Dirty Cheating B*stards

[f4f3]

Now I don't often rant about football, but last night I watched Sean Wright Phillips deliberately get another player sent off by cheating (he dived when running past a Newcastle player).

Why, now that TV evidence is available, hasn't he been charged and fined by the football authorities? Why isn't the red card being rescinded?

This sort of cheating is really putting me off watching football.

Comments

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

I accept referees making some mistakes, (though some are inexcusable) and after seeing the Elliott sending off from several angles on Match Of The Day I can see why he made it. Elliott puts his arm out then pulls it back, the ref probably had no opportunity to see the second part of that. The Assistant did and should have done. So yes you are right about the need for a Fourth Official.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Thanks - an am I right about Philips being a cheat?

Just to make it clear - this is the first time I've ever seen him dive, and I'd have the same contempt for any other plater doing the same.

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

No I don't think he dived, there was contact, he was moving at speed, he anticipated a block and took evasive action. As correctly stated by most of the panel on MotD.

The problematical area is, as MotD showed, when a player has to leap out of the way to avoid an incoming lunge. There is no contact so its not a foul? But if the lunge hadn't been there the player would have carried on in possession of the ball and so there is a lost advantage.
MotD on Thursday showed two such incidents where a player might have been construed as diving but had he not done so he may well have had his leg broken by a wild challenge.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I don't think that slightly raising your arm and dropping it again is a wild challenge- the only way he could have broken his leg was by diving. Evasive action is not hurling yourself to the ground (at least he didn't roll around clutching at his leg...).

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

I wasn't implying that Elliott's challenge was wild. I think it was at worst slightly clumsy, he thought about the foul and tried to stop himself, resulting in the sort of collision that the referee had not considered a foul of any kind probably 20 or 30 times previous in the game including incidents where players went down more dramatically than Wrigh-Philips. My view is that neither player did anything wrong but the referee was wrong not for his mistake but for his extreme inconsistency.