by David Sweeney
This weekend provided plenty of opportunities to maul certain unfortunate individuals with bewildering refereeing decisions, dodgy defending and inexcusable misses a common theme throughout the four divisions.
Ref in the Southampton Brighton match
Starting in the Championship where Peter Walton had an absolute shocker when he took charge of the South Coast derby involving Brighton and Southampton. Walton turned in an awful display, it wasn’t a case of him being bias to either side, just generally incompetent towards both and completely unacceptable for a ref at this level.
He gave two penalties to the Saints, none of which were and missed two penalties again for Southampton that were absolute stonewallers. Walton didn’t have the faintest idea what was or wasn’t a penalty and was going on pure guesswork – terrible reffing.
One of the given penalties was one of the most shocking decisions I have seen in a long, long time. The foul was clearly outside the area and Jose Fonte, the fouled player, wasn’t even moving towards the penalty area, he was moving parallel to it, despite this a pen was given. Not only that he then proceeded to send off Brighton’s player-assistant Mauricio Taricco, for complaining about Walton’s wrong decision.
Walton is an absolute abomination of a ref and he provided one of the worst officiating displays you’re ever going to see
Scott Sinclair
Manchester United narrowly scraped past Swansea City 1-0 to keep the gap between themselves and Manchester City at 5 points. But it could have all been so different had Scott Sinclair slotted the ball into the empty net with the goal at his mercy, instead hee made a hash of the chance by letting the ball go through his legs whilst taking a terrible uncontrolled swipe at the passing ball. Sinclair blatantly panicked at the crucial moment which resulted in the chance of a battling point against the champions being spurned.
Swans boss Brendan Rodgers was ‘very surprised’ at the usually clinical Sinclair’s miss and his shock and horror is sure to be shared by football fans all over Great Britain. A terrible terrible miss.
Blackburn Rovers unjust goal
Blackburn secured what could turn out to be a very valuable point against fellow North-West struggler’s Wigan at the weekend, however they did so under extremely dubious circumstances.
The main focus of this particular mauling is on a farcical goal that was wrongly allowed to stand as Morten Gamst Pedersen made as if Yakubu had subtly touched the ball in from a corner without anyone noticing, Pederson then proceeded to run with it straight from the corner, before crossing for Junior Hoilett who headed home.
Its not the first time this trick has been tried, in January 2009 Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney subtly ran his foot over the ball, Ryan Giggs picked it up and crossed for Cristiano Ronaldo to score against Chelsea however that afternoon Howard Webb disallowed the goal unlike Saturday’s ref Andre Marriner who seemed clueless as to what had happened.
According to Law 17 of The Laws of the Game the ball is in play when it is kicked and moved. Since the ball was never kicked, the ball was never in play, Marriner and his assistant’s should have been more alert and recognized that the ball had not been touched. In fact Marriner was so unaware that he had his back to the incident as it was unfolding. Shoddy refereeing and Blackburn can count themselves fortunate to leave the DW with a point.
The half-time chips at the Etihad stadium decided to take the Carlos Tevez approach.
Per Mertesacker
Arsenal eventually overcame a stubborn Norwich side at the weekend which continues their assent up the table but it wasn’t all plain sailing for Wenger’s side as Steve Morison pounced on a disastrous error by Per Mertesacker to give the Canaries an early lead. Mertesacker tried to be too clever when he attempted to play the ball back to the goalkeeper in a cool if not unorthodox fashion. This move backfired badly however as Morison beat him for pace and ,despite Mertesacker’s broad frame, power before casually slotting the ball into the Arsenal goal.
After a shaky start to life in the Prem the big German looked as though he was beginning to find his feet, however the jury is still well and truly out after this blunder and he should be grateful to the Gunners prolific talisman Robin Van Persie who once more bailed his beleaguered team mates out of the mess the continually get themselves into.
Chips!
Finally finishing on a more light-hearted note, the half-time chips at the Etihad stadium decided to take the Carlos Tevez approach; with an announcement made just before the interval informing fans at the game that chips would not be on the half time menu, outrage broke out when it was discovered the chips were in fact in the kitchen but were refusing to warm up, a FIFA investigation is imminent.
