Not sure if I will be in a minority of one, (it won't be the first or last time) but I thought Owen had a definite penalty turned down against Reading. I don't support either team and have no reason to be biased in any way, but it's not the first time that I've wondered why goal-keepers get away with obvious fouls.Anywhere else on the pitch, if the player knocks the ball past their opponent and gets taken out in their attempt to chase the ball, it's a foul - no questions asked. In the box, suddenly it's apparently important whether the attacker would have got to the ball before it went out - why? If you are fouled, you are fouled, irrelevant of how far away the ball is. And the keeper's momentum is seen as an excuse - well they shouldn't charge out as quickly as they do then should they? - that is their own risk to take. Owen's looked like a definite penalty to me.
3 comments:
Carragher has got away with what looked pretty obvious penalties two weeks running. I'm afraid the standard of refereeing in the English game isn't very high at the moment. However, if you think the Premiership is poor try reading the messageboards of a few of the lower league clubs for their fans' views on the referees: quite often you find both sides' fans saying the ref was awful, which suggests to me that he must have been very bad indeed.
I have to say that I do not entirely agree that referees are of a poor standard. I watch a lot of live games as well as the offerings from Sky and referees get it right far more often than they make mistakes. Except when they get it wrong against my team, I have sympathy for them as the game has got a lot faster over the years and trial by television is not really fair. At the end of the day they should be viewed in the same light as cricket umpires where they should be seen as the final arbiter of decisions whether right or wrong.
There's 2 elements to ref's getting it wrong - wrong decisions given by refs who had a good view, and wrong decisions because the game has got quicker and the ref is only human. There still seems to be a few too many wrong decisions of the first sort for my liking, but my real concern is with the second, which is why I think they should be helped out by whatever technology can help, particularly in any decisions that are vital to a goal being awarded or not.
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