No Gray Areas - Stoke ref bottled decision

It seems like a lifetime away that two refereeing decisions made within the space of a couple of hours got the whole of the English footballing world talking but I think it's a case of "better late than never" so here are my views on them...

First and foremost, Gary Neville should have been sent off. My colleagues on commentary thought so, every fan at the ground thought so, heck even Sir Alex Ferguson agreed, which is why he substituted him at half time. In an interview, when asked about it Neville considered himself "unlucky" to have been booked for his first offence, in the process pretty much declining to comment on the second incident and I think that tells you everything you need to know!

The referee bottled it, pure and simple. If that offence had been made by a Stoke player at Old Trafford, he would have walked. So why was it any different simply because the roles were reversed?

If the Neville incident was clear cut, then so was the one involving Dedryck Boyata, the only difference being that the referee got that one right. I was doing the commentary for the match and said straight away that I thought the lad was in trouble. Marouane Chamakh was through on goal, he was brought down by the last defender when he had a clear goalscoring chance and the referee was left with no option. That's what the laws of the game say.

A recent trend has been to suggest that when a professional foul is committed inside the box when a player is through on goal, this should lead to just a yellow card, the rationale being that the award of a penalty is punishment enough. I'm not so sure about that. Penalties are saved all the time and when that happens, the defender who has prevented the goal, whether the foul was cynical or just clumsy, has essentially "got away with one".

Players grow up knowing the laws of the game back to front. They're hammered into them by coaches, technical staff, even professional referees hired by the club to run workshops. And when there's a change to the laws, it's the responsibility of each and every player to be up to speed with what the changes are, whether that process is initiated by the club or whether they make the effort to read up on it themselves. There's no excuse.

Some of this may sound like I'm advocating card-happy referees. I'm not. Red cards spoil games, a perfect example of which was the Boyata sending-off in what had all the makings of being a cracking match. But cynical fouling and the illegal preventing of a goal is just as detrimental to the spectacle as a team losing one of their players. It's up to the referees to make these calls and for what it's worth I think they get most of these sorts of decisions right, But don't try telling that to Tony Pulis!

Andy Gray is now on Twitter so follow him for his exclusive tips and his take on the biggest stories in football each week.

Published: 1 Nov 2010

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