It was Assault.

Their is only one place I can start this weeks blog and I would like to take you back to Chelsea v Everton game played at Stamford Bridge. I would like to shed some light on an incident involving Chelsea’s Ivanovic. An incident in which today as I am typing this article I’m still in shock that he did not receive a red card on the night or worse still, retrospectively. Now let us call this issue correctly. Any player who puts his hands on an opponent in an aggressive manner should be sent off in my opinion. I cannot understand why referee John Moss did not produce red, as it was an easy one as they say.

There were three key moments in this game for me and I thought the referee and his team got two out of the three correct. As we know Matic had a shot, which was turned in by Ivanovic, but there was no doubt he was offside. The Barry red card was also correct and I have to admit in my opinion Gareth had to go. But what turned my stomach was the reaction of the Chelsea players to what after all was just an every day run of the mill late tackle. It was nothing nasty, nothing dangerous and for the men in blue to surround the referee in the manner they did to get a fellow player sent off was disgusting. The Chelsea left back in actual fact ran at least forty yards to make sure he got his point across to Jon Moss about Barry.

Meanwhile as the referee was dealing with dismissing Barry, Ivanovic was using his head and hands around McCarthy’s neck to try and sort things out. Now I don't totally blame Jon Moss for missing the incident as the tactic of the Chelsea players to surround him and try and pressurize the official into making the decision in there favour, a tactic that is surely been led from the manager in my opinion. But in this situation the assistant referee should have helped his referee out by seeing the incident and making sure Ivanovic was sent off.

Having not taken action on the night, I was sure the authorities would hand out a retrospective red card later in the week but could not believe it when he was cleared. I have done some investigations this week as to who sits on that panel but have not been able to come up with any names. The one thing I have to say about the whole incident was Ivanovic had his hands around the Everton’s players throat and his intent was clear to see on millions of TV,s around the world to head butt his opponent. That is enough in my opinion to warrant a three-match ban, no doubt. Whoever the guys are who sat on the panel

I wonder if they have been swayed by the attitude lately of Chelsea that everyone is against them. If they have been sucked in by all this publicity and decided not to hand out retrospective punishment, well then the mind game master has won. In my opinion it was a red card all day long and they got away with it. This is also the second game in a matter of weeks were we have had controversy involving a Chelsea player been under the spotlight after a game. If you remember the last time the three blind mice sat down to look at retrospective punishment, in fact they handed out a three match ban to Diego Costa.

As we go into the final few weeks of the season I don't want to be blogging about referees not making the big decisions but if it has to be passed on for others to have a look at I do hope they get it right and don't bottle any decisions no matter how special the player they are dealing with is. If I can look at an incident in the Liverpool v Spurs game last week I would like to praise Scot Ledger who was assisting Phil Dowd on the night. The shout Scot gave Phil to tell him Danny Rose had fouled Sturridge was superb. Phil was never giving a penalty and he only gave it when a brave Scot had a word in his ear.This in my opinion was team work of the highest calibre and hopefully did not go unseen by the referees boss assessor.

If only the assistant had been as brave at Stamford Bridge, Ivanovic would be about to start a three match ban. Anyway if you are out and about over the next week or so, enjoy your game and I hope your team gets the result for you. Cheers for now.