O'Donnell's Observations: Ridiculous or Sublime?
by Paul O'Donnell
England's referees are again under fire for horrendous errors and one among them is the most egregious of those we've seen in recent years. In last weekend's Watford v Reading contest the Royals were awarded a goal that gave them a 1-0 lead in a match that eventually ended in a 2-2 draw.
Ok, so it was one of those 'did it go over the line or not' things we see from time to time then? Well not quite. This time the question was 'did it go over the line or not' but with a unique twist; was it on 'frame or not' when it did cross the line if you can believe that. The answer was it wasn't even close. It was two yards wide of goal and beyond the end line when it was scooped back in front of goal and yet Reading was awarded a goal on the play.
Credit to Reading's manager Steve Coppell who offered to replay the match but the FA won't allow it nor will they interfere otherwise. No matter how bizarre or nonsensical the on field decision the league will allow it to stand forever and that is simply allowing such an injustice to be enshrined. Not devising some way of bringing justice to the game by correcting such a blatant and egregious error is just plain and simply a farce.
Supporting the on field officials is one thing but justice and the integrity of the game is quite another.
Speaking of justice an arbitration court has ruled in favor of Sheffield United who were relegated after the 2006/07 season. Their claim was that the FA should have penalized West Ham points for their handling of the Carlos Tevez and Mescherano affair and if that had happened they would have remained in the EPL and West Ham relegated.
Again, any sense of justice on this case is beyond reason. Sure, Tevez was key to the Hammers survival but the Blades lost their place on the pitch. Their claim was surely not in the spirit of the game to begin with especially when you consider their failure to earn their own way when they played the same number of games as everyone else and didn't get the job done. In fact, Sheffield United defeated West Ham 3-0 then went on to win only 4 points in the last five games of the season sealing their fate. It was only after the FA fined West Ham that the lawyers saw the basis of their claim which had been rightly dismissed earlier.
And there is more to it also and its related to another of those crazy and absolutely bizarre rulings by the on field officials. In one of the closing matches to the season Tevez was credited with a goal when he was actually offside on the play, but there's another twist to this one too. He was standing on the goal line (in an obvious offside position) and he actually prevented the ball from crossing the line! Maybe that was part of the motivation for Sheffield United to mount their unjust suit in the first place; injustice all around or that old ditty that says 'two wrongs don't make a right' is what they're really trying to turn upside down. Apparently the FA believes two wrongs can indeed make a right.
Had the FA's on field officials got that one correct, guess what? None of the rest of this would have ever happened because West Ham would have been relegated instead of Sheffield United. The end result of not getting that call correct in the first place simply leads to more and more bizarre nonsense and still the FA won't at least try to ensure they get it right to begin with.
The league says we'll just let the wrongs stand forever and will do as little as possible to ensure we get it right the first time. Then we'll fine West Ham and ban the agents which is nothing more than blood in the water for the lawyers. Sheffield United is relegated and after the fact, crying in their beer says the league shouldn't just fine West Ham they should deduct points and if they did that we would have not been relegated despite the fact we couldn't win the points on the pitch. Then along comes a misguided arbitration court that multiplies the error and we've gone from the realm of the ridiculous to the truly sublime.
So, here we are again with managers calling for video replays. More eyes on the game may be far easier to implement like hockey's goal judges as an example. Instead we have the FA standing firmly on the wrong side supporting their frequently wrong officials and simply refusing to do much of anything to ensure the decisions are as correct as possible. That does not necessarily mean video replays as their may be other answers that would be much less intrusive to the flow of the game which is the key negative for the replay route according to the league and FA.
The consequences of not getting it right range from monumental to essentially meaningless in the end.
Among the monumental remember Liverpool being awarded that 'phantom goal' in a Champions League match with Chelsea? It happened in the season when the Reds went on to the final winning over AC Milan in Istanbul in penalties. Fortunately, few of the errors are as meaningful in terms of the amount of money involved than this one.
Reset the clock to November, 2004. The scene is Old Trafford with the Red Devils entertaining Spurs. It is a 0-0 deadlock. Pedro Mendes spots the keeper well off his line and from just inside the half way line launches a drive on goal. The keeper scrambles back, reaches up to catch the ball which deflects off his hands and over his head dropping into goal, striking the ground at least a yard beyond the line. The keeper stretches out to fling the ball out of the goal. So its a 1-0 lead for Spurs, right? Wrong. Its no goal. None of the officials on the field of play saw what happened. There was no doubt whatsoever that a goal was scored but the FA would not even make a judgment on this one and Tottenham has still never won an EPL match at Old Trafford. In the end this one may have been among the most horrendous in memory but it made essentially no difference for either team in the final reckoning.
So where does the Sheffield United-West Ham dispute really stand and why is it still out there making news? Money. Today, just surviving at the EPL level is a very lucrative event for any team and worth upwards of 30M pounds in the revenue sharing scheme which is precisely why each time one of these truly bizarre events decide a result we see the managers shouting the loudest. Being victimized by one of these errors may not only mean their job it could also mean a very substantial monetary loss for the club which is the real impetus behind Sheffield United's claim as hollow as it really is in football terms.
That said, on most weekends there is at least one error, many of them determining the outcome but fortunately few as bizarre and quite obviously as wrong as this Reading-Watford event and yet the FA does little or nothing. Makes you wonder what they actually do doesn't it? If they won't move themselves to ensure the integrity of the game it seems that they've lost a big part of what it is they are supposed to be doing in the first place.
The errors keep happening and the FA does nothing to fix it to the detriment of not only justice but the game itself.
