DaveT

I just can't watch us live any more, I get too angry. I watched the first half just before reading this - to find Dave had stolen my thunder, and mentioned all the stuff I wanted to say. The refereeing thing is just scandalous now. Tierney blowing up early is plain cheating, no other word for it. And the drip, drip of little decisions going againts us. Pogba flops to the floor under minimal,if any, pressure from Gini - foul. Shaw bundles Mo to the ground - no foul. Shaw's sliding tackle takes him into Sadio, who does literally nothing - foul. 6 fouls awarded to us, of which 2 were within 8 minutes. 4 free kicks in 82 minutes! In the last 7 league games, the opposition have had an average of 29% possession.......... yet have been awarded 60% of the free kicks. Apparently we just run round kicking people when we don't have the ball! As for the offsides thing..... Rashford is 5 yards offside, but play is allowed to run on for another 10 seconds. Mane is inches offside - flag goes up straightaway. I fervently hope that in a match soon, not involving us, a player is many yards offside, play continues and some fucker (a Manc player) gets seriously injured. The old adage used to be that class is permanent, form is temporary. I've seen our great teams from the sixties,seventies & eighties shake themselves out of this kind of malaise and come good. Thye didn't have this kind of unofficial handicap to cope with though. Just checked - Mike Dean is ref on Thursday, unusually. Mason is VAR and Taylor is 4th official, so don't expect things to change any time soon.

Nope, it's a perfectly rational view, based on significant weight of evidence.

Trouble is, it takes years of training to perfect these antics, it would take forever to reach the standards most of our rivals have set long since.

The outcome of this was so utterly predictab;e that I chose to swerve it, went for a long drive into the countryside (remember when we could still do that?!). It took two (?) minutes for Berbatov to flop to the floor and Webb to fuck us over. It still baffles me to this day that with such a blatant conflict of interest, Webb was appointed to ref our mtches so often, especially high profile ones. You'd think the FA would want to avoid any possible suggestion of bias, but no. Even though he continued to fuck us over every time the opportunity presented itself.

Having now seen the incidents (two stonewall penalties and a red card ignored) at Southampton and also the ManU penalty against Villa, I have no doubt now that there's something shady going on. What the exact nature of it is, I don't know. On the one hand, half-wits like Atkinson, Marriner, Friend et al don't have the intelligence to put together a conspiracy. On the other, they're dim enough to think that they could get away with one! It's alarming that the media are completely glossing over this situation. I've seen a few analyses as to our current 'predicament'. None of them mention us getting regularly ficked over by the refs union. And it's not just the big calls, it's the relentless small one that break up rhythm and momentum. The first long throw into our box by teh West Brom lad Furlong (who, of course, has been shit since that night), was taken 20-25 yards further upfield than where it went out. Newcastle's only attempt in the 2nd half came from a free-kick taken 10 yards infield from the offence (Phillips, right on the touch line). :'And as for Dickhead Dermot..... Here''s what he said about the Pogbal incident... ''I think the referee thinks there is a tangle of legs and Pogba actually catches his foot. What I would say is once it's given, considering where the referee is on the pitch, it's never going to be overturned by VAR. You cannot fault Michael Oliver's positioning." And on the Mane one: I think this is a tangle. Walker-Peters goes to make the challenge, I think he pulls out and Mane goes to skip the ball. You can see that they come together and I think it would be harsh to give a penalty. "Walker-Peters is definitely going to pull out of the tackle, he doesn't want to get involved, he doesn't want to dangle a leg, which is what defenders are often accused of doing. He goes to tackle with his right leg and Mane actually goes into his left leg. "The referee also couldn't be in a better position, so he has a perfect view of it. He can see the contact, how it's made - there's no doubt there's contact - and he says no. VAR quickly looked and agreed with the referee." He's diappearing up his own arse trying to justify these decisions. The Neil Mellor analysis shows that it's a crystal clear foul on Mane. The irony of this situation - refs favouring United, and fucking us over, is that the team which will benefit most is City. United aren't good enough to win the title off the back of this largesse. However our lead over City has been whittled away by these shite decisions (as well, of course, by our own form/missed chances/injuries) and they've built some good momentum now.

I sent this to our Whatsapp group last night at 6.30pm..... 'FYI, I won't be watching live, going on radio silence. I'm just getting too wound up and it's not healthy. Andre Marriner will sleepwalk through the match as usual, oblivious to a load of blatant fouls on our boys.' It was a good decision, but nothing particularly clever about it. Just years of close observation of these people, and their performances become entirely predictable. You know Marriner and Atkinson will let loads go, especially on our lads. Just like you know which players go to ground easily, which ones engineer contact and then go down (Kane, Fernandes etc ), which defenders & DMs flop to the floor under minimal or no contact (mental image of Granit Xhaka flopping on top of the ball). This is all common knowledge to the average discerning fan - yet it still goes on, week in, week out, nothing changes. There now seems to be an unwritten rule that ANY challenge by a Liverpool player is a foul..... but opponents can do their worst. Remember a promising counter attack at Brighton being stopped by Ben Wright (yellow card?)...... by a forearm in Jota's throat (yellow card?). We got a free kick... but there was no card. This is happening game after game. Just had a look at the last 6 matches...... fouls given against us: 57. For: 42. In those games we had the following possession stats.....67%,73,78,65,76 & 75. So, in the fleeting moments when the opposition has the ball, we manage to foul them more than they foul us in the other 3/4 of the match?! I've always been more of believer in cock-up than conspiracy, but it doesn't feel like there's a level playing field at the moment. Football should be a welcome distraction at a time like this, but having to put up with this toxic mix of bad form, bad luck, injuries and awful officials isn't helping. Sky cocked up last night, mis-interpreting Johnson's announcement and saying that the PL was being put on hold. Unfortunately they corrected it quickly. I'm going to swerve our matches for the time being - maybe until we're allowed back in the ground..... at least I can make my feelings known to the lineman from where I sit! Or maybe until Mo starts scoring again. I just don't know right now.

Big sob story for depleted City. Had to make do with a starting eleven that cost a paltry £400 million.

He wasn’t the problem but he wasn’t fine. No problem with our yellow cards but he should absolutely have given Clarke a 2nd and Fernandez a yellow too. The free kick that they nearly scored from in the 2nd half was taken at least 10 yards infield from where the foul took place..... another instance where rules are discretionary, as opposed to corner kicks where there is an anal obsession about the placement of the ball. And what’s the ruling about linesmen keeping their flags down..... I have no idea what the rule is anymore. A couple of times last night, we were flagged offside when it was clearly marginal.... in one instance, Mo actually looked well onside. We should have had four or five more free kicks than he gave us including one when a guy jumped on top of Milner’s head,ffs. Anyone else noticed that we’re nearly always on the wrong end of the foul count (9-13) last night. This is because we press high and defenders flop to the floor under minimal or no contact and win laughable free kicks from clueless referees. No, this was just another random, eccentric refereeing performance which is about the best we can expect these days.

Didn’t Shaktar have to play Real with a whole team missing? (And didn’t the second stringers win in Madrid?!)

Moyes’s new Fellaini. Apart from the being-an-utter-cunt bit.

Penalty all day long for me. Gets wrong side, catches his heel on the first bite, then his calf.

Parker last week:That faint touch on my player was a clear penalty, amazing it wasn’t given’ Parker tonight: That faint touch by my player is never a penalty’

Not only did he get in ahead of Mo, he got in ahead of Suarez who was as good as anyone on the planet 2012-14. Hilarious.

The one on Ings is a foul all day long. Even Clattenberg said it’s given always outside the box, seldom inside. Which is a pretty damning admission. It was way more reckless/dangerous than the high kick that was given against Keita an hour earlier.

The idea of Jonathan Moss being in charge doesn't fill me with delight, but there's not many of them that I don't feel that way about. In other news, Anthony Taylor, of Greater Manchester, referees the Man U vs Dirty Leeds grudge match. (Without fans, it'll be pretty tame).