This week’s post game interview on the Official is short. Hodgson is clearly agitated with the turn of events and the officiating of the game. And he damn well should be.
I was just today trying to piece together the many times this season that we have been robbed of a win or a draw because of poor officiating. Of course we’ve not helped ourselves too many times as well. But bad officiating in itself has cost us at least 5 points. Am I missing some? I’ve got a very poor memory when it comes to this sort of thing. Maybe someone can remember the specifics. But if it was 5 points, that would bring us two spots out of relegation.
Again, I’m torn. I always say that we should never be in a position where such a decision will affect us. And yet, when such calls go against us, I can’t help but be angry and lament the points they’ve cost us. It’s very frustrating. I really do think that instant replay should be brought into the game. Every goal should be reviewed by a group of officials in a “war room” like the NHL has. Goals like West Ham’s would thus be disallowed.
Thing is, BC, things are so tight that it’s always going to be the odd thing here and there that does for a team. We’ve had a few issues with officials and more with our own defence. In the final analysis I think we will go down, but will probably have been the 16th/17th best team in the division. What can you do? That’s the game.
Even on Saturday we saw it in microcosm: Birmingham get a late (dodgy) pen to equalise against Arsenal (which gives them a nice boost); we concede late (dodgy) against West Ham, which gives us nothing. That’s the way it goes. Somehow the team needs to pick itself up and… well, it’s Man Utd isn’t it?
I’m reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book “Black Swan” at the moment. He’s also written a book called “fooled by randomness”. Taleb’s view (and he’s a very successful financial ‘person’) is that we as humans are terrific at finding explanations for things that possibly can’t be explained. We went over this earlier in the year, but randomness is a big thing and I still think we underestimate how important this is in football. True, if we were better it wouldn’t be such an issue, but we’re not better, so it is…
We were robbed of many a point by officials earlier in the season.
Boro at home is the obvious one – one point taken away due to the incompetence of the linesman. At Villa away, when 0-1 up in the first half we were denied (in the words of Alan Hansen) a stonewall penalty for handball. I like to think at 0-2 we’d have gone on to win, or at the very least draw. Sunderland away: 20 minutes to go, 0-1 up with them down to ten men – referee denies Kamara a perfectly legitimate goal for a phantom foul. That would definitely have been 2 extra points and a confidence-boosting away win.
I’m sure there are more but I’ll stop now because I’ve realised there no point to this exercise whatsoever, apart from to get wound up! :p
Jamie and others, you are of course correct. It’s pointless. I had more written on this post and then deleted it before publishing it because of that very reason. It just seems pointless. So much of it is our fault. If Murphy had paid attention to Salano we’d not be having this discussion. We could point out things like this in every game.
As a rule, I also believe that the bigger clubs and bigger players often get the decisions. Not that the Hammers are a bigger club. Just a general statement about officiating. I also see this in sports in the U.S. Particularly true in the NBA. But again, we could go on and on, but it’s pointless and as I had written and then deleted, there’s no use crying over spilled milk.
But it does sum up the season.
We weren’t good enough. We didn’t have any luck. We went down.
I can see that being said.