Just in time to be back for the world cup.
Im sure there are some activities and products he in Mexico he’d be very eager to encounter.
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I’m not sure if you have seen the foul on Mateta today, but Michael Oliver allowed play to continue after this:
I assumed that he had not seen the incident, but this photo indicates otherwise:
Aside from him not seeing this as seriously foul play, did it not even register that a player had been forcibly kicked in the head?
There are head injury protocols specifically for this kind of incident. Doesn’t it count if the player isn’t rolling around holding their face?
Oliver is just beyond the pale. Aside from officiating games like it’s a betting scam he is putting players lives in danger.
Surely it’s time to bin him before it ends in tragedy.
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There was an element of this that was difficult in that Palace did still have a big chance to score from the loose ball and so Oliver allowed play to continue only as long as that immediate high quality chance was still on the table. When he ultimately blew his whistle it was maybe 2 seconds after the initial contact and so not really meaningful in terms of player safety but was in terms of not robbing a team of a good goal scoring opportunity.
Had he pulled out the red card then I might have called it good refereeing, but the fact he needed to go to the monitor says otherwise. But I think this probably speaks to a general sense of refs winging it over these so called “comings together”, because remember this is the guy who refused to give a foul for Doku plating his studs in Mac’s chest. This incident was worse in degree that that one (head >>> chest) but wasnt different in type and on that one they couldnt even see a foul among a group of them when watching it back on video
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Unbelievable. He was 5 yards away from a full on assault. On the street he’d have been the key witness. But when refereeing, when his job is to watch for fouls, he didn’t see it?
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Let’s stop making excuses for Oliver. That’s what all the media ever seem to do
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I am not. I am saying the criticism of him should not be that he let the game continue for 1 or 2 seconds after the incident, but his entire attitude towards it.
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An assault like that overrides the goalscoring chance though.
Its a straight red and immediate attention for the injured player.
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Letting the game continue for 1 additional second does nothing to get attention to a hurt player any quicker, which is why the refs are directed to manage situations that way.
It was shit refereeing, reflecting a fundamental blind spot ref and the refereeing authorities have, but not because of that
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The only blind spot here is Oliver’s…
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Stop defending him
Me? Are you kidding?
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I was returning your responses to me in kind
Let me repeat. There’s no angle from which this is nothing but a horrendous refereeing performance
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This was potentially a serious head injury.
You have to stop the game.
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Is palace playing city soon?
Not until 12th April.
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I think that Michael Oliver is a top ref. He gets too much criticism from all sides. He’s under a lot of pressure, and not reacting instantaneously in a fast moving game, but instead delaying for a couple of seconds to make sure he gets it right, is not a big deal.
Now that is defending him!
The truth is he’s crap. And corrupt.
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“Mateta entered his space. They’ve both come in high. It’s a coming together…”
Michael Oliver has gone from being the best ref in the league to the very worst in a few years. He is genuinely awful.
To be stood a couple of yards from a keeper jumping with his leg six foot in the air and kicking a guy in the head with such ferocity that he had to go to hospital, and he thought ‘yeah, play on’.
I don’t think he is particularly biased (although his UAE side hustle should raise questions), but he is a ref that always seems to feel the need to manage the narrative. Underdog team in the FA cup? Last game at Goodison Park? Big weekend televised fixture? Last seconds of a tight game? Let’s not ruin it for the customers by actually enforcing the fucking rules, eh Big Ol?
He doesn’t ignore the foul yesterday because he is a Millwall fan. He ignores it because he thinks his job is to manage the game as a spectacle. When refs get a certain amount of acclaim and profile, they fall into the trap of thinking that they are integral to proceedings and that their job is to see the game play out to a set narrative. He’d be happier in the WWE where someone would give him a script and say ‘make this happen’.
Apparently he is an arrogant cunt as well. Most of the refs are terrified of stepping in to tell him he’s made a mistake. I feel for whoever sent him to the screen yesterday.
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I have some sympathy with refs on the head injuries thing, because players do take the piss with that protocol (a protocol put in place to safeguard their well-being, the fucking idiots). But not that. He is stood five yards away from a lad taking a flying kick to the head.
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