19 Sep 2024 21:05:29
This Rice red card situation is becoming a problem. It was a terrible call, in my opinion, but decisions happen in football, for and against, and it wasn't totally without nuance. We ended up forcing an amazing result against the spuds, so we should just move on, right?

Except the ref associations, and all their surrogates, can't stop lecturing that 2 plus 2 is 5, completely tying themselves in a corrupt knot. So it's going to happen again, because there's zero learning happening, just spin.

The audio from the incident is so incompetent. The yellow card is not in a bubble of its own. It can't be stopping a quick free kick, because obviously the ball never stopped moving, and Veltman.

1.) 20 Sep 2024
20 Sep 2024 11:40:04
Liverpool fan here gunner - I get the explanation in that yeah, if he kicked the ball away then the rules are a yellow card, alright I guess, but:
- should the keeper not have gotten a yellow card for just kicking Rice in the knee? Aye the ball was kicked away, but what he missed the ball and just kicked him in the knee, not the foot? Some miss that you would think, almost like he aimed for his knee - wonder where VAR was for that.

- like you say, the ball was moving. How can you take a free kick if the ball is moving? So, he couldn't have taken a free kick and Rice didn't prevent him from doing so then? VAR not see the ball was moving? Or did that not matter?

- the 'quick free kick' angle - if you see the reverse angle, there was literally none of his team mates anywhere near where he was supposedly kicking it! I mean, not one official thought to point that out?

- then, under the rules of the game, kicking the ball away is a yellow card offence, so then where was the yellow card for the offence in the 1st half? That guy didn't even just flick it, he proper belted it and that's ok then? Is the offence based upon how hard it is kicked? Where on the pitch it happens? Maybe only if certain players are involved?

Fans, players and managers have issues with the way these rules are enforced - just seemingly on an ad hoc basis, is it because of the stadiums the game is in? The teams involved? Players involved at each incident? Who knows, just the inconsistency is awful.

The worse is that such incidents are just not covered - the audio awful and yet people back these decisions instead of doing something about it fs - we used to get Dermot Gallagher on TV actually rewriting rules to tell us 'why the decision was correct' only then to completely reverse that stance when a different decision for an identical situation happened the next week - that too, he then explained was 'correct'

You had Clattenburg say that the ref needed to give free kicks to Milan to 'win over the crowd' against Liverpool the other night - seriously? Give a free kick if its a free kick! And unsurprisingly, the media etc have just not commented on that either.

2.) 21 Sep 2024
21 Sep 2024 09:34:53
Thank you Bill, you've done an excellent job basically finishing my post after I accidentally sent it half way through!

I'm still angry about it. It's not that a bad decision went against the team I support. It's hearing the audio, knowing the incompetent process they went through, and then having to listen to the constant, corrupt defence of it from the panels and associations.

I imagine at least someone in the background is stressing for this to not happen again, as it looks awful. Publically though, it's been set in stone that if a similar incident is repeated, the ref should make the same bad decision, with the same incompetent following of the rules. Another Rice should be sent off, and another Veltman should get away with assault. That's it, that's football now, carry on!

Do we just put up with a season of random, inconsistent decisions that totally change the course of games, because afterwards the refs all say together that whatever just happened was the right decision, we just didn't know it before?

I see the 'discourse' of rival fans laughing about it, or being angry at 'moaning Arsenal'. Off the top of my head, I'm not so sure Wolves, Forest, Liverpool fans are so quick to laugh after decisions last season. Surely we shouldn't be so busy enjoying the incompetence when it creates misery for another club, and be demanding massive improvement? I'm not saying I know what to do, but the fact the refs definitely don't is a problem.