Any self-respecting football fan groans at Sky's attempts to artificially create a league-within-a-league, and yesterday's coverage was hard to stomach. Liverpool were out of the title race a long time ago, and have a slim 2 point cushion for the fourth Champions League place. And yet we're led to believe that Sunday was all about the title.
It's hard to criticise Sky too much since they are the single-seller of extended Everton highlights, and
I therefore willingly subscribe to their services. It's easier to criticise the BBC, since they offer scant coverage of Everton, yet still charge me for their services (and threaten to jail me if I don't pay). But I'm used to Sky and the BBC providing a mouthpiece for their Liverpool supporting "professional analysts", and generally getting carried away by the whole "Premiership" branding. I've just been perusing today's papers though, and hadn't realised how rife, and widespread, that sentiment is.
Consider the actual events from yesterday. Liverpool took a battering at Manchester United, losing 3-0. After they were already 1-0 down (and were fortunate Steve Bennett didn't give a penalty and send off Carragher after he fouled Rooney when clean through), Maschereno received a second yellow card for dissent. According to the laws of the game:
A player who is guilty of dissent by protesting (verbally or non-verbally) against a referee’s decision must be cautioned.
As far as i'm aware, no-one is genuinely under the impression that Bennett made a wrong decision. This wasn't a one man vendetta that over-applied the laws of the game to the understandable bemusement of the player in question - that happened to Everton last season, and I don't remember the press making a big deal about it. Yet this morning the BBC, SKY, and the smattering of newspapers I've flicked through, lead with it.
The real stories in the Premier League at the moment are: (i) relegation battle; (ii) title battle (between Man United, Arsenal and Chelsea); (iii) the race for fourth (between Everton and Liverpool), and it's by artificially creating "Grand Slam Sunday" and pretending that Liverpool are involved in (ii) rather than (iii), that we gloss over one of the most fascinating, intruiging battles in recent times. Shed in that light, this mornings press might have put more attention on an actual refereering mistake which saw Yakubu's second against West Ham wrongly disallowed. And that might have jogged a few memories to Andy Johnson's winner against Blackburn - again, wrongly disallowed. It might even prompt someone to wonder why Everton haven't been awarded a penalty in the Premier League all season.
The mainstream media are systematically treating the so-called "Big Four" as being worthy of more time and attention than other teams in the Premier League, and this has the potential to actually influence what happens on the pitch. Even Rafa Benitez is clued up enough to realise that Bennett made the correct decision, it's pretty obvious that his post match comments have one eye firmly on the Derby (and attempting to influence the referee's handling). What annoys me is that the media play along, supporting the view that our Champion's League representatives deserve special treatment. Do I exaggerate? today a Daily Mirror columnist (I can't find it online) made the argument that Steve Bennett shouldn't have ruined such an important match by sending off a player so early. At half time Richard Keys said that the match was ruined for the neutral. In other words, the referee should have shown leniency purely because it was "Grand Slam Sunday".
For those paying attention, a weekend of proper refereeing would see Everton and Liverpool joint fourth going into the Derby. As it stands, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see yet another Derby decided by awful refereeing, swept under the carpet and stored in the great video vault labeled "non Super Sunday". Bitter? Perhaps. But at least I'm not deluded.
I’ve never understood the argument that a referee should ignore the rules in order to make a game a contest; you may as well castigate the team that is 4-0 up at half-time for ruining the match for those neutrals expecting a tight second half.
No, file that rubbish alongside the nonsense about some players needing “protection” from the referee, rather than a referee simply fairly applying the laws of the game whenever he sees any infringements, regardless who the player is.
Posted by: Quinn | March 24, 2008 at 05:09 PM
"A player who is guilty of dissent by protesting (verbally or non-verbally) against a referee’s decision must be cautioned."
I'd love to see dissent eradicated from the game, so I'd have no complaints if this law was actually applied on a consistent basis, and if Mascherano's sending off was the start of this I'd be less annoyed by it. But it won't be, because it was the result of Steve Bennett losing his head, as evidenced by his bizarre booking of Torres in the seconds before. Basically, Liverpool have been punished for what Ashley Cole did, so how you can try to spin all this into evidence of a pro-Liverpool bias I do not know, while making excuses for James McFadden suggests you're some way from consistency on this subject yourself.
As for the derby, I see you're getting your excuses in early! Who knows how it'll turn out, Everton have had an excellent season and we'll be deprived of a certain brilliant Argentinian so anything could happen.
Posted by: Jim | March 26, 2008 at 10:27 PM