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
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