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
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