muttley
Alert Team
I think the big problem yesterday was the bloke sat in front of the monitors . It was commented on that he was a fairly new addition to the “Premier”’(and I use that term very loosely) list and may have been reticent to overturn or assert his views on senior refs . They are not my thoughts but those of the pundits in the BT studio. It was remarked that he had 50 premier games experience whilst Michael Oliver had over 250 games . The lack of experience certainly showed with the release of the “ human error “ statement . They must be cringing on the Stockley Park bench . What a can of worms that can open up .
There were other glaring errors yesterday , Matics comment on Giroud being offside . He was deemed offside against Utd on Monday but not against us . Similar incidents with the same amount of “ offsideness” ( I think I’ve made up a new word there ?) have been poured over for minutes and minutes and given offside .Maybe they didn’t want to incur Lampards wrath again , after his midweek rants , The Lo Celso Stamp , I’m still of the opinion it was a red but obviously a lot of you don’t ,. Oliver’s entire handling of the game was atrocious, he let far too much go unpunished and allowed niggles to expand to far worse “contests” . The push in the back now seems to go unpunished and the the fake claim and subsequent dive of a push in the back now gets rewarded , with commentators saying how “ he cleverly won the free kick by inviting contact “ . Refs must a get a grip of games , they are losing control by allowing the cameras to do their job too much and it’s creeping into their general decision making .
The other TV game was even worse . Debruynes hand ball conformed to all the new guidelines of handball , as debuted , and kindly demonstrated, by Sissoko in Madrid , but was ignored by the ref and Var .Exactly how could that be ignored , was it accidental ? Was it a normal position of the hands ?
. How on Earth was the keepers “taking out” of Inheacho not looked at .I don’t think it was even a corner , as given by the ref , the keeper was nowhere near the ball . He just took him out but it wasn’t even looked at .
Then there was Walkers assault on the Leicester left back . Can anyone tell me that wasn’t reckless . He came steaming in , got the ball, i admit , but took the player totally . Just got ignored .
VAR hasn’t had many , if any , good days but yesterday was a bad one . I’ve heard there were other stupid incidents as well in other games . Haven’t seen those , kept well away from MoTD
What I would add that like all commentators, Fletcher and Hoddle should feel thoroughly ashamed of their commentary around the VAR incidences. It was if Hoddle had never played the game in his entire life the way he spoke about them.
It's such a shame that the influence of The FA on the TV companies has meant that the punditry is like a wet lettuce. They all know they won't have a job if they go too strong especially if the commentator and co-commentator start calling it how it really is during the game.
I stand by my statement that anyone that has ever played football knows that if Gio wanted to hurt Azpilicueta then he would have left in an ambulance. He refused the opportunity to hurt the Chelsea captain who clearly is a coward as he tried to get a fellow professional sent off. Lampard also knew what really happened and showed absolutely no class in what he said.
I am enjoying the rugby today. Nice to watch some real men play and commentate on sport.