Monday
Aug132007
Weekend Round Up
Monday, August 13, 2007 at 3:46PM
You tend to find on the opening day of the Premier League season there is a storm of controversy over a decision or two. This year there was no major law change or directive and so chances are this was going to be avoided and overall this proved to be the case. Given Keith Hackett's call to the Referee's to keep low key this was in my view achieved. In my view there was 3 interesting points from the weekend.
Steven Gerrards well hit free kick. Martin O'Neil felt it was harsh and that Gerrard had ran into the Villa player looking for the free kick. In full flow I can understand it being given, however can see why looking at a video O'Neil would have this view. What was interesting was Setanta had a screen behind O'neil and showed him the incident when doing the post match interview. Ive thought this should be done for a while. When you get a manager ranting and raving about a incident and having not seen it. If you have the hard cold facts it may save some of the Ref bashing.
The next is the Arsenal Penalty. If im honest Ive not really had a proper chance to look at this, howver belive Lawrie Sanchez is not happy with the decision. No surprise really.
The final one was in the Man Utd vs Reading game. Dave Kitson came on as a substitute late in the game. 37 seconds later he was going the other way. Evra took a throw in and the ball was played back to him deep inside his own half. Kitson went in clumsy and with his feet off the ground and took Evra out at the ankle. There was no hesitation from Rob Styles and he was shown the Red Card. Rightly so as well in my view. There was some talk about that this was harsh, but to be honest if that's not a Red Card, then at what point is it. For me it ticked all the boxes for serious foul play.
(Note - Unfortunately I cant link to the video's as since the Premier League have taken a law-suite against Youtube they are taking everyone down!)
Steven Gerrards well hit free kick. Martin O'Neil felt it was harsh and that Gerrard had ran into the Villa player looking for the free kick. In full flow I can understand it being given, however can see why looking at a video O'Neil would have this view. What was interesting was Setanta had a screen behind O'neil and showed him the incident when doing the post match interview. Ive thought this should be done for a while. When you get a manager ranting and raving about a incident and having not seen it. If you have the hard cold facts it may save some of the Ref bashing.
The next is the Arsenal Penalty. If im honest Ive not really had a proper chance to look at this, howver belive Lawrie Sanchez is not happy with the decision. No surprise really.
The final one was in the Man Utd vs Reading game. Dave Kitson came on as a substitute late in the game. 37 seconds later he was going the other way. Evra took a throw in and the ball was played back to him deep inside his own half. Kitson went in clumsy and with his feet off the ground and took Evra out at the ankle. There was no hesitation from Rob Styles and he was shown the Red Card. Rightly so as well in my view. There was some talk about that this was harsh, but to be honest if that's not a Red Card, then at what point is it. For me it ticked all the boxes for serious foul play.
(Note - Unfortunately I cant link to the video's as since the Premier League have taken a law-suite against Youtube they are taking everyone down!)
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