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Wenger attack on Oliver off target

Henry Winter

The Daily Telegraph

Tuesday January 17 2012

 

Arsenal manager’s criticism of referee after Swansea match was badly judged but typical of modern football

 

It is not only Newcastle United's players who are shining this season. Michael Oliver, once of the Tynesiders' academy, is rising high as a referee in the Premier League and has just been awarded the huge honour of elevation to the Fifa list for 2012. Oliver is now eligible to take charge of Champions League, Europa League and Uefa internationals. And he's only 26.

That is why Arsene Wenger's weekend criticism of Oliver cannot go unanswered. For all those deriding Premier League referees, and Arsenal's intemperate manager was the latest to launch some barbs, Oliver provides substantial evidence to the contrary. Devoid of ego, Oliver is a refereeing star in the making.

The son of the Northumberland referee Clive, he first started officiating at 14, his calm running of games soon spotted by the Football Association, who have fast-tracked him.

Now Uefa and Fifa are guiding him higher and higher. He has already trained among Uefa's chosen ones at the Centre Of Refereeing Excellence (CORE) at Nyon, being nurtured as one of the Pierluigi Collinas of the future.

Oliver does make mistakes, and red cards last season for West Bromwich Albion's Pablo lbanez and Norwich City's Grant Holt were rescinded by the FA.

On Sunday, Oliver angered Wenger at the Liberty Stadium by giving Swansea a penalty. With Nathan Dyer sprinting into the visitors' box, Oliver decreed that the winger had been brought down by Aaron Ramsey.

Subsequent replays indicated that Ramsey was probably blameless.

Probably. Few were sure. Wenger was. He fulminated that the game was "decided by some strange decisions" by Oliver, rather ignoring the weak and costly defending of the hapless pair of Per Mertesacker and Ignasi Miquel.

"It was interesting listening to Sky, where the experts said in 'real time' it looked like a clear penalty," reflected David Elleray, the chairman of the FA's Referees' Committee, who is working with Uefa to develop the next generation of international  referees, like Oliver.

"That's what really we should judge referees on. Real time.

"The quality of English refereeing is very good given the speed of the game. Last season, 98 per cent of offside decisions were correct in the Premier League.

"Referees still make fewer mistakes than players, but if they make a mistake it is always the turning point of the game.

"If a player misses a penalty, an open goal, or gives a silly back-pass, they don't get the same level of criticism as the referee. Twas ever thus."

Those who know Oliver argue that he possesses the strong character to take criticism in his stride. And he's getting better and better.

"Watching Michael this season compared to last year, he's very calm," continued Elleray. "He's stopped charging around. Michael has a good way of communicating with the players. He has this balance between having authority, and maintaining some distance, but not being aloof.

"He has been part of the programme I am now running for Uefa. Every year, every country in Europe can send a referee and two assistants for a 10-day residential course at CORE, where they do practical’s, fitness work and referee some lower-league Swiss or French football.

"That's followed by four months' distance coaching, followed by another residential course of eight days. It gets them ready for the stage when they move up to the Fifa list.

"Michael was on the first course.

From my work with him on the CORE programme, I've seen he has a real willingness to learn. He knows he's not the finished article. He wants to improve on every game. Michael's father has been a help. He has kept his feet on the ground."

Those feet are moving fast. The road map to the top is clearly marked for England's new generation.

"Michael and Mark Clattenburg [34 and another Tynesider elevated to Fifa's Elite category] both have high levels of fitness, which players appreciate. Typically, you do run more in English football than in Continental football, where there is a slower build-up. English football is not as Route One as it was but, physically, English football is more demanding. "

A fit, ambitious new generation emerges. "Stephen Hunt said recently he liked being refereed by Stuart Atwell [29]," continued Elleray. Attwell has his critics, and has never fully escaped the haunting memory of that "ghost goal" for Reading, but Clattenburg earns good reviews again after a period of introspection about his career.

"At the FA, we are working closely with Mike Riley [the Premier League referees chief] about succession planning," added Elleray. "You need a range of ages. Internationally, we will lose Howard Webb, Martin Atkinson, Mike Dean and Andre Marriner in five years as they have to retire at 45. Therefore Mark, Stuart and Michael are our next generation of international referees."

But what of the criticism? "People often say 'European referees are much better than English referees, look how few problems we have in European games'. They claim that until it all goes horribly wrong." Ask Everton about Colina. Ask Chelsea about Tom Henning Ovrebo. (Don't ask Didier Drogba; he's still calming down).

Elleray was always prepared to speak after matches clarifying decisions, but he explains why there is a reticence in the profession for officials to be grilled afterwards. “There was a big problem with a slight misuse of words by Mark Halsey in a game between Arsenal and Fulham [in 2004]. Mark gave a penalty [to Fulham], realised he had made a mistake and changed his mind. He said afterwards, 'It was the reaction of the players that told me I was wrong and that was why I changed'. He missed out the word 'instant'. He could immediately tell from the players' instant reaction. But it came across that he was saying that because 'the [Arsenal] players argued with me, that's why I changed my mind'."

Elleray does not believe referees would be helped by an assistant in the stand reviewing incidents. "I don't think there's an appetite for that. A lot of that is driven by the TV companies. There would be so many situations you would need to look at. It's not like rugby or cricket, where you have great long delays. So many situations are not black and white. Who is to say the person on the TV screen is going to make a better decision than the person on the field, who can smell the atmosphere?"

A person such as Michael Oliver, the Newcastle academy player now graduating with honours as a referee'

Zero tolerance for human torpedoes

Paul Haywood

The Daily telegraph

Friday January 13 2012

Worries about the game emasculated are outweighed by injuries from two-footed tackles

 

Smart weapons know where the target is and sell us the myth of no collateral damage. The same promise comes from footballers who tell us they can jump in with both feet without maiming the opponent.

Vincent Kompany thought he could de it. So did Glen Johnson. In they both went, like Cato from the Pink Panther films surprising Inspector Clouseau as he comes home from work. Neither caused a scratch to Nani or Joleon Lescott, respectively. But would you trust an airborne missile?

This week we have seen Kompany sent off and banned for four games for his jump at Manchester United's Nani and Liverpool's Johnson escape any kind of punishment for his arrow-leap in the direction of Kompany's team-mate, Lescott, in Wednesday's Carling Cup semi-final first-leg at the Etihad Stadium.

Inconsistency is the obvious red rag to football's bull. Kompany was glumly imprisoned in an executive box while Johnson remains free to go about his work.

As ever we get lost in a fog about which jump was worse and who said what to whom, while the principle on which the law is based is obscured.

Every time the whistle toots there is a tension in the English game between the old island heritage of blood and guts and the modern yearning to see something closer to ballet. 'We want it both ways: thunderous collisions and David Silva-esque artistry.

Finding that harmony is tough and we can all cite areas where we see imbalance. One is in the penalty box, where any kind of defender-on ­striker contact is now considered reason enough for the forward to hit the deck.

This has bred a whole culture of deceit in which the striker encourages the defender to touch him with the end of a toenail to justify the subsequent tumble. Too many commentary box experts are going along with this sophistry.

"There was contact." they say, as if the attacking player has no' moral obligation to stay on his feet. But this is subtle, moral-maze material compared to the simple issue of players leaving the ground and arriving at the contact point like human torpedoes.

Coos Fay flashed a red card at Kompany. Lee Mason did nothing about the Johnson challenge. One response probably shaped the other. Mason will have watched the Kompany imbroglio and perhaps decided subconsciously that he was not about the expose himself to a similar trial by TV.

Either both were red-card offences or neither was. And let's go for both, because if you study footage of the most infamous two-footed tackles you will see a level of reckless endangerment that could put a victim in hospital or end a career.

Examples, old and new would be Kevin Nolan on Victor Anichebe or Steven Gerrard on Everton's Gary Naysmith. The Fernando Torres leap at Mark Gower of Swansea City fits into the category of karate lunges where the recipient is off to the side of both sets of raised studs and therefore supposedly safe, however bad it looks.

You know what comes next. It's the 'he-won-the-ball' defence. Both Johnson and Kompany could justifiably claim as much but neither complied with the current criteria for the essentially dangerous act of leaving the ground in the late tackle.

Referees are meant to look at the speed and intensity of a challenge and ask whether both soles are off the turf.

Then they ask whether the tackler is out of control (ie can he change his course of action). Johnson and Kompany fail on at least three of these counts and were therefore in clear contravention of the law.

Philosophically, plenty of us worry that football is being emasculated. A deeply rooted voice wants the game to be a test of strength as well as skill. But these combative urges are easily quelled by pictures of feet pointing the wrong way after irresponsible challenges.

The sickening injuries to Eduardo and Aaron Ramsey of Arsenal should have been a watershed. Nobody could have studied those images and argued for the kind of eye-popping machismo employed by lesser teams to nullify more graceful opponents.

The advance made by Kompany's tackle was to remind all players that airborne interventions will not be tolerated.

The leniency towards Johnson reversed that progress in a moment of weakness by Lee Mason.

Instinct drives them to jump in like this, and sometimes malice. Leaving the ground enables the tackler to arrive faster and 'clean­out' the ball.

But it's not for players to decide whether they can make these Cato jumps without hurting opponents whose limbs are probably planted when the missile hits the ball.

If you tolerate this then your ankles will be next.

 

Mancini’s card trick is a farce

 

Des Kelly

Daily Mail

Saturday January 14 2012

 

 

UNLESS you live in a cave, you will be aware by now of the controversy over two-footed tackles involving a couple of Manchester City players. And if you do happen to live in a cave, I'm guessing you were backing Roberto Man­cini's protests all the way.

There is a great deal to like about the Italian manager. He is emotional, passionate, outspoken, and his team have started to produce the stylish, swashbuck­ling football everyone hoped he would be able to fashion from the lavish resources at his disposal.

But the man has the unerring ability to contradict himself in the same sentence. I can only assume he has been an amnesiac for as long as he can remember, which at the going rate appears to be less than a week.

For having wildly danced up and down the touchline waving· an imaginary card in the air as if it was a winning lottery ticket (not that he needs one) in an attempt to encourage the referee to dis­miss Martin Skrtel as recently as January 3, guess what happened five days later?

Mancini went apoplectic with rage because Wayne Rooney waved a hand in the air and questioned if Vincent Kompany would receive a red card in the FA Cup tie against Manchester United.

Anyone can see the obvious problem here. But Mancini's memory operates like an Etch A Sketch, wiping itself clean and starting afresh after every match.

Roll on another three days to Wednesday and another challenge was at the core of the argument. This time Mancini was furious when Liverpool's Glen Johnson escaped sanction for a two-footed leap' at Joleon Lescott, one that was comparable to Kompany's, albeit from the side rather than head on.

Mancini even threw his packet of Fruit Pastilles to the floor. And there was me thinking he'd prefer to buy his sweets from the Pick 'n' Mix counter, as this seems to be where he selects his laws of the game.

How can Mancini complain about inconsistency when his argument changes every few days? managers demand a steady, uniform response from referees, but they rarely exhibit the same quality themselves. Nor do the howling mobs of fans baying for 'justice'. They only want their justice.

Steven Gerrard was absolutely right to confront Mancini in the tunnel after their fractious Carling Cup tie in midweek. It was a beautifully timed encounter too, coming in the midst of Mancini's interview with a BBC journalist.

Pointing an accusing finger, Gerrard told the City boss: 'You said to the press that Wayne Rooney tried to get Kompany sent off - and then you try to get Johnson sent off.'

He was right, of course. This sort of hypocrisy makes a mockery of managers' endless whining about officials.

There will always be an argument about a decision, no matter how many slow-motion television replays are studied. Most incidents are subjective judgment calls. Sometimes there is no 'right' decision.

Gather a dozen people in a room, put any game on the TV and when the first contentious moment occurs, the chances are there will be bedlam.

It was there for all to see on Twitter last weekend as Kompany trudged off. Almost half thought he deserved a red card. Almost half did not. The remainder confined themselves to expletives. Amazingly, the split usually correlated to the club allegiances. Funny that.

In the aftermath, I read and heard some inventive but misguided 'solutions' being offered up to erase so-called errors. One was the return to replays for fourth officials, which would obviously clear up some debate, but do nothing except add a variable to many more judgment calls. Another was that a manager should be allowed to 'challenge' such an incident on the touchline, calling for a review in the manner reminiscent of NFL American tackle, that would be entertaining, but unworkable.

Video reviews are for straight line calls - was the ball in, or was it out? - end of debate. Add an element of interpretation to the equation and it becomes messy.            

Surely we might try something more grown-up, like respecting referee's call on the day, or is that beyond football now

For all the hullabaloo that accompanies any contentious televised incident, the game is anything but dirty.       

There is more violent conflict within the confines of Nigella Lawson's blouse as she whips her  egg whites into stiff peaks than you'll find on the average Premier League pitch these days. It's not a blood and thunder game any more.

There is blocking and jostling in  the penalty area, the occasional  tackle, a lot of rolling around, and  that's pretty much it. The use of  the elbow, once a routine and cynical ploy, has all but been eradicated, as has the tackle from behind. The same will happen to the two-footed lunge.

After his appeal against the red card, Kompany himself was remarkably dignified about it all. He asked, quite reasonably: 'I wonder though if we are now going to see an unprecedented wave of red cards on match days because we sanction "ifs" and "maybes"?'

But ifs and maybes should have nothing to do with this issue. Law 12 addresses the issue of serious foul play and it states that if a player lunges at an opponent with one or both legs, and is guilty of endangering the safety of the other player, he should be dismissed. It doesn't matter whether he 'won the ball' or not. It doesn't matter whether a toothless old pro moans that 'great defending has been outlawed' in a bout of misplaced nostalgia.

The defender does not get the benefit of the doubt, as Johnson did, they get their marching orders like Kompany. On that basis Chris Foy got it right in the United match and Lee Mason was undeni­ably wrong in the Liverpool game.

But this is going to happen on occasion. Officials often have to put up with 22 players trying ,to cheat and con their way through 90 minutes and they will make mistakes.

I'll take all those managers' complaints more seriously when they see the fouls and crimes committed by their own players ­and when they cut out their own 'inconsistency'. I'm not holding my breath, mind you.

Footballs artists must be protected from the Neanderthal tendency

Patrick Collins

Mail on Sunday

January 15 2012

 

WHEN the old pros get together, they speak lov­ingly of the hard men. Tommy Smith, Norman Hunter, Ron 'Chopper' Harris; the mere sight of their names on a team sheet would send faint-hearted souls rushing to the treatment table. Happy days. As the old boys will tell you, they don't make them like that any more.

And there is a good reason for that: you see, the game has become more civilised, more protective of its art­ists. It prizes craft above belliger­ence, creation above intimidation.

Not that the ancients see it that way. For sport has a curious effect upon its former players; they become more stridently macho with every year that passes.

Rugby men, long retired, will revel in rheumy-eyed reminiscences of noses bloodied and scores settled and all manner of muscular may­hem. They might have been playing for England or turning out for Old Tosspottians Extra Thirds; no mat­ter. It is the manly violence they remember most fondly.

Similarly the cricketers, especially those who played in the days before helmets. With no restriction on short-pitched bowling, a batsman would take his life in his hands if he decided to play the hook shot. It was what the late, and all too frequently quoted, Fred Trueman would call 'proper cricket'.

Now, I would contend that cricket is a far better game since it started to safeguard vulnerable skulls. And while rugby has become inevitably more hazardous as its players have grown bigger, stronger and faster, it is no longer cursed by compliant referees, turning blind eyes to ram­pant thuggery.

 

 BUT it is football's Neander­thals who currently concern us because they have been particularly vocal these past few days. They rarely devi­ate from the depressing script: 'Nobody's allowed to tackle any more ... it's become a non­contact sport ... we wouldn't have lasted five minutes under these rules ... the game's gone'.

A couple of two-footed tackles brought them blinking into the day­light, the first by Manchester City's Vincent Kompany on Nani, of Manchester United, in the FA Cup, the second by Liverpool's Glen Johnson on City's Joleon Lescott in the Carling Cup. Kompany was sent off by the referee Chris Foy, while Johnson was exonerated by Lee Mason.

Each incident received the kind of forensic examination once reserved for an assassination attempt on a head of state. Kompany, who was suffering his second expulsion of the season, warned of 'an unprece­dented wave of red cards' if his tackle was considered illegal, while various erudite panels declared the decision 'harsh'. The Johnson incident saw the respective manag­ers acting in character: Roberto Mancini erupted at the perceived injustice, while Kenny Dalglish announced that he hadn't seen a thing. He may have been joking, of course. He enjoys a joke, does Kenny.

A personal view - one reached after the luxury of endless replays and serene contemplation - was that both players had deserved dis­missal. Kompany's challenge was reckless.  The fact that he did not make damaging contact owed eve­rything to providence and little to the City captain. Johnson's lunge looked a good deal worse, the kind of frantic, studs-up assault which could have written off Lescott's  season. A red card was the only appropriate punishment.

Of course, such a view will find no favour with the old guard. Why, just last week I heard one pundit announce that the referee's first duty is to ensure that all the players  stay on the field. Under this extraor­dinary code, players need accept no responsibility for their actions, while officials would be considered culpable for any red-card offence. That way madness lies.

IN TRUTH, we shouldn't worry too much about that notional 'wave of red cards'. If players knew that severe punishment was automatic, then their cruder excesses would disappear within weeks. And those cards should· be regularly flaunted, not just for violent tackles but for other, more insidious, offences.

I believe the public would support instant dismissals for dissent or diving or waving phantom cards in an effort to get opponents expelled. (I would also send off anybody who ostentatiously kissed the club badge, but 1 doubt we could carry the FA with us on this one).

But the most urgent outrage is the two-footed tackle and there are encouraging signs that certain man­agers are becoming concerned by the danger it poses. Roberto Mar­tinez, of Wigan, says: 'I do believe that we need to protect the players that we all love and are excited to watch, we want to see all those challenges being red-carded.';'

Such a view will win no friends among the admirers of Smith or Norman or dear old Chopper but the game is moving on. And for that, we should all be grateful.