I know this is also in the news section, but I wanted to discuss it and you can't in there so sue me 
How many Premier League manager's would come out and say things like this after a massive refereeing cock up? Mr Ferguson for one would have absolutely pilloried the referee.
Rather than hide behind it to disguise what was a really poor performance on Saturday, he actually appears to be playing the incident down somewhat - and directing the focus onto our bad performance. It makes a refreshing change, and is a slap in the face to a few posters on here who immediately after the final whistle were posting things like "what **** excuse will Rafa come out with this time" etc.
Whilst I kind of wish the club had kicked up more of a fuss over what could end up being a rather costly refereeing mistake, I'm kind of proud that we as a club, and particularly the manager haven't come out of this looking like bitter bad losers (however within our rights we would have been to do so).
Anyone agree/disagree/really give a ****?
Tony Barrett, 20 October 2009
The Times
Rafael Benítez, the Liverpool manager, has again passed up the opportunity to criticise Mike Jones, the referee who failed to rule out Sunderland’s winning goal against the Merseyside club on Saturday. Darren Bent’s shot found the net via a deflection off a beach ball that had been thrown onto the pitch.
Jones was yesterday demoted from Barclays Premier League duties for the forthcoming weekend after his failure to implement the Fifa law which stipulates that games should be stopped in the event of any outside interference. The official will take charge of the Coca-Cola Championship fixture at London Road between Peterborough United and Scunthorpe United.
Jones has been heavily criticised by Graham Poll, Dermot Gallagher and Jeff Winter, his former colleagues, but Benítez, although still surprised at the error, has taken a different tack, choosing to offer the referee his support. The Spaniard also ruled out any possibility of Liverpool asking for the match to be replayed.
“The situation is that we cannot change this,” Benítez said. “I think that the rule is very clear. Everybody knows and all the experts agree that the goal had to be disallowed but we cannot do anything now so we have to move forward.
“I don’t know if he didn’t know about the rule, maybe he couldn’t see. Anyway I think that it is better to move on. I think the referees and Keith Hackett [the general manager of the Professional Game Match Officials Ltd] know that a mistake has been made, but I do not want to criticise. He is a young referee and there are not too many referees around the world, so if you have someone who has a passion and wants to be a good referee, then the best thing to do is to just move on.
“I said after the game that we did not play well because I did not want to use the incident as an excuse. It was an important situation because, with the problems that we had, to start the game by going a goal behind was not the best situation for us.
“But still it is something that you have to forget and to think only about what you can influence now, like this Champions League game [against Lyons at Anfield this evening]. A lot of people are saying that the game should be replayed but we will not be asking for this.”
The Times
Rafael Benítez, the Liverpool manager, has again passed up the opportunity to criticise Mike Jones, the referee who failed to rule out Sunderland’s winning goal against the Merseyside club on Saturday. Darren Bent’s shot found the net via a deflection off a beach ball that had been thrown onto the pitch.
Jones was yesterday demoted from Barclays Premier League duties for the forthcoming weekend after his failure to implement the Fifa law which stipulates that games should be stopped in the event of any outside interference. The official will take charge of the Coca-Cola Championship fixture at London Road between Peterborough United and Scunthorpe United.
Jones has been heavily criticised by Graham Poll, Dermot Gallagher and Jeff Winter, his former colleagues, but Benítez, although still surprised at the error, has taken a different tack, choosing to offer the referee his support. The Spaniard also ruled out any possibility of Liverpool asking for the match to be replayed.
“The situation is that we cannot change this,” Benítez said. “I think that the rule is very clear. Everybody knows and all the experts agree that the goal had to be disallowed but we cannot do anything now so we have to move forward.
“I don’t know if he didn’t know about the rule, maybe he couldn’t see. Anyway I think that it is better to move on. I think the referees and Keith Hackett [the general manager of the Professional Game Match Officials Ltd] know that a mistake has been made, but I do not want to criticise. He is a young referee and there are not too many referees around the world, so if you have someone who has a passion and wants to be a good referee, then the best thing to do is to just move on.
“I said after the game that we did not play well because I did not want to use the incident as an excuse. It was an important situation because, with the problems that we had, to start the game by going a goal behind was not the best situation for us.
“But still it is something that you have to forget and to think only about what you can influence now, like this Champions League game [against Lyons at Anfield this evening]. A lot of people are saying that the game should be replayed but we will not be asking for this.”
Rather than hide behind it to disguise what was a really poor performance on Saturday, he actually appears to be playing the incident down somewhat - and directing the focus onto our bad performance. It makes a refreshing change, and is a slap in the face to a few posters on here who immediately after the final whistle were posting things like "what **** excuse will Rafa come out with this time" etc.
Whilst I kind of wish the club had kicked up more of a fuss over what could end up being a rather costly refereeing mistake, I'm kind of proud that we as a club, and particularly the manager haven't come out of this looking like bitter bad losers (however within our rights we would have been to do so).
Anyone agree/disagree/really give a ****?
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