DaveT

Watching Murphy and Jagielka on MOTD2 and Refwatch with Dopey Dermot is hilarious. The whole situation is farcical. I did learn, however, that PGMOL has apparently decided to ‘raise the threshold’ for handballs in the last month or so. When was that announced?! Is anyone officially aware? 
As for the 3rd Forest penalty shout, there can’t be a better example of ‘clear and obvious’. Taylor said Young got the ball, he clear didn’t…. irrespective of who he supports, Atwell should face some consequences for not calling that out. Oliver and Taylor clearly don’t like being referred to the monitor…. and Webb needs calling out on that situation. 

Nice to have a referee who didn’t apply a different set of rules to us and penalise our every challenge. Maybe that’s why he’s only reffed us a couple of times and not the 5 or 6 times the Manc refs have had us. 

5 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

 

For me it is not about the decisions. It's about the appearance of impartiality. I've been banging on for ages about why there seems to be differing standards for what is classed as impartial depending on who the club/region is. It's a very clear thing and always has been, you don't ref your own team. Or that of rivals. Rivals can consist of rivals based on region or rivals based on league position, yet it seems to happen with complete inconsistency - Manchester refs can ref Manchester clubs for example. Merseyside refs don't get the same opportunity with Everton and Liverpool. The there's the refs who operate abroad and take wages from owners of clubs in this country. 

 

And this follows on from what I've posted above. Neville is appalled because forest question the impartiality of the VAR. He's had a right old rant. But all we need is the appearance of impartiality for the whole house of cards to come crashing down. I've said this consistently. Howard Webb should be out of a job, because he thinks he is above these petty protocols. 

Agree. Michael Oliver’s failure to give Chelsea a clear penalty- or even a corner from a clear deflection- just adds fuel to the fire.

31 minutes ago, Kevin D said:

Neville is appalled by this.

Neville thinks the Young handball wasn’t a penalty. Not sure what he’s been watching the last 5 years. Knobhead 

20 minutes ago, magicrat said:

I thought it was really close in real time 

First freeze frame showed clearly it was onside. Didn’t need more than a glance, but ….

Did they even need to draw the lines?

This team lacks that bit of nous and grit - 2 minutes before half time the attitude should have been to dig in and see the half out… Much less likely to happen with a Milner-type or, dare I say, it a Henderson on the pitch. 

Shocker - referee doesn’t fall for outrageous dive

Who is on VAR? Because he should be telling Taylor that Young got the man and not the ball. 

So, first penalty denied because of ‘minimal contact’. A bit like the minimal contact by Robbo on Welbeck that time or the minimal contact by Quansah at Palace this season. Oh, wait.. 

They continue to make up such bullshit to justify dubious - or blatantly wrong - decisions. 

How is that not handball? Totally clear cut. Don’t know how much longer I can be bothered with this sport, it’s a farce. 

Just now, Jairzinho said:

Pretty clear penalty that. Perhaps the VAR lads weren't watching.

Is there much difference between that and the Anthony Gordon ones recently?

10 minutes ago, an tha said:

Wolves down to the bare bones

Wolves v Arsenal (19:30 BST)

 

Gary O'Neil is down to the bare bones.

Not quite into Sunday League territory of sending WhatsApp messages in the dressing room to potential ringers - but not far off.

 

The Wolves boss has raided the youth team to make up his squad today

 

"For the starting 11 I've got 10 senior players who can last the match," O'Neil said at his pre-match press conference.

 

"It's probably the worst situation we've been in, but the positives to come from it are that there's loads of young players involved.

"And the fact we're on 43 points already. We're not on 27 fighting for our lives."

 

 

Seems to be week in week out for Arsenal this.

Meanwhile Arsenal’s injury list includes Tomiyasu, Timber and…. no one else. 

2 minutes ago, Nelly-Szoboszlai said:

Didn’t watch all of it and just seen that. 
 

He slams his arm down quickly and deliberately to try and stop the ball. It’s a stonewall penalty. And, I believe that they looked at it and said no penalty and gave City a goal kick, with Chelsea not even getting a corner. 

Part time UAE employer gives biased decision to team owned by UAE shocker. Again. He didn’t even give a corner, just pretended it went straight out. Totally bent.

2 hours ago, Barrington Womble said:

It took robbo 4-6 weeks to be right. They have had long lay offs, I think it was inevitable that they'd be a bit rusty. The question is can we win games while getting them back on it. I think there's just too many - Curtis, Jota, Trent, Salah, dom all short of their best. 

Agree with this. The season’s been fucked over by the number and length of the injuries. It’s not just the absence of key players, but the build up of fitness and rhythm once they’re back. And the fact that we’re dependent on a small core of players to keep the ship afloat during this time. Mac is the best example of one of that core who is clearly goosed having played 90 minutes SIX times in 19 days. Arsenal, and to an extent City, on the other hand have gotten off extremely lightly in this respect. 

11 minutes ago, Lee909 said:

Jota fouled and they get a throw in

Apart from the penalty, the referee has been a cunt all night. There was more danger of us getting a bad injury or two than scoring in that second half, he let them get away with so much crap.

I have zero hope of turning this around- they don’t need to play any differently than they did at Anfield. Any kind of win would at least restore a bit of dignity after last week’s shitshow. 

Bernard the Rat’s penalty…. Hilarious 

The Grauniad quoting The Esk, whatever next!..... https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/apr/17/everton-on-the-brink-questions-over-clubs-finances-are-more-urgent-than-ever

One last comment…. Whilst he didn’t make any difference to the outcome, -we could still be playing now without scoring, it was one of those games - I thought the ref was a total shithouse. He was mostly even handed, missed a couple of clear fouls for each team. But when palace started the inevitable time wasting and injury feigning, he took the coward’s way out and ignored it. I’ve noticed that the time wasting isn’t so obvious when you’re watching on tv, as the cameras focus on other distractions, but at the ground, it’s so blatant. At one point, Palace were taking an age over substitutions and instead of dealing with it, Kavanagh turned his back and started up a conversation with Virgil. When Ayew came on, his first 2 involvements were to, literally trip himself up, getting Curtis booked, then to flop to the floor winning another free kick for a non-foul.  From that free kick, they almost scored…. despite Andersen shoving Virgil to the floor before setting up the Mateta chance. As I say, the referee didn’t particularly affect the result, but definitely added to the intense frustration of the afternoon. (Still can’t believe we didn’t score).

Feels like we’ve been defying gravity for a while and the ridiculous succession of injuries has caught up with us. It’s not just about the likes of Jota, Trent, Mo etc etc missing big chunks of the season. It also limits the amount of sensible rotation you can do. And some players have been over used, especially Mac. The lack of intensity in the first half today and also Thursday night is surely a result of this situation catching up with us. In the past week, Endo has looked like the stop gap bargain but we thought we were getting not the excellent DM he was for several months. Others are clearly still grasping for form and match fitness after layoffs. 
None of that explains why we can’t score piss easy chances.

The harsh truth, as Arsenal are about to find out again, is that you need a near perfect season to beat the oil cheats, hardly any injuries, luck and decisions going your way. Arsenal have had most of that and it probably still won’t be enough. Hope to god this season doesn’t peter out in a whimper, Klopp deserves so much better than that.

p.s. Honourable mention to the kids who got us over the line at Wembley and acquired themselves well throughout. 

1 hour ago, Mook said:

I can't be arsed with still pictures of penalty incidents. Football isn't played at one frame per 30 seconds.

 

Should probably go in the Shitness of Modern Football thread.

Dead right. Unfortunately that’s how it’s refereed these days (eg Curtis Jones red card). And when it suits them. 

Agree totally about the Wolves offside, and made similar comments on one of the threads. Amusingly, on MotD they showed the line from the rule book which talks about being in an offside position and 'clearly obstructing the opponent's line of vision'. They then showed the Wolves player virtually standing on the goalie's toes, blocking any view in front of him...... and the intellectually-challenged pillocks still thought the decision was wrong.

As for Jordan Ayew, he's always near the top of the Most Fouled charts on account of the fact that his first instinct is to flop to the floor at the first suggestion of a challenge. In this instance, however, Gvardiol just runs into him and flattens him. As it's City, there's no action. I'm getting to the point now where I just can't be arsed wasting emotional energy on it - it's just all so blatant, I've just about given up.

And Burnley - probably the only time they haven't tried to play from the back was at Anfield, when they launched it every time. Their prerogative, of course, but they're not good enough to do it at this level anyway, so why pretend? Unless you've got a Kolossal Kunt as your manager.

55 minutes ago, sir roger said:

 

Wan Bissaka knew it was a penno straight away, never even looked at or spoke to the ref.

Whenever we are involved in a situation, common sense goes out the window with opposition fans.

If ever football goes down the franchise route we can be called the Mersey Pissboilers.

It was the first item on this week’s Ref Watch…. even though all three of them agreed it was a  straightforward and clearly correct decision!! Anybody other than us, it wouldn’t have even been referred to. 

1 hour ago, Barrington Womble said:

but this is the problem making offside subjective. Take for example the one from the league cup final on endo. Quite rightly loads of our fans were saying "but that's what arsenal do on every set piece like that". But using your point of view that it's tough titty that the wolves player is off is kind of the same - in so much as endo was offside and moved back the way he did with the intention of gaining an advantage. but we give the referees, linos and VAR the tools to decide which ones they want to allow and which ones they don't. My view is they should all be offside. Endo, Wolves, the arsenal example. if you are in an offside position, you are just offside. they could even as a starting measure just make the penalty area a place where you cannot be in an offside position. just take the subjective decision making away from the referee team and put it down to where the lines are drawn. loads of this nonsense of standing on keepers toes, defenders trying to clear a ball because the forward is offside, which then makes him onside and countless other just disappear. 

Yeah, I’m fully on board with anything that minimises or eliminates any subjectivity….. it’s the grey, subjective areas which allow these fuckers to influence results or rationalise away clear errors.