sick of teams hacking us down,after we get past them, pretending to be injured to break up play, when we getting on top, going to furthest part of the pitch knowing their getting subbed so it takes an age to get off, pulling and pushing our players at set pieces and corners,not getting back 10 yards in wall, refs give us nothing, we have had 1 penalty all season and winnall missed it ,it is getting beyond a joke our lads just seem to get on with the game ,think we are too honest for our own good
They do come across as a team of 'polite young men'. I hate cheating, but it is sadly a part of the modern game. There was a moment yesterday when Ryan Kent was skipping over a tackle just inside the box, and despite hating cheating, I was thinking 'just drag your heel and go down lad'. But we don't cheat or play act or get in the ref's face very much. Makes me proud of our boys, but does it cost us decisions?
yes I was thinking same, if he goes down here its a stonewaller, but no he tried to stay up and shoot.good on the fair play, but bad on no reward of a goal
Personally, I believe that this is just the result of the attempt to standardise refereeing interpretation. If referees are told to only give free kicks if a player goes down, and it becomes obvious to coaches that it is the interpretation, then coaches will tell players to go down. Whether the coach means cheat is open to doubt, but the fact that players do cheat is not. There seems to be no calculation by the referee any longer about the amount of force used. Thus the merest touch on a shoulder results in a foul if the player goes down. The problem for referees is this, they have to make decisions in a moment and that is hard enough. If they hard to frame their decision in an opinion, "was the player cheating or not", it is much harder. They know the assessor will mark them on how they interpret the law, rather than whether they spotted cheating, so they tend to err on the side of the law. Which is all well and good, but minor cheating is now so common that it breaks up and spoils games. It has come about through the best of intentions, but because players play on the edge, and they look for the tiniest edge, they seek to take any advantage they can. I do not know what they can do about it, but what I know is that it does spoil my enjoyment of the sport.
One of the reasons i miss Conor. Great player and knew that we got played by the ref regular. He was a good skipper in that sense.