****ing pain jaw injuries. Had worse swelling myself - doctor at Fazakerley Maxillo-Facial unit asked I minded having pictures taken for student case studies! Took 3 months to ease off.
Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
General Football 23/24
Collapse
X
-
EmbarrassingCardiff's 3-0 defeat by Crystal Palace in early April should not be allowed to stand, the Welsh club has said in a five-page letter seen by the BBC.
The document, sent by club lawyers to the Premier League, alleges Palace boss Tony Pulis knew sporting director Iain Moody was trying to obtain Cardiff's starting line-up before the game.
The club claims it has proof Moody succeeded and says this breaches league rules. Pulis declined to comment when contacted by the BBC, although Palace previously denied the claims.
The Premier League has confirmed it will investigate the claims.
Cardiff states that clubs should act in good faith to one another and calls into serious question the integrity of the match.
The club says Crystal Palace cheated and wants the Premier League to take serious action.
Palace won 3-2 at Everton on Wednesday to climb to 11th in the table, on 40 points, a figure Pulis says is enough to ensure their Premier League survival.
Comment
-
Very interesting read fromDave KitsonThe Secret Footballer....also speaks glowingly about us at the end.
Intimidation of referees is acceptable
Hey, ref, that’s got to be a yellow
Much has been made of John Terry’s admission that he encouraged referee Phil Dowd to send off Chico Flores in Chelsea’s 1-0 win against Swansea on Sunday.
Encouraging referees to send off players is standard practice, even though the FA has made the mock brandishing of a yellow card – by players seeking to get their opponents booked – a yellow card offence in its own right.
But if I feel that an opposition player should be booked or dismissed and I’m close enough to the referee to ask the question, then that’s what I’ll do.
It doesn’t have to be done in an all guns blazing type of way, just a simple: “Ref [always try to use his first name], that’s three times now. He’s gonna end up hurting somebody if you don’t book him.” That’s all it takes sometimes.
You’re just trying to gently remind him of the reasons why he carries a yellow card in the first place while trying not to come across as somebody who is trying to do his job for him.
That said, collective pressure works. How many times have you seen the top players surround a referee and intimidate him?
Players know only too well that referees suck up to the big names and call them by their nicknames. Wayne Rooney is always “Wazza” and Frank Lampard is always “Lamps”.
So, by that logic, it is easier for those players to exert pressure on referees to make decisions in their favour. And that happens for most teams.
On this occasion, I can’t blame Terry. He was simply doing what every single Premier League player does in the same situation, sowing the seed of doubt in the referee’s mind.
“Are you sure, ref? Are you absolutely sure [that you want to be on the back page of the papers on Monday?]” That’s all it takes.
It is important that, rather than looking at footballers as if we’re all lacking a moral compass, we think about how good it felt as a Chelsea fan or a Liverpool fan when they won on Sunday.
All the little things that happen in between the goals add up to make the victory.
A team that doesn’t try to influence the referee is a team that will never achieve anything.
Referees ARE biased
Whenever we play a smaller team in the FA Cup, save for the first 15 minutes while the crowd are having their moment, we know that we’ll always get the important decisions. Always. Because referees are simply too scared of making a mistake that sees their name all over the papers on Monday morning.
Nobody will see his name if that mistake is against a smaller team because fewer people have an interest in that. And, certainly, the newspapers don’t want to devote column inches to it.
The sub-editor wants to quote our manager and players because that is what people want to read. It’s just a fact, I’m afraid, and what we say will ultimately sell papers. Referees know that only too well and they referee accordingly.
I was summoned to the FA headquarters to answer a charge that said I had deliberately and knowingly accused the referee of showing bias in our match. I was fined and, apparently, lucky not to be banned.
So, let me clear it up for you. Referees are biased. They are biased against players, clubs, managers and even themselves. They are biased because they’re human beings who are capable of emotion, within which lies an ability to favour one thing or another through conscious, conceited analysis. And I say that deliberately and knowingly.
Take Liverpool’s thrilling 3-2 win over Manchester City, for example. Luis Suarez dived over Martin Demichelis and the City players asked referee Mark Clattenburg why he wasn’t booked. To be honest, they had every right to.
If it wasn’t a free kick, then Suarez must have dived. He wasn’t claiming that he was trying to get out of the way of the defender by jumping over him because he was rolling around holding his shin.
In the face of such blatant gamesmanship, I would be the first player to ask the question. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask if it isn’t a free kick, why isn’t it a booking for diving?
If those are the rules, then I have a right to ask why the rules are not being applied, don’t I?
The answer is simple. Clattenburg did not want to send off Suarez because the knock-on effect is that he would have seriously dented an entire team’s title chances in the face of what is a groundswell of neutral support in Liverpool’s favour. All of that went through his head in a nano-second.
The irony is that Clattenburg made a rod for his back very early in the game by booking Suarez for a lunging tackle, a decision that was spot on. The Jordan Henderson tackle – and red card – was an easy one to give because it was so blatant.
But being sent off for diving? I’m afraid some referees see that as an easy one to let go.
On another note, how good was the atmosphere at Anfield on Sunday? That’s why it’s so good to have Liverpool back challenging for the league.
It’s difficult to say whether or not it means more to Liverpool fans, as some of my team-mates were trying to suggest on Monday morning, but they certainly seem to go in for audience participation in a way that other clubs aren’t able to match.
The huge flags, the singing, the swaying of “The Kop” and the sense of history pouring from every corner of the ground, I’m afraid that can’t be replicated.
No matter how many hundreds of millions of pounds the Middle East cares to throw at it.Last edited by Shaggy; 17-04-14, 05:45 PM.Thanks very much for being ‘This Mornings’ Farmer’
Comment




Comment