Didsbury Dave
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 1 Feb 2007
- Messages
- 38,063
Blue Mooner said:Exeter Blue I am here said:tonea2003 said:after 38 minutes both teams had two players booked so that respect both teams were walking tightropes
i will add by half time we had another two bookings
but it certainly wasn't all one way
The way we play doesn't help our cause any either. The two most relentlessly punished fouls in the game now are going through the back of players and the cynical pull back to stop the opposition counterattacking. We play the highest defensive line in the league, with the back 4 defending on the front foot, trying to get in in front of the opposition forwards. Fouls and yellow cards are an inevitable consequence of this.
I also don't subscribe to the notion that referees are cheats. They may be shit, they may succumb to pressure, they may make mistakes, but deliberate cheating? Nah. Even Clattenfuck was pretty reasonable for the first 45 down at the Emirates the other day and for a supposed rag he had a nice line in awarding penalties against them this weekend. The notion also that Mike Dean 'cheated' us against Chelsea is too risible for words. Over the course of the last 10 years he's given us more soft decisions than any other referee on the planet. Some you win, some you lose.
There are 2 or 3 exceptions however. Mason and Taylor are rags, it's that simple. Taylor even used to go to the Swamp to watch them as a kid, and yet they pass themselves off as Bolton and Altrincham fans in order to officiate at the Etihad and Old Nafford, and they never give us anything. We really should make more of a fuss about those two. The only other referee to consistently grind my gears over the course of the last 10 years was, ironically (given that some City fans seemed determined to venerate him) was Mark fucking Halsey. From Gillingham to his retirement, he diddled us left, right and centre.
You're making subjective assertions to justify our high card count I'm presenting you with facts. The team with the highest amount of possession gets the 2nd highest amount of yellow cards and that doesn't in any way strike you as strange? I would suggest it probably bucks any trend since these type of stats were collected. Clattenburg gave two penalties to Leicester that were penalties and neither of them were game defining at the point they were taken.
Zabaleta's second foul was a foul nothing more, nothing less. He didn't leave the floor, raise his foot stop in a professional manner a promising attack. He simply attempted to get round costa to win the ball and fouled him in the process. Dean for whatever reason saw that as an opportunity to send our player off at precisely the moment we started to look like we would go on and win the match.
Let's take Bayern munichs booking count for last season who equally play a high pressing game, they accrued 45 bookings last season so that would seem to negate that theory.
I'll give you my interpretation, we get booked for tackles that are nothing more than fouls and in many cases are a result of players throwing themselves to the floor to win fouls and the referees are looking for any reason to book our players that immediately puts them treading a tightrope to not get booked for the remainder of the game and stifling their game in the process.
In the face of pretty damning statistics you continue to try and defend the status quo. Unbelievable.
I enjoyed your use of "unbelievable" as though he's the crackpot with the wild conspiracy theory, not you.
Funny.