It WAS a penalty (in the eyes of the referee…)
Just when you thought you’d seen it all in football, something new comes along to shock you to your very core. Something so foul and rotten, it makes the stench of Jade Goody’s perfume range seem almost pleasant.
A football team have had a rather dodgy penalty awarded against them.
I’m waiting for Parliament to be recalled from its summer recess to discuss the matter. David Cameron has been so overwhelmed and stumped for a reaction that he’s flown to Africa for another photo opportunity, instead of visiting the affected area to offer sympathy.
Maybe he should have sent Boris Johnson instead.
Back (and front) pages have been held across the nation. That fine arbiter of moral propriety, The Sun, has discovered that the referee responsible for this heinous crime against football Rob Styles has a sinister connection with Roman Abramovich.
Well, he’s on the board of the company that laid the Russian’s drive. This translates as sinister when you’re trying desperately to up your circulation on Merseyside, it would seem.
Of course – I can just see Styles now, up to his ears in tarmac and gravel surreptitiously taking that well-stuffed brown envelope from behind the milk bottles outside the front door of Chez Roman.
Something of a rarity, but fans of both clubs are in agreement about one thing – the referee had the proverbial ‘mare on Sunday.
The dodgy penalty which Frank Lampard had the temerity to score, a sending off that was or wasn’t, depending on who you thought the man in black was pointing at whilst waving his cards around like an epileptic practising semaphore.
Frankly, I’ve not seen so many unexpected flashes of yellow since a (particularly entertaining) visit to Amsterdam’s legendary ‘Banana Bar’. But that’s for another time.
Sky’s pundits handled the issue of the penalty in their usual “let’s turn this into a national crisis” manner and offered the standard furrowed brow and limp footballer English, courtesy of Messrs. Gray and Redknapp Jr.
“Well, the ref’s had a right shocker and he’s given it Richard, but I dunno why…”
He’s given it, Richard and any other halfwit who has any doubt about what a referee does during a football match, because he believed what he saw constituted a foul inside the area and was therefore a penalty. And also because he doesn’t have half an hour to fart on about it with the benefit of hindsight, light pens and slo-mo replays.
Granted, on this occasion he was wrong. Slightly more wrong than suggesting that Margate is the capital of Austria, but not quite as wrong as Rafa’s facial hair experiment.
A refresher course on the rules of the game, a weekend off to reflect and get his eyes tested should do the trick for Mr. Styles. But obviously, in the midst of all the outrage and hand-wringing, it can’t end there.
Referees’ chief Keith Hackett has pitched into the fray, offering Rafael Benitez his apologies for Rob Styles’ error.
I’d imagine that referees across the land were delighted by that. Thanks for the backing, boss.
This sets a rather worrying precedent, does it not? Will every aggrieved manager now expect a grovelling call from Mr. Hackett when they have suffered an injustice at the hands of a match official?
And if so, where does it end?
The Kebab and Calculator XI refusing to continue their fixture with Sub-Standard Liege on Hackney Marshes until the referees’ chief calls to apologise because Teggsy didn’t really foul their centre forward and they wuz robbed coz the ref’s a blind tw*t, innit?
Or Premiership club lawyers circling over the wording of any apology offered to see if there is an opportunity to start flinging writs around?
Should we demand an official apology from David Elleray for his truly shocking performance in the 1994 FA Cup final?
Will Everton fans be following the lead of their outraged neighbours and lobby their local MP for an early day motion requesting a grovelling “I was wrong…” letter from Clive Thomas?
Referees make mistakes. Some you win, some you lose (well spotted, Stevie). But has there ever been such a ridiculous amount of fuss made over the award of a spot kick?
“But what if we miss out on the title by a point or two?” wailed the Liverpool hordes on Sunday evening’s 606 programme.
(Martin O’Neill might be asking himself a similar question should Villa miss out on European football by a similar margin.)
Who knows? Maybe you should have hoped for a couple more dodgy free kicks to be awarded for no apparent reason? Scored a few more goals when you had the chance, possibly?
Anyone know what the odds are on the next visiting team being awarded a penalty up at Anfield?
Somewhat shorter than the odds on Liverpool winning the title, I’d guess.
- Posted at 02:11 PM · Permalink · Print · 2116 views · Last indexed by Google on the 11th May 2008
- Tags: Anfield, Chelsea, David Elleray, Everton, Liverpool, Premier League, Rafael Benitez, Rob Styles, Roman Abramovich, Steven Gerrard
Mr. Dyer,
Brilliant piece as per usual. I can’t heap enough praise on your writing, love the humour.
I think your piece sums it up perfectly - ’short memory’ stevie, its a great song by a great Aussie band, midnight oil.
A good 2-0 win against portsmouth and a draw between the spuds and mancs and things are looking very peachy…
Are they city in disguise?
Cheers Dylbo - good to see you on here again…
Good to be back in the mix,
I’ve spent the last 6 months in Africa looking for the next Essien..
I wonder if the roles were reversed if it would have half the hullaballoo about that penalty. Why didn’t Finnan go for the ball then? On countless occasions last season Chelsea were the victims of dubious referee decisions. Man, what a double standard in the english game. Heaven forbid this occurred in Manchester or else the queen herself might have to arbitrate.
Nice one, thinking about writing something along similar lines but you’ve done such a good job…….thought we’d seen and heard it all from our wonderful press and those irredeemably annoying lot from Anfield - on and off the pitch. One thing brings a smile; pictures of Carragher (God I hate that guy) with his mouth wide open and hands on top of his head. Best version of ham acting while playing football we’ve witnessed in a long while. Not to mention that aggressive and sustained finger pointing of Styles at the final whistle. When it comes to comparisons with Liverpool FC, we’ll never measure up, in the eyes of most journos, and we can be sure this isn’t the only example of double standard reporting we’re going to see this season.
Guys, I can tell you one thing. Would he awarded Liverpool with penalty against Chelsea he could be considered at most as making minor mistake. Bloody hypocrites, last year when we lost in that Spuds game and Drog’s goal was disallowed I do not remember any particular noise about it.
The best thing to happen is Everton finish at 2 points above Liverpool in the end of season! :-)
Great article JD as always, your writing is akin to a pure, innocent, beautiful English girl - a real treat that grows rarer and rarer! LOL, keep up the good work!
It was interesting to see that the ‘goal that wasn’t given’ in the Fulham match, and subsequent suspension of the assistant ref, was mentioned as a mere sidenote to the ‘real’ story of Liverpool (praise be upon them) being robbed of 2 points. What if Fulham are relegated by a point or by one goal scored?? I wonder if Keith Hackett bothered to ‘phone Lawrie Sanchez to grovel and beg forgiveness?
Great stuff mate! I’m crying with laughter. As one of Liverpool’s most famous sons once sang: Instant karma’s gonna getcha! Gonna knock you right in the head!
Pathetic…
SimonT hoping for the same…Everton and man City finnishing behind us in second and third position…now that would be something with Pompey in fourth…that would be it really…
Pirez dives and gets a penalty against Pompey…
C Ronaldo of ManU dives numerous times and gets penalties to help his team progress…
Oh my God Liverpool scores a goal that did not cross the line and is “gifted”
Chelsea players raise their voices to an official that badly manages the Chelsea Barcelona game after the Barcelona coach is seen chatting up the ref… we are not good for football…when liverpool decide that they have been offended the Ref Chief comes up with an apology…
What a sham…
Utter rubbish…I wonder what short memory the British media have got…
Great piece JD.
It’s hard to comprehend exactly why we are being targetted as the enemy following Sunday. Styles made the decision, no-one appealed for a penalty so why it’s our fault is slightly bemusing, but ultimately to be expected as we are the source of all evil. Apparently.
I’m glad we’re not losing sight of Gerrard tripping over his own feet against Villa to ‘win’ a free-kick. Surely more heinous was the fact he had dived to win that free-kick. Like you say, if Villa miss out on Europe by two points, I hope Keith Jacket-potato is on the phone to Villa Park.
There’s probably a good chance Anfield will see a barren spell of penalties for the visiting teams for a while now; no ref will be brave enough to face a barrage of abuse from Max.
In fairness, it’s a good job the bad decision has diverted attention away from our fairly abject performance Sunday. We’re no-where near firing on all cylinders yet. We seem to struggle to create chances, although it’s good to see SWP finally playing, and playing well. Essien can’t play at RB any more, and we need to get things sorted well before the African Nations Cup.
9 days of the window left, and we still need a RB. It’s all gone quiet in Alves, but I note this morning Micah Richards is yet to sign a new contract at Man City - let’s get in there and sign him up.
Finally, I’d like to mention some of the Chelsea youngsters, who finally seem to be getting the recognition they deserve. Sinclair and Hutchinson siging lenghty contracts. Smith, Bertrand, Sahar and the others on loan, and Michael Mancienne who made his U21 debut for England last night and has also signed a 3 year contract while on loan at QPR.
The future’s rosy…..
Giles Smith (from official FC website)
So there you go then: two points cheekily filched at Villa - two points humbly handed back over the counter at home to us. Bank makes error in your favour: bank sends the boys round. Football never lets you down, does it?
Of course, when I say that two points hinged on Sunday’s wrongly-awarded penalty, I’m assuming that the game would have remained at 1-0 to Liverpool if the penalty hadn’t been given - a somewhat unstable assumption given the clear chances squandered, prior to the incident, by Terry, Pizarro and Drogba, to name only those, and the general sense, shared around the ground, that an equaliser was coming.
It’s worth bearing in mind, too, the usual counter-argument from Liverpool fans regarding the non-existent Champions League semi-final goal - namely that, if the ref hadn’t given the goal, he would have given a penalty and they would have scored from that.
We are, of course, deep in the realm of fantasy consequences here - a game which famously led Ruud Gullit to point out that his aunt would, in certain other circumstances, have been his uncle. Nevertheless, on the Liverpool model, let’s at least point out that, at the moment when Rob Styles misguidedly blew his whistle on Sunday, the ball was just coming to an unmarked Didier Drogba, 10 yards out.
Styles has been wildly victimised, I feel, in the wake of one simple misinterpretation of a collision between Malouda and Finnan, and the ensuing non-controversy of the ’second yellow card’. Whereas it seems to me that, if you wanted to criticise the referee on more substantial grounds, it would be for failing to play the advantage and denying us the pleasure of an uncontroversial (indeed, beautifully crafted) goal in open play. Who knows? We could well have pushed on to win it from there.
But you can’t have everything. For example, one day I would like us to play Liverpool with a full-strength back four, though I can see that it’s a pipe dream, and unlikely to happen within my lifetime. Ah, well. We do well enough as it is.
We also have to accept that, when Liverpool play us, passions among fans will run high, and reason will, from time to time, go out the window. And understandably so. It might just be another fixture on the league schedule as far as we’re concerned, but it’s their Cup Final.
In this context, let me merely mention the view of BBC-salaried experts with no obvious axe to grind on this topic, such as Alan Hansen (623 appearances for Liverpool) and Mark Lawrenson (332 appearances for Liverpool, making a massive, combined, BBC-tastic 955 appearances for Liverpool in total) - namely, that, despite dropping two points at home to us, Liverpool nevertheless demonstrated that they have the mettle to put in a proper challenge for the league, and could possibly even go on to win the title for the first time in the modern era.
They may well be right, and good luck to them in their astrology, though, for what it’s worth, I can’t really see it myself. Yes, Liverpool seem to have strengthened themselves up front a little with the signing of Torres - a solid enough, goal in every three or four games kind of striker. But the problem, as I see it, is that they’ve still got the same manager (the beard doesn’t fool anyone). And don’t forget, the Premier League doesn’t go to penalties.
I admire the time you spent to type out the whole article Ian… when adding the link to the Chelsea Website would have been quicker and easier ;) But yes Giles does make some great points in his usual “tongue in cheek” way.
What I’m more surprised at is the fact we’ve had no “Scousers” leaving their educated and cultured remarks on the matter!
PS Also a great Article as well JD
cut and paste clive, cut and paste…..you may have noticed how slow the official site scrolls so this is better than a link.
Nice work Mr D. “Not as wrong as Rafa’s facial hair” indeed :-)
That even did the trick on the Liverpool fans here in the office, and they’re a right surly bunch (unless they’ve just put six past Derby, in which case they bask in certain knowledge that they will dominate English football for the next 30 years).