Webb was the same. Remember the FA cup final where he's coming on with ManU and spends the pre match over at their bench high fiving his buddies with Pardew watching with a WTF look on his face.

Success will lie to you but failure always tells you the truth.

There is no point in playing Liverpool. Every ref is 6 miles up their arse and give them absolutely everything. That Harold Shipman c*** managing them probably hands the grasses the brown envelopes himself before every game

Football is fixed.

Our boys were in it today deep into the game and with a bit more luck/guile up front would have been at worst level.
Then the predictable 'refereeing' influence takes over, sucking out the spirit. Every week games are wrecked by moments like this and every week Kevin Friend 'to the big clubs' and all the other incompetents, Dean, Moss, Pawson etc carry on 'refereeing' without any explanation of their decisions or being taken to task and probably worse nothing is ever done over their barely-disguised leanings to the bigger club.
It has always been like this in the Premier league but the administrators always bottle it over the big clubs, particularly as they have already threatened to walk once and the Premier league was set up for the benefit of the big clubs.
You either swallow it or as a previous poster wrote, write off certain games.

so do we play our B team, whenever up against the big fish of the top Four ? And keep the A team fresh ? to crucify all the smaller clubs ?

Eze Peasy at Anfield....

I don't think that Referees are intentionally bias but I do think at the back of their mind is the concern that if they don't give a marginal decision in favour of a big team there will be sh*t storm from that club, fans and the meeja.

I remember an article which pointed out certain referees had tangled with Sir Alex or other big team managers and they had not since ref'd them so definitely big team influence.

I wonder if they still goes on today certainly not at Palace they seem to delight in giving us a controversial ref.

One more point

There have been a lot of games across the PL this season with some very odd decisions, with this affecting most teams both big and small. I get the ref makes mistakes, but how does VAR make so many?

I do also think there is a disconnect between what happens in the box and what happens outside of it. This season (rightly so in my view) refs have been letting things go and are not stopping the game every time a player gets some contact, but if anything, when it comes to the 18-yard box they've become even more stringent. This of course has not been helped by VAR micro analysing some decisions and ignoring others. Consistency being the other issue of course and the fact we are seeing VAR take 5 minutes to decide if something is 'clear and obvious', which seems a contradiction in terms.

The one thing I'd really love to see go is the pitch side monitors. It basically seems they are being used to show the referee why they are wrong. I don't think I've seen one occasion this season where the ref has stuck to his original decision. Can you imagine having to go over to a monitor with a wall of faces glaring at you and players talking in one ear and VAR in the other. It's ridiculous and just seems to undermine the referee.