekend,s game. It would also give the lads a break to recharge their batteries and have a look at their previous mistake. I can not see their bosses running with this idea so the controversy will continue and I will surely have more to write about again next weekend. On that note I will leave you alone to enjoy your football and I do hope I am not writing about a controversy involving your team next week. It is a very long season and we are barely underway, so let us all hope things calm down a bit. " Ciao "
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