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.