That’s an awful lot of words and misdirection to say “no”.
It doesnt have to be a court of law to value clarity. Other people get less grief because they are better separating speculation from fact. Literally all you needed to do is to add a word like “likely” in the right place and the message would have been clear.
Regarding the bigger Kavanugh/Tierney issue, the thing that gets me is how badly it comes across the the league dont appreciate, even if only for optics, that they shouldn’t be teamed up together. Individually and together they have made a series of really controversial to bad decisions so to keep using them in games together suggests a sort “im not listening to you” belligerence that if trickled down to the officials themselves might suggest a tendency to keep giving city controversial decisions to demonstrate they are not affected by the criticism.
I think this is an extension of the psychological issue @Mascot often turns to, where many bad decisions against us are not bias per se, but based on a personal commitment to demonstrate they are not swayed by the famous anfield crowd. Its about refs wanting to show they have bollocks more than they care about being right.
Sure. The bias it was implied I was talking about was explicit anti-liverpool bias.
I do think though it is important to understand how this sort of bias dominates the working of the ref’s mind. Clattenburg has spoken openly, thinking it made him appear to be a good ref, that his focus was less on getting each decision right, but on balancing out the outcomes in a way that left the fans and pundits less room for accusing him of favouring one team or the other. He literally said if he’d already given one pen that was only 60-40, if he saw the same incident again he would be more inclined to give the decision to the other team than make his decision based on his reading of that incident alone.
Yeah I don’t mind him for us he is fine usually if I felt he went out of his way to make a bad decision I’d have issues for us anyhow I know he was the centre of that shitty handball against wolves plus he owns an indie record store it’s hard to hate him totally.
Everything that comes back to referees is down to Mike Riley…
He has been in the job long enough to have his stewardship running like clockwork…
Unfortunately not learning from past mistakes alongside his reliance upon a small pool of referees leaves him wide open to future criticism…
I read a piece from Marcoti the other day about the issues with how we appoint refs in this country. He tells a story of Australia’s best ref, a FIFA grade 1 ref, who moved to england for work and applied to ref in our leagues. Instead of respecting his standing int he game, he was made to work his way up the ladder starting in the third tier before he was allowed to take Prem games (2 years later). It’s laughable.
Actual example or just perceived, this is the problem refs can make mistakes Tierney’s against Spurs seemed dubious at best, Kavangh not even suggesting Kane’s needs to be looked at as well. And this with the hand.
I know why I didn’t visit this thread yes some of it seems genuinely corrupt but some is shit management of the game or bad refs.
I think the standard is utterly appalling frankly but then you go down to a pitch and watch it on a Saturday aimed at 16/17 year old lads who are starting out refeering and you get to this in the PL, in which you can count one or two decent ones.
I had to forcefully remove one of our players one day making the point that lad was about 19 doesn’t have VAR and ironically you did actually foul the other guy.
Maybe the course makes me soft as I am with goalies but having done friendlies and the odd match it’s not something I fancy doing outside of that and yet I feel I’d be pretty good and have been told so by some players.
If Moss is shit on Saturday I’ll say so but that this weekend, that Spurs game, the Everton game and Lee Mason on VAR against Fulham when he attempted to get Fulham a penalty for by suggesting Marriner to the screen on what was a good challenge by Fabinho, those are what I’ll call corrupt.
Years ago i got asked by a mate to ref a game in an event that was put together to help high school girls nail down their collage scholarships. I got about 15 minutes and had to stop the game and pull everyone in to tell them shut the fuck up and play - the purpose of the game was to give them the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to the watching coaches, and that wasnt going to happen if I blow the whistle every 20 seconds…if there was an opportunity to play advantage I will.
Why?
Why, on a Liverpool fans forum where a lot of opinion is simply opinion, why do we need proof of everything?
@AnfieldRdDreamer has a list of ten decisions against us that ultimately favour City, and though not exactly proof, does make a compelling argument of his assertion of Kavanagh having City connections…
Is it conceivable that if:
Its not incompetence?
Its not anti Liverpool bias?
Its not corruption?
Conceiveable, sure. And not that controversial to suggest. However, he stated it as a fact, which is worthy of questioning. And when then understandably questioned, rather than admitting he over-stepped, he went on a massive misdirection and then complained about people treating his posts differently than other people’s.
but these personal back and forths are tiresome so I’ll exit this one.
Ok, let’s assume Kavanagh isn’t corrupt, then at best he’s incompetent at his job. We’ve seen plenty of examples of his disgraceful decisions this season alone. In any other profession, he would’ve been sacked by now.
Mike Riley has now personally apologised to Kenwright and Lampard. Did we ever get an apology from Riley, after the games when Kavanagh and Tierney fucked us over, yet again?
I think they somewhat back themselves into a corner with how thin their roster of refs is. They don’t have enough refs to demote a poorly performing one. But they also have their own perverse evaluation meaning there is little overlap between the perspective of the fans and their internal ratings of their refs.
