Sometimes I wonder why I bloody bother. Is
there any point in getting out of bed while it's still dark, slogging your way across
country and paying out your hard-earned to watch 22 highly-skilled professionals engage in
earnest combat for league points, only for some amateur prat in black to determine what
happens? Before the title, before the score, before anything else on this page, in the
biggest possible letters, should be written the name of Alan Kaye of Wakefield. He was the
referee, and this was his game.
I try hard not to overdo the referee-bashing, as it can become a bit
tedious, and has in the past too readily been used to prevent discussion of other
failings. Most referees are bad, and some are biased, and no one seems prepared to do much
about it. For as long as I can recall, I've advocated professionalism, including fitness
training, case studies and more contact with players, as a means of removing the absurdity
of having an ever faster, ever higher stakes, professional game at the mercy of
under-equipped amateurs.
Whether such a change would weed out officialdom's true mavericks, such as
Kaye, is open to debate. Every so often a truly shitty referee comes along - one thinks of
the Bristol Rovers match last season - and then we can only hope that they come in games
that we don't need to win. That, at least is a consolation. Because of our hard work and
achievement earlier in the season, we can afford to lose games. It's never nice to lose,
of course, but it would be a lot less pleasant if we had 32 points. The other silver
lining is that some of our play was brilliant.
I've never had a lot of sympathy for the 'brilliant football at all costs'
school of thought. I'm not one to emerge from a defeat saying, 'yes, but we played really
well'. But, we did. Particularly in the second half, at times we were breathtaking. The
score doesn't tell the story, and if I were to say this was such a one-sided defeat,
chances are most people would get the wrong end of the stick. We dominated the second
half, were the better side in the first, and deserved three more points than we got.
That we didn't was mostly due to the referee and his henchmen. I came out
of this game feeling angry, indeed furious, but also exhilarated. I found in our
performance, particularly in the second half, a kind of affirmation. We have brilliant,
fast, smart, skilful attacking players, and when we want to, we can play. Can't we play
like this every week? We'd get the remaining points we need to stop up, and it would be
good practice, as this is how most sides that go up play.
Onto the match, and the first thing that struck me when the team ran out
was what a potentially attacking line up it was. In the absence of the suspended Cox (cue
lots of 'Cox out' gags), our ten outfield players included only two dedicated defenders.
With Branch, Smith, Weller and Little wide, and Mullin and Moore up front, this looked
like a side with pace and ability. And then Crewe scored. It was a soft goal. Paul Cook
made a mess of his attempt to clear from a run into the box, and the rebound left
Michopoulos exposed. So what if their attacker clearly handled the ball? Why would the
referee be interested in that? We can only be thankful that one of our lot hadn't handled
it. I think we can guess what the outcome would have been.
To our credit, we put our ropy opening behind us and quickly got back into
our game. When the equaliser came it was deserved, if the manner of it was fortunate.
Branch ran and then let off a shot. Unleashed would be the wrong word. It was low, slow
and disappointing, and it shouldn't have troubled a goalkeeper, but Bankole, a dodgy sort
of cove, obligingly decided not to try to stop it. Result: another goal from the Di
Branchio scoring machine (hey, they all count) and game, very definitely on. After a shaky
start, Burnley would now go on to assert their superiority. A point, possibly three,
looked eminently possible.
So we thought, but the men in black begged to differ. Looking back, this
Branch goal was the only one that the officials didn't actually play a starring part in.
In some ways, it was the only real goal of the game. From then on, we were through the
looking glass.
The player who dived for their first penalty later confessed that no one
was anywhere near him. Just a thought, but why not stay on your feet in such a situation?
But can we really blame players for diving? Aren't the referees who reward diving the
stupid ones? After all, if they didn't buy it, players wouldn't do it. As it happens, the
referee didn't see a penalty. He was happily playing on, until the linesman drew the
mythical incident to his attention. Penalties are quite important, as they often win
games. If you're not sure it's a penalty, this should mean that you don't give them. The
benefit of doubt, if there is any doubt, has to go with the defending side. This referee
was the opposite. His credo seemed to be, if in doubt, give a penalty. As we all know,
Michopoulos, for all his other strengths, doesn't save penalties, so 2-1 it was. There
can't be many sides who go behind to a penalty that even the referee didn't think was a
penalty.
We were busy making our feelings known when the referee decided to take
the piss. I think we were shouting something along the lines of 'why don't you give a
penalty for that one too?' when we realised he had. This was, as it happens, less
controversial. There was contact from Cook to end their man's run into the box, although
it didn't look particularly bad to me. Probably a penalty in retrospect, and certainly
more than most of the other penalties in this game. In, for the most undeserved half time
score in this and many seasons.
Details of the match escape me at this point, as I was in full ranting and
raving mode. I suspected the hand of some dark conspiracy in this. What are MI5 and the
CIA up to these days, anyway? Were the league prepared to stand by and watch everyone's
favourite heartwarming homegrown story, and the media's favourite manager, slide again
into the depths? I really wanted to like Crewe, especially after the pub that sold Titanic
beers and laid on transport to the ground. I even tried hard to overlook the fact the
small, inadequate stand in which we were housed was more expensive than the much bigger,
much newer home stand that faced us. But I saw a spook in every corner. I felt this was
crooked; I felt this was fixed.
As it happened, the referee tried to drop some bollocks for our side in
the second half. They so often do. Truly bad referees try to even up their mistakes - by
being bad for both sides. Call me overly simplistic, but wouldn't it be easier just to run
the game well so that both sides can play and the best one win?
Perhaps we wouldn't need his help. We tore into them. It was utterly one
sided. It became a question of whether we could stick our chances away, and whether they
could hang on. Little, Moore and Weller got forward at every chance, and Steve Davis spent
much of his time in midfield. Interestingly, at the home of a side revered by the media
for playing holy grail football, all the good stuff, all the passing, moving and
dribbling, came from us. They were reduced to hanging back en masse and occasionally
lumping the thing forward. Their pitch, as well, didn't look exactly the sort a
pro-football side would want to maintain.
But lots of runs didn't produce enough crosses, and more to the point,
enough attempts on goal. As if by way of acknowledgement, the referee gave us a gift.
Little's run towards the box was illegally stopped - before he got into the box. The
result, in this strangest of all possible worlds, was, naturally a penalty. Mullin
politely refused this gift. It was odd that Mullin, having a fitful match in a position to
which he isn’t suited, took the penalty. I didn't know he took them. Perhaps he
doesn't. His kick was tame, too close to the keeper, and saved.
Kaye was not to be put off by this. Perhaps he just likes that particular
end. All of two minutes later, we were given a further opportunity to practice the art of
spot kicking. To pretend reasonableness for a moment, this was the clearest cut penalty of
the day. Mullin, doubtless determined to make amends, raced goalwards and the keeper ran
out and took his feet. Clear penalty, at last. As I understand it, referees don't have
much leeway here. If it's a penalty and a professional foul (and if the keeper isn't
considered to be the last line of defence, I'd like to know why), then it's a red card. If
it's not a sending off offence, in those circumstances, it's not an offence. The one thing
you can't do is give a penalty and a yellow card. No prizes for guessing what the ref did.
At least Cook got this one right. The fightback was now well and truly on.
And bloody hell, we gave it a go. I've always suspected that these players are at their
best when attacking, even when trying to accept the necessity of Ternent's survivalist
defensive approach, and this performance confirmed it.
Unfortunately, I've felt all season that we need a strong and aggressive
goalscorer to lead the attack. Sort of like an Andy Cooke, but with the skill to play at
this level. Without it, we lack a finish. Moore is starting to get slagged for costing a
million and hardly scoring, although of course it isn't his fault what he cost, and
anyway, a million isn't much these days. He's never been an out and out scorer, being more
the kind of player who plays off a front man, and while his overall contribution has been
good, it's clear what he, and we, need. Ternent knows this too. I'm convinced that, when
we let Cooke, Gray and Lee go and signed Moore, we thought we were signing two strikers,
and we thought the other one would be Adebola. I think that would have been a pretty good
partnership, with Payton on the bench, but Adebola turned out to be the only player on the
transfer list who money can't buy, and it wasn't to be. This game proved that this is what
we still miss. In the absence of a finisher, too often there wasn't a target to play the
ball too. Great runs, superb moves, fizzled out for the absence of anyone to find in the
box. We had a string of corners, but didn't make the most of them. With the Crewe
goalkeeper looking so vulnerable, we really needed to test him more. Moore had, I thought,
a brilliant game - one turn that saw him spin between and away from two players in front
of us was amazing - except that he didn't get shots in. Ironically, while I've accused him
of diving in the past, he kept his feet at crucial moments here. For once, he might have
got something for diving.
We stepped up another gear when Maylett came on for Smith. He's always
been fast, but he seems to be developing his skills. He took them on. The problem was
that, with Branch, Weller, Maylett and Little on the field, we had a surfeit of wide
players. Not many goals between them. We needed to get Payton on sooner, really, although
you can't say how knackered he'd have been after two nights hanging around a maternity
ward. Teen reserve sensation Shandran even got a debut, oddly at the expense of Moore. He
tried hard, but this is not a football comic, so he didn't score.
Committing ever increasing numbers forward, we would always be vulnerable
to the counter, but what can we do? They broke, failed to beat the offside trap, were
through, and scored. Of course, being miles offside usually means the goal isn't given,
but why be surprised by anything now? It was always likely that the game would be sealed
by a further shocking act from the bastards in black, and so it proved. We should only be
grateful that there wasn't anything he could give a penalty for, really. Oh sorry, wrong
end.
Yeah, I know the linesman didn't give offside, but that just means the
linesmen were as crap as the ref. What a team. Ultimately, the referee has responsibility
for running his game, and doesn't have to do what his linesmen tell him to. Unless he's a
chronically weak individual, of course.
It has to be said Crewe stewards are more tolerant than most. This
clinching display of crap officiating, accompanied by a crowd taunting celebration by
their penalty taker S Smith, provoked a surge to the front. (Okay, it wasn't that far away
from the back.) I was free to let rip my spleen as they looked benignly on. At somewhere
like Fulham, I'd probably have been hung, drawn and quartered.
That was the end of the game. I was pleased that, at the final whistle, we
applauded our lads. I was really, really proud of them. This had been a better away
performance than games we've won.
You could say that we went out because we didn't take our penalties as
well as they did theirs. Apart from the obvious reflection - what a way to determine the
outcome of a professional league match - we will, of course, never know if Kaye would have
given us a second penalty if we'd scored the first. He was that kind of referee. And that
kind of referee deserves no place in the game. He deserves to be sent back to his day job,
in disgrace. Naming, shaming, and sacking is what we need here. Have you ever seen a game
with four penalties in it? It wasn't a dirty match! And if you ever read in your paper
that there had been four penalties in a game, wouldn't you think that the referee had
blown it? There should be no place in the game for incompetents like the referee, and his
linesmen. We all deserve better.
We were given a mountain to climb that wasn't even a molehill before the
ref stepped in, and we nearly managed it anyway. So don't be downhearted. Just hope that
we play like this again, at a time when the man in black's a less obvious tosser.
The
referee's a wanker