Its a fix

[BlueHammer85]

The second hew blew the whistle, his only option was to send the lad off as he was clearly the last man and was fouling him to prevent a clear goal scoring opportunity.

Sunderland got well and truly dicked.

Yellow for me

 

[IrelandSuperman]

The second hew blew the whistle, his only option was to send the lad off as he was clearly the last man and was fouling him to prevent a clear goal scoring opportunity.

Last man means nowt these days.

 

[The Future's Blue]

This "it must be a fix" garbage that people are spewing because of the Sagna/Altidore incident is exactly that, garbage.

It was a tussle that you see quite often around the pitch throughout the game. Both were holding onto each other, Altidore's strength began to get him away from Sagna but before he could wriggle free and get on goal, Atkinson had no doubt that there was a foul in there somewhere, but one which is not serious enough to warrant a red card. Now had Sagna fell over and grabbed Altidore's leg to trip him up, then you could totally justify your reasons for wanting him off. But that was merely a scuffle between the pair of them, which thanks to Altidore's strength got him pulling away, and never a sending off, IMO.

Of course now he's seen the incident again, he'd let play continue, as that's what he should have done "in hindsight", but it doesn't work like that, does it?

Flip it around and had he let play go on, and Altidore happened to fall on his arse and scuff the opportunity, Atkinson would have been getting shit for not blowing up for a foul.

The worst thing that happened in this instance is that it trickled over the line, despite the fact that when Atkinson blew up, Koscielny was already slowing down antiticipating a foul of some sort, and would probably have got back in time to stop the ball going over the line, to which di Canio, Altidore and the rest of the Sunderland faithful would have laid into Atkinson for not giving a foul.

To put this incident down as irrefutable proof that Atkinson was blatantly cheating, is IMO complete rubbish.

Whilst the advantage law is a good one, and we do see it used more and more as seasons go by, there's still the odd incident which leaves people wondering why the fuck they didn' play advantage, yet because these tend to be in the middle of the pitch, or not near the box, noone ever mentions "cheating". It's just a moment where the referee in question didn't let play run that little bit longer.

Have you explained the Halsey thread yet?

I'll pop over to see.