h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And guess what??

Liverpool had a decision go *against* them! Cue outrage and hysteria!

Torres gets fouled. Says something to the referee - very possibly asking for the Man Utd player to be booked. Which is unsporting conduct, and therefore a yellow card. Javier Mascherano, who had already been booked, runs over, and aggressively questions the decision. Referee Bennett tells him to be quiet. He continues. Bennett sends him off. Not just for that incident, but for repeated and continued dissent throughout the game, including swearing at the referee.

And even days later, it's still headline news with the FSW seeking a meeting with Keith Hackett and JM bleating in the media that he doesn't understand why he was sent off. Just as well the rule that Jamie Carragher can commit whether fouls he likes in the area without being penalised is still in place, or they'd have had two sent off.

The funniest thing was listening to Alan Green spontaneously combusting on Radio Five at the sheer unfairness of it all - to the extent that *Mark "Lawro" Lawrenson of all people had to interject to get some measure of balance back. My favourite was Green criticising Rio Ferdinand for trying to get a Liverpool player booked - arguing that this made him unfit to be a candidate for England captain. Just as well you'd never see Stevie Me doing that, isn't it!?

This is what I don't get.... and perhaps a 'neutral' can explain it to me. Why is the poor refereeing story of the weekend about a perfectly justifiable sending off of a Liverpool player which in the end made little difference to the result (though not the scoreline), rather than why on earth Yakubu's perfectly good second goal for Everton against West Ham was ruled out for offside when it very, very clearly wasn't?

You won't often see me linking to a story in the Daily Hate, but it's in the sports section, so it's probably okay.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1130055/EXCLUSIVE-Clattenburg-sacked-referee-told-career-breach-contract.html

It seems that Mark Clattenburg has been sacked as a referee because of alleged business debts and allegations of sending threatening emails. I really hope that English football is clean, and that there's no link between his sacking and his somewhat eccentric refereeing performance in the Merseyside derby last season. Wrong decisions are one thing, but such a pattern of wrong decisions, all going one way, was downright sinister. I've never seen anything quite like it.

I notice mind that this does not seem to have been reported anywhere else. Including on the BBC.....

I don't think he is that bad a ref, certainly not in the Steve Bennet/Rob Styles league of appalling match officials...

FB