The referee's performance last night.

Some terrible decisions last night for me. He started almost straight away when he gave N'hampton a free-kick on the edge of our box when it should have been a free-kick the other way for impeding the GK. A couple of other decisions which called into question whether he understands the game at all - the free kick to them in he second half when their player launched himself in the air into O'Keeffe which should have been a free kick to us. And missing the blatant push on O'Keeffe when he was running forward a few minutes later. Oh and he bought the diving when feeling contact virtually every time.

I thought he was abysmal.

 

Honestly I’m starting to think refs hate us for some reason every game seems to get baffling decisions against us and yet never for us.

 

I was surprised at their manager gobbing off at the ref, he'd given them 16 free kicks in the game...I would have thought they'd want him for every match.

 

While I don't disagree, I didn't come away from watching that match giving any real thought to the ref's performance, which I didn't feel significantly affected the game. We need to look closer to home.

 

We only get **** refs . The standard of referees seems to be getting lower too

 

I too thought obstruction on the keeper for Smith’s handling mistake, though I always think keepers have a tendency to get to close to the edge of the area when releasing the ball.
I also thought it was a push on O’Keefe.
However overall, I thought the ref was ok, nothing special, just ok. Certainly not biased against us.

then came the sending off…..which personally I thought was a yellow, but the simple thing is that MDG shouldn’t have been anywhere near that player to make the challenge.

from then on I was convinced the ref had a bet on the draw.

 

The weight of 16 soft ( in the main) free kicks against you to 5 in your favour does affect the game though in giving them far more possession than they would otherwise have got.

 

Like 90% of the games this season I'm afraid mate. Wigan & Birmingham were the worst for it

 

I think we can be quite thankful he didn't give a penalty at the death when Russell decided to mug their attacker at a corner repeatedly despite being warned.

 

9 minutes injury time and 10 on Saturday when in both cases we were winning by a single goal.

 

It’s not about blaming the ref for results, it’s the sheer mind-blowing decisions they make or don’t make. Some last night as already mentioned we’re almost as laughable as the ‘missed’ handball at Rotherham on Saturday. The 2 incidents already mentioned involving O’Keefe were either pure incompetence or downright cheating. Either way they were poor decisions.

 

Ref, nuf said, made me swear more than once last neight, 'A' ole

 

And, don't forget there are 2 linos at every match, are they not allowed to speak to the ref if they think he's wrong; or is it a case of "I'm in charge and don't you dare question ANY of my decisions" ?

 

One name needed they never forget Willard

 

I don’t think he was biased just incompetent.

 

I too was very worried about the possibility of that outcome. Ridiculous behaviour by Russell.

 

This.

Every club in the country will feel that refs are against them. They aren't. They're just all generally poor.

 

The 9 minutes last night was justified, given the number of injuries in the 2nd half. They had a lad down for nearly 5 minutes early in the half.

I've no idea where the ref got 10 from at the weekend though.

 

just wish we got some of those incompetent decisions for us rather than against us pretty much every game tbh.

if you look at the Phillips tackle from behind first half that didn’t even warrant a free kick despite the defender getting only the player and none of the ball and yet MDG won the ball and got sent off. See Northampton had been instructed to perform all the rolling around dark arts and you can see why they do it as teams that try to play hard and fair get penalised for it.

 

I've no idea how much it pays at our level to be a ref but for me we've got to find a way to get lads in there early 30s who have played the game too decent standard into doing the job. Too many white collar types who are good at the theory side of the game good at box ticking but have no game understanding.