Of course football referees are paragons of honesty and above reproach. Right?

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Right.

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The Ferret
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A list of incidents reported from abroad.

No evidence whatsoever of any PL referee making a decision in a game knowing that it was wrong just to favour a particular side or to gain any financial inducements from it.

In my view, the ref was too quick in making the penalty decision.

If he’d allowed another half-second, the assistant ref or fourth official , Andre Marriner, might have said : “Dive!”

But if Niasse had been booked for simulation, then subbed at half-time, perhaps Rooney would have come on and scored a hat trick.

So perhaps the incident worked to our advantage.

I was surprised (and relieved) that Rooney never came off the bench.
I think Unsworth was too cautious and missed a trick.

Yeah read that....fiddling while Rome burns springs to mind....it wont happen Willo, simply because it will make referees look bad and the FA cant be having that now, can they???

Like Mr W, I don't accept that referees are corrupt or that they consciously cheat.

What I strongly object to is their spinelessness, inconsistency and prejudices. I sometimes think they have their own unofficial rule book. For example, don't give a second yellow card, even though it may be more deserved than the first one, otherwise the player will be sent off. And don't give a straight red, however well deserved, if it's "too early in the game". And try never to red-card a player from one of the big teams playing at home. Award a penalty when one player is brushed off the ball, but never ever give one when Zaha is wrestled to the ground, as happens almost every game. When the number of fouls gets out of hand, just give up trying to enforce some discipline and let the offenders get on with it.

This pathetic behaviour of too many of them makes me sick.

Taylor ,yesterday was totally incompetent, missed quite a bit in my view , but got home and watched MOTD and had to listen to Lineker and Co purring over Man City , would have been a different game if the Ref there had balls and had sent Kompany off ,evidently the experts concluded that the incident was too early in the game !