Two teams play each other at Stamford Bridge this weekend whose seasons are in danger of being completely wrecked by terrible refereeing decisions.
In last week’s FA Cup tie at Leicester City, Newcastle broke quickly in the first half and £12 million summer signing Remy Cabella expertly finished off a pacy 70-yard counter-attacking move only for the assistant referee to wrongly disallow it for offside.
Technology In Football Needed To Halt Descent Into Association Farceball
Instead of celebrating the first competitive goal scored by their new France international and more than likely a win, such is the crucial nature of the first goal in modern football, over 4000 travelling Geordie fans were chanting against their team and owner by the end of the game instead.
Newcastle fans are desperate to win a cup and, having seen off Manchester City 2-0 at The Etihad in The League Cup, its a fair bet they’d have beaten Leicester, a team bottom of the table whom they have already defeated 1-0 this season.
Similarly, over the Christmas period, Chelsea were stung by a string of equally appalling refereeing decisions which manager Jose Mourinho has labelled a “conspiracy” against his side.
Penalties not given to Chelsea – Cesc Fabregas’ wrongful booking by referee Anthony Taylor for diving against Southampton when clearly fouled by Matt Targett in the area and the non-award of a crucial penalty by referee Phil Dowd in the Spurs game at White Hart Lane when Jan Vertonghen handled the ball in the area with Chelsea 1-0 up at the time have wrecked Chelsea’s title lead.
Indeed, so poor were the decisions by officials over the vital Christmas period, Match of the Day pundit Martin Keown speculated on the BBC1 show that the referees and their assistants had “overindulged” during the festivities.
Yet there may be something more sinister to it as experienced by last year’s title hopefuls Liverpool.
Liverpool’s Premier League title charge was in full swing when Brendan Rodger’s men went to The Etihad to take on rivals Man City on Boxing Day.
In the first half, Raheem Sterling raced through to score a perfectly good goal only for it to be ruled offside. As replays showed he was so blatantly onside that Rodgers was moved to attack Greater Manchester referee Lee Mason whom he deemed unfit to ref the game:
“We had no help from the officials. They were horrendous,” said Rodgers. “We never got any decision for us. The linesman for the offside one – they’re not even on the same cut of grass. It is not even a difficult one.”
Three days later Liverpool played at Chelsea and again were the victim of horrendous refereeing decisions as Luis Suarez was denied a penalty and Chelsea should have had two men sent off by Howard Webb.
The game finished a draw and Liverpool dropped 5 points in 2 games. Ring any alarm bells Jose?
Man City then played at St James’ Park to face Newcastle in January, 2014 and benefited from the worst refereeing decision I’ve seen live when Cheick Tiote’s 25 yard Goal of the Season volley was disallowed by referee Mike Jones who astonishingly overruled his linesman to deny it.
This is the same Mike Jones who was had his nose bloodied by Moussa Sissoko in the Southampton game a month earlier and he has given nothing to Newcastle since, including a Boxing Day penalty discussed shortly and has a clear grudge against the club.
Manchester City would benefit from more extraordinarily favourable decisions from a blatant offside goal against Southampton at The Etihad to the wrongful dismissal of Danny Rose at White Hart Lane (interestingly the clubs benefiting from the recent decisions against Chelsea and in new Spurs manager’s Pochettino’s case, involving both his old and new clubs) before they were crowned 2013/4 Champions.
Worryingly, over the recent 2014/5 Christmas period, Manchester United, the subject of the essential read ‘The Manchester United Refereeing Conspiracy’ by Nadim Bedran, benefited from three very obvious penalty decisions of their own.
One was against Newcastle when Yoan Gouffran was blatantly clipped by Juan Mata when about to score the first goal at Old Trafford.
The others, picked up by The Daily Mail, were blatant handball by Chris Smalling in the box from Peter Crouch in the Stoke-Man Utd game and Wayne Rooney’s blatant foul on in-form striker Harry Kane when he was about to score from a corner.
Three penalties not given and ex-referee Graham Poll described Louis Van Gaal’s side as “riding their luck.”
These are crucial decisions in vital football matches which the referees are getting wrong or, worse, being allowed to slide for the “conspiracy” Jose Mourinho describes to favour and deny certain teams or make the League seem more competitive to the neutral.
It’s the 21st century and it is a sad fact that the average viewer at home watching Premier League games on Sky with access to slow motion video replays from every angle are better equipped to referee games than the officials on the pitch.
Why is this the case when The Premier League has sped up 20% since 2007 meaning three all-too human officials are simply too slow to adequately keep up with, process and deal with correctly the high-octane frenetic sport played by the elite multi-million pound athletes around them?
It is a problem that is getting worse certainly by the season and almost by the week at the current rate – technology is available and as Sky pundit Gary Neville has said, future generations will look back with ridicule at the present era of football being governed without readily available technology.
Only those powers that be who directly benefit from a fixed Premier League – the clubs and anyone from sponsors and organisers who financially benefit from certain teams winning trophies – would not want technology and a truly fair beautiful game.
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