Yesterday we witnessed one of the poorest days of refereeing decisions in a long while with, again, a clear bias in referees decisions towards the bigger teams in the league.
In the Merseyside Derby Cahill was fouled badly, no card was issued. In the second half Cahill commits a foul, which in Alan Hansen's view (and he is not noted for his bias against Liverpool), was not as bad as the one on him in the first half and Mike "old mother" Riley produces a red card from nowhere.
Then later on in the day we saw Rob Styles give a comedy penalty to Manchester United for no reason at all. It would not be so bad had he been in a bad position to see it, but replays showed he was perfectly placed. It would not be quite so bad had he got the guts to step forward in front of the cameras and say "I'm human, I made a terrible mistake". but his silences always makes you wonder why it is that Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea always get those decisions.
Of course, when it comes to the smaller teams, it clearly depends who you are playing. Last year Fulham had some awful refereeing decisions against them in matches when they were playing bigger opposition whilst Norwich fans will have little difficulty in remembering the away game in the Premiership against Portsmouth when not only were Norwich somewhat controversially down to 10 men from an over officious referee, but Norwich were ultimately robbed of the points by a referee who decided when a Portsmouth player hand balled in the Norwich area, to award them a penalty !
What hope is there for those smaller teams who go up to the premiership when you know you are playing against 12 not 11 men ?
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As a ref myself, I have never understood the bias that is so obviously present when one of the the big teams is up against a minnow.
It is not easy to ref under such pressure, however I do feel that the way the league selects refs for these big games is wrong at times and only adds to the problem.
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