LM is poor week after week. I watched the game live. The flurry of activity after Aguero stopped the game himself for SPA (no sanction), was an uncomfortable few minutes for the MIBLee Mason was blooming awful all night, the worst performance by a referee at BL for quite a few years, and that includes Kieth Stroud!!!!! Mahrez was auditioning for Platoon, twice, LM fell for both!!! They don't need to cheat, they are a fantastic team!!!! How come we get refs from Greater Manchester for both City games!!! Surely there are other options!!!
Overall, City were far far better team than Liverpool at BL over 90 minutes and good teams grind out results, 0-1 probably fair but small margins is small comfort when you are up against it!!!
It does seem a bit of an anomaly that if one of the Sheffield United defenders had cleared the ball rather than Henderson picking it up then it would presumably have been retaken for encroachment.
I can understand them not wanting to use VAR because it was becoming a bit farcical in the WWC where virtually every saved penalty was being retaken but I think they do need assistants/referees to start penalising encroachment more. I remember a time around 15 years ago when it was penalised quite a lot but over the last decade it has virtually never happened in England (apart from with VAR.)
in the professional game it'll just end up going the other way and people will complain about all the penalties being re-taken.
As we already saw in the WWC.
Yep! I've always said this. The "if you give one, you'll give ten a game" narrative doesn't work because when you've given the second or third, players will be batshit insane to keep doing it (and more fool them if they do).When we say "we can't call that because it happens all the time," we ignore the fact that it happens all the time because it isn't called. Smart players are going to push the envelope where they can get away with it.
Lee Mason was blooming awful all night, the worst performance by a referee at BL for quite a few years, and that includes Kieth Stroud!!!!! Mahrez was auditioning for Platoon, twice, LM fell for both!!! They don't need to cheat, they are a fantastic team!!!! How come we get refs from Greater Manchester for both City games!!! Surely there are other options!!!
Overall, City were far far better team than Liverpool at BL over 90 minutes and good teams grind out results, 0-1 probably fair but small margins is small comfort when you are up against it!!!
Lee Mason was blooming awful all night, the worst performance by a referee at BL for quite a few years, and that includes Kieth Stroud!!!!! Mahrez was auditioning for Platoon, twice, LM fell for both!!! They don't need to cheat, they are a fantastic team!!!! How come we get refs from Greater Manchester for both City games!!! Surely there are other options!!!
Overall, City were far far better team than Liverpool at BL over 90 minutes and good teams grind out results, 0-1 probably fair but small margins is small comfort when you are up against it!!!
I don’t think I ever referenced the penalty and a dive in the same sentence although that was very soft. The two dives I talked about were in normal play, who goes down with two arms in the air with two legs tucked behind better with aplomb than Mahrez! It’s blatant cheating and LM fell for it.Cheat? Sorry Sheff but it was a clear penalty. I can't remember the name of the United player who got a yellow for the tackle on Laporte, but it was a poor tackle worthy of at least a yellow and the United fans were booing Laporte for being on the end of it. A man that's been out because of injury for 5 months.
I respect Sheff U alot and Wilder is doing a great job. I enjoy officiating at their academy. Cracking side and I'm delighted they're doing so well this season.
I don’t think I ever referenced the penalty and a dive in the same sentence although that was very soft. The two dives I talked about were in normal play, who goes down with two arms in the air with two legs tucked behind better with aplomb than Mahrez! It’s blatant cheating and LM fell for it.
It was John fleck I think who was rightly carded for the Laporte tackle but what his injury lay off has to do with anything I’m not sure! They are all very gifted footballers so all this sly tugs and time wasting was just ****housery!
The Fleck card was our third (all correct) but they’d had at least 2 that were equally worthy, the booing was at what appeared to be favouritism in flicking the card out with gusto when he could have easily carded 2 MC players minutes earlier.?You certainly can’t read a game if you think we were booing an injured player!It was the booing of Laporte from the crowd after he was fouled that I disliked. He's been out for 6 months and he's just been on the end of a poor tackle where the studs went down his ankle and he was being booed for staying down. Small issue though.
Timewasting is endemic unfortunately. At the Etihad every goal kick takes a minute. Teams spend the entire game time wasting. I don't blame them, you do what you can get away with to get a result.