Football's most tedious discussion resurfaces

Yes, you have read this story in 17 different newspapers in the past 5 years, and yes it’s back again. For the umpteenth time in the history of the Premier League, the old row over goal-line technology has hit the surface once again.

This latest uproar comes courtesy of a truly hilarious and ridiculous incident during Crystal Palace’s match with Bristol City at the weekend. Hilarious because it happened to Neil Warnock, whom I dislike severly, and ridiculous because it was. Palace’s Freddie Sears effort flew past City custodian Dean Gerken and hit the stansion in the top corner of the net. However, referee Rob Shoebridge and his assistant, Chris Knowles, failed to realise what 14,000 other people did realise – that the ball had gone in the net. Dear oh dear. If we’ve learned that Arsene Wenger doesn’t in fact need to go to Specsavers, we’ve learnt that Messrs Shoebridge and Knowles need to take the Arsenal boss’ place.

City went on to win the game 1-0, and as you would expect, Warnock was furious and claimed his side has been “cheated”.

The incident brings back memories of similar incidents in recent years, most notably the Pedro Mendes ‘goal’. The now-Rangers man was playing for Spurs at the time in an important encounter at Old Trafford against Scumchester United. Mendes’ long-range lob beat United ‘keeper Roy Carroll and bounced at least 5 inches over the line, but neither referee nor assistant spotted it, despite Carroll’s obvious disappointment at conceeding the would-be wondergoal (he sat on the ground for about 10 seconds with his hands on his knees!).

Keith Hackett, the General Manager of the Professional Game Match Officials Board (easier done than said), is adamant that the use of goal-line techonology would be a positive step for the game.

“I think the major issue centres around the fact for a number of years PGMOB have been calling for goal-line technology to be introduced. In fairness the Premier League worked with Hawkeye to achieve a product that the Premier League wanted to put into an operation as an experiment with the full support of the Football League, Football Association, LMA and PFA. All the parties were in favour but, at the international board meeting in Gleneagles a year ago, FIFA and Sepp Blatter decided the experiment could not go ahead.”

I think that on such matters, and difficult decisions, levels of tedium should be taken into account and a decision should be based on that. Therefore, this case should have been decided at least 3 years ago, when the tedium levels hit more epidemic proportions that Swine Flu. Introduce bloody goal-line technology and lets talk about something more interesting. Mr. Blatter, are you reading?

A seagull with a mission, and all change for England

Okay, so a lot can happen in a week.

This is the infamous Seagull that decided to uphold play in the match between the Aussies and the England Lions because he was hungry for a bail. Yes, a bail. Perhaps not the tastiest of choices, but a gull's gotta do what a gull's gotta do!

Back to more Cricketing matters, and England have made the tough, but probably the correct, decision to drop under performing batsman Ravi Bopara. Bopara has made just 105 runs in 7 innings in this year's Ashes, a tally that clearly isn't good enough for the England selectors to give Bops another chance.

Jonathan Trott will make his Test debut at the Oval in the deciding match of the Summer. The Warwickshire batsman has been his county's top scorer in all competitions this season, so one can't argue that he doesn't deserve the call-up.Oh, but look - he's a South African. Commeth the day when England find a decent batsman from ENGLAND.

It bewilders me how the England selectors continue to show so little faith in our home-grown talent. James Hildreth, Alex Gidman, Paul Horton. They're all out there. A name that has been bandied around recently is that of Surrey antique Mark Ramprakash. I think Andy Flower and the boys were ready to dip in and purchase a zimmerframe for Ramps, who 20 days short of being 40, would be England's oldest Test Cricketer since Geoffrey Boycott. Perhaps Bob Willis will be called out of retirement in time for the Oval decider.

Spurs 2-1 Liverpool: Lacklustre Reds pay the price

Eugh.

Liverpool paid the price for a below-par performance at White Hart Lane on Sunday with a disappointing 2-1 defeat at the hands of an impressive Spurs side.

Benoit Assou-Ekotto opened the scoring for the home side on the stroke of the break with a powerful drive into the top corner of Pepe Reina’s net. Liverpool equalised soon after half-time with a Stevie G penalty, brought about by some impressive work from Glen Johnson, making his debut for the club. However, Harry Redknapp’s side had the last laugh, with new recruit from Newcastle Sebastien Bassong heading home from a Luka Modric freekick.

There was obviously something missing for the Reds throughout the 90 minutes, and it was clear to everyone apart from Rafa Benitez, it seems, just what that was. The presence and class of Xabi Alonso. Rafa replaced the now Real Madrid man with Lucas Leiva, possibly the worst Premier League player Liverpool have ever had, including Karl-Heinz Riedl. Alonso’s ability to pick a pass from 40 yards made Liverpool a threat from all over the park in previous years, but now with two ‘workhorses’ in Lucas and Mascherano in the middle, there was no such luxury.

Looking at the Liverpool bench, it’s evident that Benitez needs to spend a bit more time in the transfer market too. The likes of Voronin, Dossena, Sanchez Ayala, and Kelly are simply not good enough to be able to change a game when coming off the bench, and in comparison to Spurs’ subs, they were considerably weaker. Harry had the likes of David Bentley, Peter Crouch and Roman Pavlyuchenko to call upon, but without a second class striker, and with Daniel Agger and Alberto Aquilani out injured, Rafa had nowhere to turn.

Tensions rose towards the end of the match when Sammy Lee was sent to the stands by referee Phil Dowd. Rafa Benitez wasn’t best pleased either, displaying his disappointment in a post-match interview.

“We didn’t play well, especially first half, but we were much better in the second. We pushed harder and had more options in the final third, but clearly we have to improve if we want to win these kind of games”.

Damn right, we need to improve. We don’t have the strength in depth that United, Chelsea, Man City do, and we don’t have the quality in the middle now that Alonso has left. Aquilani is out for 2 months, so in the mean time, either Lucas has to perform a miracle and play well for once in his life, or Rafa has to get someone else in, either on a short-term loan, or permanent. Preferably the latter.

Liverpool won’t be winning the League this year, i can safely say that. If we continue to play like that, we’ll be lucky to finish in the top half.

Next 5 matches:
Stoke City – H
Aston Villa – H
Bolton – A
Burnley – H (no Djimi Traore, thank the lord)
West Ham – A

From where I was sitting, I saw nothing!

Who would be a manager, eh? Not only do they have to control a group of mischievous, binge drinking, gambling addicted idiots but from what we gather from post-match interviews, they have a severe case of missing the most crucial incidents and decisions, UNLESS they go against their team. It’s usually because a steward was standing in their way, or they were on the phone to the Mrs, or some other really valid excuse.

However, as if we didn’t know already, Mr. Arsene Wenger of Arsenal FC has admitted that he faked it all. Well I never. I’m not being funny, but Arsene didn’t really need to ‘admit’ that for us all to believe. It was as clear as daylight.

Speaking ahead of his side’s League opener against Everton at the weekend, Wenger stated that loyalty to his players is far more important than answering questions from the media. (I’m sure a few media personnel will have a word or two to say about that).

Asked whether Wenger had ever been economical with the truth, the Frenchman replied: “Yes, because you are thinking ‘why has he (the player) done that?’ and you know you cannot explain”. So why not just say he’s a cheat then? We can all see it, we all know what’s happened – the hundreds of camera angles take care of that.

“From where I was sitting, I couldn’t see it” is now code for “yes, he dived – he’s a cheat”. However, you can understand where Arsene is coming from – it’s his duty to protect his players from criticism and such like – but for years now the FA and all other major governing bodies have been trying to clamp down on foul play such as diving and manipulating the referee into making decisions. Surely these acts of protection and denial give encouragement to players to continue doing such things, as they know that they will get the backing of their gaffer.

It’s a different story when the bad refereeing decision, or a dodgy offside flag goes up AGAINST Wenger’s team – he’ll give it some after the match, claiming the referee is biased or not fit to officiate a PL match, or the linesman wasn’t doing his job properly – but when the rub of the green is going his way, he’ll keep quiet and act innocent. I think it’s wrong that they are allowed to behave in this way. We know that in Football, and in Sport in general there are going to be some bad decisions, and it’s tough to accept them, especially in such high-pressure arenas and situations like you get in the PL. But berating officials when they get something wrong against you, and then turning a blind eye to something that happened for your team isn’t the way to go about it.

Sir Alex Ferguson is arguably the King (it pains me to use the word ‘King’ in the same sentence as Fergie) at manipulating referees to such an extent that they are influenced during the match. Then when the rare occasion of a bad decision goes against United, you see him parading onto the pitch post-match and giving Howard Webb, Mike Riley, Steve Bennett a complete earful. It’s not fair on officials to be treated like that, and it’s not fair on opposing teams who have to be on the receiving end of a Ferguson tantrum – they ultimately affect a referees thinking.

Rafa Benitez received a lot of criticism when he spoke out against Ferguson’s influencing tactics, but none of that criticism was justified. He was 100% right in what he said, and I was so glad to hear about it – it was about time someone stood up and said something, and stopped letting Fergie get away with it. Benitez is a good one for staying quiet on the subject of criticising match officials. Seldom do you hear the Spaniard ranting Kevin Keegan style on TV after a bad match, and seldom do you hear about him getting involved in pre-match disputes about the men in the black.

The FA keep claiming they’re putting measures in place to give the referees more protection, but from where I’m sitting, I can’t see anything happening. Or perhaps that steward just got in my way. But seriously, last season a ‘rule’ came into place which allowed only the Captain of the team the right to speak to, challenge, whatever you want to call it, the referee, but on more than one occasion, much more than one occasion, did we see a mass of players aggressively approaching a referee. Chelsea are the main culprits – an Old Trafford Tie of the Avram Grant era springs to mind, when John Obi Mikel was sent off for a late lunge on a Utd player (prizes for naming that player). I’m looking forward to seeing if the FA’s latest attempt to give the referees some protection will actually work – I’m not 100% sure what they’ve actually changed, but we’ll see I guess.

It’s time that Wenger & Ferguson get a grip on their emotions, and be real here. It’s Football – you’re going to get done out of a few decisions – but deal with it. There are 20 teams in the PL all experiencing the same referees/linesman/officials – the World is not against YOU. I’m fed up of the words “I didn’t see anything”. I want managers to clamp down on cheats, and not protect them, and I want them to stop moaning about ‘bad’ referees.

Bring on tomorrow.

Torres signs new deal

Fernando Torres has agreed a new contract with the Reds that could see the Spain International stay at Anfield until 2014.

Such relief for me and my fellow Liverpool supporters, as Torres has been linked on a number of occasions recently to Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City – that’s an insult for a start. But Torres has now committed his future to the Merseyside Club, ensuring the Liverpool faithful can enjoy more wondergoals, such as the Van Basten-esque screamer against Blackburn last season.

The only question that remains over Torres now, is what sort of hairstyle he’ll be modelling come Sunday afternoon.

He's neven going anywhere!

Is it just me or does anyone else think that the name Neven Subotic belongs in a Bond movie? Or perhaps a disease on your feet?

Subotic has recently been linked with a move to Arsenal but his agent, Stephen Kelly (very Football, no?), claims it is all speculation: “There is nothing in the reports linking Neven with Arsenal.. He only recently signed a new 5-year deal at Dortmund and it would take big money for any move to happen”. He says it like spending big money is a novelty.

The Gooners aren’t the only team to have shown interest in the 20-year old 6ft4 Centre-Half (that’s scary – i’m 17 and already 6ft3!). Last season, Everton expressed their desire to bring a then teenager to Goodison, but nothing ever came of it.

Arsenal have been looking to fill the gap that Kolo Toure has left since his departure to Manchester City. First they tried luring Federico Fazio, the young Argentine, to London, in vain, and now they seem to have missed out on Subotic – although you should never believe anything an agent says. It’s usually bull.

Subotic Fact-ory:
Born 10th December 1988.
Parents Zeljko and Svetlana.
Moved to Germany in 1994, before moving to Salt Lake City in 99.
Spotted by Mr. Kelly playing for USA under17’s in Netherlands.
Signed by Mainz where he made his First-Team debut at the end of the 06-07 season.
Signed for Dortmund in June 2008 on 5-year contract.
Has represented Serbia 4 times and has scored 1 goal.

Seems like a very interesting chap, does our Subo. Oh god, lets not call him that – any association with Susan Boyle can’t be a good thing.

Gerrard pulls out of England Squad

Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard has pulled out of England’s Squad for the Friendly against Holland on Wednesday with a groin injury. The news will come as a concern for Red’s gaffer Rafa Benitez, who will obviously want Gerrard fit for Liverpool’s Premier League opener on Sunday against Tottenham.

The FA stated that they would “err on the side of caution” with their squad, due to the timing of the Friendly which happens just days before the Premier League kicks off. The FA have previously received criticism from Managers for arranging Friendly matches so close to big Premier League games, and it wouldn’t be a surprise should this latest injury to Gerrard fuel up more discussion on the subject.