them a shonky one.
After Captain Pugwash’s little fact based rant about refs and ManUre it could only result in two outcomes, both of which were on view on Saturday.
First scenario the ref starts to favour Pugwash’s side with every decision no matter how blatant and bad, see the 3 o’clock game versus Hull City. Or you get what happened a little later that afternoon, a team is two up at Old Trafford, Fergie’s nose is changing shades of blue much like those tropical fish you see on Attenborough programs. The ref comes out at half time and decides “you know what call my professionalism into account Pugwash, I’ll show you, first opportunity”.
Twelve minutes later that chance falls to ground in the box, the ref can’t believe his luck, he really didn’t see anything happen but someone in red fell over, what a great way to say “fuck you Pugwash, you want that league title, you’ll have to get by me first”.
Alan Green thinks the refs in the Premier League aren’t bent, nah they’re just incompetent. Which is worse? The latter means things aren’t going to get better. Jermaine Jenas claims Webb bottled it…
I think it was a case of a referee crumbling under the pressure at Old Trafford really Jermaine Jenas
Why should we care what he says? Well it’s his area of expertise if anyone knows about crumbling under pressure then it’s this ponce, as shown by his disappearing act when it all turned bad. When things needed stiffened up to preserve the 2-1 lead Jenas managed to find more and more new hiding places.
And that’s the real problem, yes the penalty changed the game but the introduction of Tevez had started the change and yes ManUre should have been down to 10 men when Scholes first three acts in the game were three bookable offences. Spurs may have held out if the ref had done his job properly, Gomes was having one of those days when you see why he’s call The Octopus. If they could have stopped a goal going in the more frustrated would get ManUre, Lennon, Keane, Bent, Modric could have caught them on the break. Who knows.
But the way they went to pieces after the pen everyone knew what was to come, we all remember the 3-5 game at The Lane. Why would conceding a goal mean that you would then give Wayne Rooney the freedom of the left hand side of the park, that’s a question for Mr. Corluka. Oh could those in the middle please track runners, and Aaron you had Evra on toast yet again, you skinned him got to the byline and crossed the ball and Modric scored, why don’t you do that every time, it’s not rocket science but it is effective.
But the biggest reason everyone should have know Webb was going to give them a spot kick was the presence of Chris Waddle in the 5Live commentary box. He had to say the word at some point during the game. That word that has troubled him since that balmy July night in Turin some 19 years ago.
And after all at Old Trafford he was never going to comment on Spurs being two nil up and getting a “pelanty“.