The Worldwide Game

The game of Association Football is played all around the globe, from as far North as the Faroe Islands, to the hot South of Australia. The English Premier League is beamed into many homes on this great global planet every weekend and big decisions are discussed in so many different languages when they happen. That is the beauty of our game, everyone has an opinion and a view on so much involved in and around the games. Their is so much football on TV these days, that the weekends are now special for us football fans. Controversy is never to far away and again this weekend we had our fair share of it. I want to this week focus on the game at the Eithiad Stadium and in particular, a refereeing performance from Roger East.

I have watched Roger on many ocassions over the past year and he has the making of a very good referee. But to be perfectly honest I was disappointed with his performance on Saturday. It was not that he had a particularly poor performance, but it was more the way he went about his business on the day and I can not let the Sean Davis handball go without a mention. In my opinion I thought Roger,s application of the advantage rule was wrong on the day, something I have not seen him do before. He seemed to be letting a long time lapse between the tackle and the awarding of a free kick. On a couple of occasions he tended to hold before blowing and then a second challenge came in, before he blew, for the original free kick. This is so dangerous, as it can lead to all sorts of problems and it causes players to react to you as if the first free kick had been missed. As I said earlier I have not seen Roger take this approach before and I just hope his coach is not putting it into his head to do this. His big call in the game was a handball by Southampton,s Steven Davis on the goal line which went out for a corner. It was in my opinion a100% red card and a penalty. How the referee did not see it was amazing, even the movement by the Southampton player should have told him it was a handball. But if I can, may I take this a bit further. An official behind the goal would have seen the incident and in my opinion would have been in the best position to do so. This is something that maybe the FA should have a look at and take the European route. The extra official behind the goal does work and will not cost the millions that the introduction of goal line technology has.

Before I end this week, I can not sign off without giving Craig Pawson a mention. I pulled Craig up in last weeks blog for not carding players for diving and quite a few of my blog readers were in touch to let me know they were in total agreement with my views. They say a week is a very longtime in football, and I have to totally agree with that, so let me this week, heap praise on Mr. Pawson for not blowing for a free kick, when it was so much easier to do. In fact, if he had blown, history in the Barclay,s Premier League may never have happened. I am talking about the incident in the Leicester v Manchester United match, when Blind tried to stop Kasper Schmichel clearing a ball upfield by sticking his leg up, a free kick all day every day. But the referee on this occasion used his head and saw their was a break on for the home side, a break in fact which led to Jamie Vardy creating history by scoring eleven goals in eleven games in a row. Amazingly none of the so called TV pundits gave this decision any sort of mention over the weekend. Typical of people who get paid big money but have not got a clue about application of the rules laid down by FIFA. It was a great decision to play on by Craig and fair play to him.

Ok that's me for this week, I do hope you enjoy your football during the week and if your side is taking to the field, I do hope all the refereeing decisions are correct for your team, I know this sometimes never happens but sure isn't that why we love this beautiful game. 

Until next week enjoy.