{"id":9993,"date":"2024-09-01T07:12:29","date_gmt":"2024-09-01T06:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=9993"},"modified":"2024-09-04T12:01:53","modified_gmt":"2024-09-04T11:01:53","slug":"look-what-theyve-done-to-my-game-ma-look-what-theyve-done-to-my-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=9993","title":{"rendered":"Look what they\u2019ve done to my game Ma, look what they\u2019ve done to my game"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Yesterday afternoon a referee called Chris Kavanagh, from Ashton, Greater Manchester, put in the worst refereeing performance I have seen in over 60 years of watching football. He made poor decision after poor decision. The game turned on his sending off of Declan Rice around 50 minutes, for a second yellow card for delaying the restart of the game. I could give you my version of that, or there were some very well written drinks under the preview, especially by GSD. But instead I\u2019m going to quote in full a piece written by a former senior referee, Keith Hackett, in the Daily Telegraph:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sending off Rice was nonsense<\/strong><\/p>

The decision to send off Declan Rice was absolute nonsense<\/p>

All Rice did was tap the ball and it barely went a yard! His insignificant actions had no material impact on the match and hardly slowed the game down, which was the explanation offered by the Premier League for the second yellow to be shown. <\/p>

In the madness of this unfolding, I also do not understand how Brighton\u2019s Joel Veltman escaped a card after hoofing ball, and Rice, after the Arsenal player had tapped it.<\/p>

Veltman\u2019s actions could easily have earned him a red card, and was a far more egregious act than that of Rice. A yellow should have been given to him as a minimum. The video assistant referee would have been well within their rights to intervene. <\/p>

Common sense going out of refereeing<\/strong><\/p>

The farce at the Emirates is another prime example of common sense going out of refereeing. Chris Kavanagh was clearly focusing on the letter of the law, rather than using a feel for the game. <\/p>

I get the feeling that the current crop of referees is too afraid to do anything that is not exactly by the book. We are losing that grey area of wiggle room that the top officials understand how to use to manage a game. <\/p>

When I was refereeing, I always believed that if you were handing out a second yellow card, it needed to be at the level of an \u201corange\u201d card. By that I mean, closer to a red than a yellow, given the implications it may have on the match. <\/p>

Sympathy and common sense should be part of refereeing. I fear they are both lacking.<\/p>

After all, football remains a form of entertainment, and that is being lost at the moment. Rice being sent off is a bad look for the Premier League and the sport\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Mikel Arteta commented, \u201cI was amazed. Amazed, amazed, amazed because of how inconsistent decisions can be. In the first half there were two incidents and nothing happens. Then, in a non-critical area, the ball hits Declan, he turns around, he doesn\u2019t see the player coming and he touches the ball. By law he (the referee) can make that call, but then by law he needs to make the next call, which is a red card (to Veltman) so we play 10 versus 10. This is what amazed me. At this level it is amazing\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier in the game, Kavanagh had<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Failed to book Pedro for smashing the ball 50 yards after it had gone out of play.<\/li>
  • Failed to punish several Brighton players for violent conduct, including Martin \u00d8degaard being kicked hard on the knee.<\/li>
  • Failed to give a penalty against Lewis Dunk for preventing Ben White\u2019s shot going in by means of his arm. He literally stopped the ball from going in the net. Kavanagh was also the ref who disallowed the goal for Bournemouth v Newcastle when the ball had hit a player’s shoulder. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Now there are many pundits (and a few Arsenal fans) who say that the failure to win the game was Arsenal\u2019s fault. That after our superb first half goal from Kai Havertz and then the red card we \u201cwent into a red fog \u201c (Jonathan Northcroft, The Times). That our defence was at fault for the Brighton goal and that we missed two excellent chances to win the game. All that is true. But the impact of that awful decision to send off Rice dramatically changed the game (and removes Rice from the NLD after the interlull.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    PGMOL are not fit for purpose. They are not accountable. In some cases they apply \u201cthe letter of the law\u201d and others they \u201clet the game flow\u201d. In recent weeks we have seen the full choke hold by the Wolves player on Kai Havertz and the clothesline by Joelinton on the Bournemouth goalkeeper, an action which could have broken his neck and would have led to dismissal in all games from Rugby to NFL, go unpunished by a red card. They are risking serious injury to players (look at the way Saka and Odegaard are kicked to death each week) whilst parroting \u201cletter of the law\u201d but not even applying that consistently. Is there no way the Premier League clubs can call time on this jumped up, smug, officious, self-justifying Manchester boy\u2019s club who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, and are ruining the Premier League?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Chris Kavanagh ruined my Saturday and probably my weekend. Thankfully we have two weeks off from it. Next weekend, I\u2019m off to watch some cricket at the Oval.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Yesterday afternoon a referee called Chris Kavanagh, from Ashton, Greater Manchester, put in the worst refereeing performance I have seen in over 60 years of watching football. He made poor decision after poor decision. The game turned on his sending off of Declan Rice around 50 minutes, for a second yellow card for delaying the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9993"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9993"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10013,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9993\/revisions\/10013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}