Arsène, I agree with you
Arsène Wenger has reacted furiously to comments by former referee Graham Poll that John Terry’s red card against Everton last night had to be judged against the Ch*vski defender’s status as England captain.
There’s no doubt that Terry’s challenge deserved a red far more than, say Manu Adebayor’s two bookings on Sunday.
Referees should be anonymous, forgettable and incidental to the game rather than trying to take centre stage themselves.
No wonder Wenger is so upset at Poll’s assessment of Terry’s dismissal (see here for a clip)
The suggestion that referees may not book or dismiss players because of their England status is ridiculous folly – and provokes the question of how impartial referees actually are during matches.
Each decision should be made on its merits, not the nationality of the player, whether it’s England’s golden boy Theo Walcott or someone with a record of previous misdemeanours from beyond our shores.
That’s always been the suspicion about Poll, who despite his shameful three bookings for a Croatia player at the World Cup in 2006, still thinks he has the authority to tell us how the game should be played.
DA
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Reader Comments (7)
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Graham Poll is a horrible ref and it's sad that he was considered England's best referee at one point in time. It shows the quality of refs in that country. I'll be honest in saying that right now I don't think any English referee is fit to be considered world class and I would cringe to see any of them now officiating a WC 2010 game. Howard Webb is supposedly the best now and his bookings for Adebayor and how Lucas Leiva managed to stay on the pitch past halftime is beyond me. These refs seem to have explicit nepotism for certain clubs, maybe they support the club and that's fine if they do but it should never interfere with their ability to be objective and fair.
Graham Poll is one of the worst referee's i have ever seen!!!...
Thank u , Graham Poll for confirming my suspicion about why the English player always get special tread by the PL referrers. Al lease u has been honest.
regardless of those three bookings and regardless of the shit he often says, the fact remains that he has ALWAYS been a useless ref. he's just a waste of space and i have no time for him even before he says such stupid comments.
It has become much more than an incident I think. Watching MoTD every chance I got I noticed a plethora of decisions becoming biased by the only persons on the field that should be objective.
Sure mistakes will be made as it is still a human in split second arbitraries. Imagine a court judge assessing a case within nano time.
But in retrospect after the game you may expect some intelligence of the person who controlled the events over 90+ minutes. This slip of the tongue has finally revealed what one of the worst refs in the EPL considers weight in order to find the balance in his decisions.
Now that this is out I think the FA should take firm actions and introduce a penalty system for refs who have done more than a fair bit of slip-ups. I am thinking 3 strikes and you’re out for a month, doing championship matches and a rereading of the ref manual.
By the way:
Merry Christmas to all GOONERS!!
Boxing day is always one of the highlights in my year. Hope we show Villa the back of our heads.
Arsenal; my pride and glory.