The laws of the game
are being applied subjectively. It is a worrying trend and a growing problem
which must be sorted immediately!
The
most recent round of matches and some more woeful “officiating” and ineptitude
shown on the part of the FA - two incidents stick out like sore thumbs from
last week’s games. The first occurred in the first five minutes when Stoke came
to Anfield on Sunday. It is, of course, Robert Huth’s cowardly, deliberate
stamp on the chest of Luis Suarez. It was disgraceful, behaviour like that has
no place on a football pitch. It belongs on a rugby field, which is quite apt
seeing as Stoke love to play old style Rugby Union, feeding off line-outs, up
and unders, set-pieces and stramashes. It has gotten to the point where I
half-expect Bill McLaren to be doing the commentary for their matches. This
style (if you wish to call it that) is not giving the fans or the board much
value for money when you consider that Stoke are up there behind Chelsea and
Utd as the biggest net spenders over the last three seasons; I digress.
The
stamp was not punished and the FA won’t be taking retrospective action as the
“referee”, and I use that term loosely, Lee Mason apparently saw the incident
and thought nothing of it. Nothing? Not even a yellow? How can this be when
everybody with eyes can see this was a red card offence, even Graham Poll has
come out and said so and refs usually stick together. The FA should be looking
at this instance and reasoning that if Mason thinks that this kind of play is
ok, he is either too stupid to referee or, much more likely, totally inept!
This
was not the only instance of serious foul play from Stoke, far from it, for my
money Dean Whitehead should certainly have gone and others were lucky not to
pick up two yellows as well. It is the same week in week out, year in year out,
they get away with murder, almost literally in some cases. Questions must be
asked about the officials because they simply do not apply the same standards
of fair play to the Potters, it is plain for everybody out there to see. Again
the rules are being applied subjectively, if yellow cards were dished out to
Stoke players early on in games for their bully-boy tactics (a form of cheating) they would inevitably
have to change their approach (play some football perhaps) or have men sent off
in every game they play, which would be no more than they deserve.
Suarez
himself escaped a yellow card for a comical dive late in the second half, there
was contact from Wilson which caused the forward to lose his balance, he
attempted to stay on his feet but when he realised he wasn’t getting to the
ball he threw himself down theatrically. There are two possible reasons why
Mason failed to card Suarez; perhaps he saw the initial contact and therefore
was of the opinion that Suarez’s fall was not a clear dive or perhaps, he
thought that having allowed Suarez (and other Liverpool players) to be battered
all afternoon, producing a yellow for a dive would’ve been too much even for
Mason to justify; who knows? Thanks to Pulis’s cynical misdirection, this
incident became the talking point of the match, a damning indictment of the
ludicrous hypocrisy surrounding the game in Britain. Diving/going down easily
is cheating, stamping on players,
thuggery and generally roughing the other team up as much as possible,
is perfectly ok. Nonsense, utter tripe!
The
other major talking point from the weekend is the Robin van Persie elbow on
Yohan Cabaye during Manchester United’s trip to St. James’s Park on Sunday. It
was, no doubt, a clear and deliberate elbow, thrown in anger/frustration as the
Dutchman attempts to break clear from his marker. Howard Webb another referee
who has shown his inability to act on/notice transgressions such as this in the
past, missed this one too, or did he? Again the FA are not taking retrospective
action, which means that Webb saw it and thought nothing of it. Ridiculous,
simply ridiculous! Again the FA should be looking at that and thinking long and
hard about awarding Webb a Premier League game in the near future.
Professional
referees are now paid £170,000 a year to take charge of Barclays Premier League
matches, a tidy sum in anyone’s book, over three times the national average and
far more when you take London out of the equation. They simply cannot continue
to referee in the way that they have been for the last few years. They must,
must begin to apply the rules objectively across the board or they risk
contaminating the game in England forever. The rules have to be the same for
every player from every team. A yellow card tackle is a yellow card tackle, no
matter who commits it nor who the victim
is, whether it’s in the first minute or the last, in the centre circle or a
penalty area. The same can be said for a red card tackle and for a foul of any
kind for that matter. I am so sick of hearing that a foul outside the box is
different to a foul inside the box. Absolute rubbish!
Reputation
is just that; bluster, nonsense, and totally irrelevant to the referee’s job on
any given day. Referees should essentially be like jurors, they should not have
their opinions coloured by gossip and speculation, nor previous transgressions
which are again, irrelevant. They should judge the incidents of the day merely
on their merits and nothing more, something which they are clearly and
obviously not doing at the minute. Yes they are human beings but they are human
beings paid a lot of money to do an important job which relies on their
impartiality and objectivity in applying the laws of the game. Not only that,
but also the entire fabric of football in England relies on referees being seen
to be objective and impartial in applying the laws of the game. Referees should
not have contact with managers aside from a chat after the game, perhaps, where
decisions are explained. They certainly should not be sitting at top tables at
charity dinners alongside Premier League managers, such as was the case with
Mark Halsey and Sir Alex Ferguson recently.
Referees
are the ones there to blame but there are more sides to this story as more and
more often the Premier League is blighted by the officials’ inability to get
the calls correct and not just the big ones, little ones too. How can the
referees be expected to apply rules and hand out punishments objectively, with
the same punishment for the same transgression, when the FA singularly fails to
do so (Luis Suarez/ John Terry)?
Referees
are paid well but they are not superhuman, so why do the powers that be ie. The
FA, FIFA and UEFA, expect them to be. The game is played at a frantically fast
pace, there is no way that the officials can pick everything up, process the
information, consider, judge and act all in a split second, it’s absolutely
impossible. Every other sport has employed the use of technology to aid
officials. Why not football?
We’ve
heard more lip service being paid to goal-line technology but still we await
its introduction, amidst more controversy involving incidents in games between
Everton and Newcastle and, more recently, between Newcastle and Manchester
United. Rugby Union, as was mentioned above with reference to Stoke, has
cleaned up its game a lot in the last decade or more with the advent of proper
retrospective punishment. All players now know that they are being watched at
all times by the cameras and that any incident of foul play can be picked up on
with charges being brought at a later date. This still does not happen in
football, where the ridiculous caveat of whether the referee has noted the
incident comes in to play all too often.
Video
assistance is absolutely essential for the Barclays Premier League, another
point echoed by Graham Poll this week, and it must be used to pursue offenders
regardless of who they are and what club they play for, whether a referee has
seen an incident or not. Either that or we continue to grin and bear the
consistent and important errors that are being made, the subjectivity of
refereeing decisions which is blighting the game, the flagrant conflicts of
interest which are laughed off and explained away and the sport eventually
becomes a sham which nobody believes in or trusts anymore. It’s time for the
beautiful game to show itself to be fair, clean and, above all, honest!
By Neil Patterson
Email: neil.b.patterson@gmail.com
Facebook: http://goo.gl/MJce0
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Neil1980
