I'm pretty sure that's utter ******** as he was happy to pose for a photo with my friend's son after a game this season.
KEITH HACKETT @HACKETTREF Ref Chris Kavanagh delivered a poor closing season performance at Watford. Miles away from play when he decided to red card the Watford player who should win an appeal. Chris more speed training required in the close season. Stand still you regress. The way the referee allowed himself to get conned twice by Antonio was dreadful. Clearly Antonio is a cheat and is like a typical forward player in the Premier League. Goes down like he's shot with the merest touch. I saw Zaha ride a really strong challenge for Palace yesterday, while running to set up their fifth goal. The reason he didn't go down was because he was well outside the penalty area. Inside the area he goes down every time. I cannot stand this type of cheating. Look at the way Antonio goes down after Kiko falls into him for the penatly. It's just ridiculous for the referee to have been mugged off like that. West Ham players were doing this all game long, in the end, much too late, I think the ref twigged what was going on, and stopped giving free kicks for their diving...…..but the damage was already done by then. Before yesterday, I though Kavanagh was a decent young official, but he's too raw and na*ve for the Premier League.
Just watched the coverage from Sky. Their highlights package is very good. Showed all Watford's good attacks as well. Looking at the first two goals, they were so avoidable. The first one, Noble plays a simple one-two with Antonio and is left with a run at our goal. Capoue is overtaken by Noble, but instead of chasing his run, he just ambles back allowing Noble to be unchallenged. He still has to beat Kabasele, but does this with ridiculous ease. Kabs cannot allow that to happen, it was very poor play from him, but had Capoue chased back with urgency I'm sure he could have made a challenge on Noble as he moved the ball past Kabasele. It's little things like that which is the difference from stopping a goal or conceding a soft one. The second goal is similar in terms of lack of effort on our part. The ease in which Antonio skips past Cathcart's token effort was really poor. I was such a weak challenge from him. The way the defence and especially Kabasele just stood frozen to the spot, ball watching, as it cannoned off the bar, again was just dreadful. We dominated the first half, yet poor finishing and weak defending reversed the natural score line on the balance of play. We pulled a goal back through a West Ham mistake, then that woeful red card decision goes against us through Antonio cheating. At the other end Deulofeu pushes the ball past Zabaleta and accelerates past him with ease. Zabaleta tries to foul GD, but he's honest and stays on his feet and with only the keeper to beat, inexplicably passes to a marked Watford player and the ball is cleared. Had Deulofeu gone down under the West Ham challenge, then the referee would have had to send off Zabaleta, so honesty does not pay when it comes to football. Shortly after this, Zabaleta gives the ball away cheaply in is own penalty area to Doucoure who finds Gray. Gray take his customary heavy touch, but is fouled by Masuaku. This was heavy contact on Gray which took him down. Blatant penalty not given, and Watford's hard luck story continues. West Ham were just picking Watford off on the counter attack in the end. a long ball forward catches Watford's high line out every time. Arnautovic is denied by a brilliant Cathcart tackle, but the next attack see Anderson hit the post after a great save by Foster, but again Kabasele is slow to react and Arnautovic is first to the ball to shoot home. Then the ever so generous Kavanaugh awards West Ham the softest of penalties for a clear Antonio dive and the game of woe is complete. Basically the defence were pathetic, forwards were indecisive and West Ham mugged us of by taking advantage of a weak referee. So Holebas gets a ban for Antonio's cheating, but there is no retrospective ban for David Silva after this Kung Fu kick. The game is broken. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...tml?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490
After the final whistle yesterday, my immediate thoughts took me back to the At Your Place event, when Deeney got overly-shirty and aggressive with the fan who questioned if the squad would collapse down the back stretch again....
They are professional footballers paid a fortune to give their best efforts every week. They aren’t paid to start shirking games in favour of a bigger one to come. I’m happy with the season overall but some of the performances since the S/F are just not to standard and the players need to look at themselves. I have no doubt that some of them have gone down to 1st and 2nd gear since that day. Yet they’ve still been picked....
Personally, I think after Janmaat's performance against Arsenal, he should have been played a lot more recently. I do like Kiko, but he's not a natural defender. Janmaat was fantastic against Arsenal, and even though I think he may be off in the summer, he's still a Watford player now. I would certainly start him in the final, but I suspect Gracia will stick with Kiko. Capoue looked like he was in third gear yesterday. He was really off the pace and lethargic. Cathcart under performed, but did make one brilliant last ditch tackle. Kabasele was just dreadful. Deeney was poor yesterday, and seemed to me trying to stay out of trouble during the game. Maybe there were one or hiding out there yesterday, wanting to avoid an injury or red card, but I would seriously consider making a lot of changes because of our recent run, and no one that played yesterday could have any complaints about being dropped.
Although he’s not great, Britos is comfortably better than both. How he is frozen out in favour of those 2 players makes me wonder, that for all Gracia’s good work, if he knows what makes a decent CB.
Britos' showings have generally been against weaker opposition, but I do agree that when we're sitting deeper he's a better CB than Mapps or Kabs.
Surely individual errors (plenty of them), soft defending at the wrong time (plenty of it) and a failure to take chance (again, plenty) all adds up to being quite **** recently?
Since coming up to the PL, our best pairing was Cathcart and Britos. While it’s not what we want going forward, given the current CB’s we have, I think it’s crazy that partnership hasn’t been used more. The thought of City’s attackers against Kabs or Mapps fills me with dread and will hamstring us from the first whistle.
Yeah but as HB1 said I thought it had been discussed before on here. I’m surprised no one has noticed that he comes out on to the pitch without a mascot and it’s left for (usually) Mariappa or Cathcart to take Holebas’ mascot out as well as their own. I’ll admit I only found out about him ‘moving aside’ a young kid wanting his shirt signed when I was out with club staff after Chelsea. Apparently not for the first time either. He won’t be missed when he’s gone by a lot of staff there
So just another 3 points lost due to crap refereeing. Not to mention another game ruined for about 16000 people who had paid their money. Well done FA.
Yep and the loss in revenue as the result affected our final league position. Round of applause for Kavanaugh and his cohorts all round. Oh yeah and the amount of time he allowed West Ham to indulge in their goal celebrations, even on one occasion joking around with them, was ridiculous
Or score the winning own goal. Good to have someone in the side who can cross and take a set play. Might be our best chance of scoring. And you know Holebas will get stuck in....
If they dropped our mascots from the games and all our players played like Jose, then I'm quite prepared to have a bunch of kids bawling their eyes out. I'm quite prepared to have the mascots be a little upset about it too.
They'll be FA hand picked mascot so the kids will be crying anyway if they miss out holding the hands of the Man City players. Said kids probably won't know any of our players!
This has made me like him more. Why the hell would he want to hold the sticky hand of some irritating little ****wit?
Yeah but the debate in the pub afterwards was fantastic. Beers and banter. Who gives a **** about 3 points?
**** ref may or may not of cost us the draw / win , the crapness of the decision was apparent by how quickly it was overturned. We were fairly ineffective in the first half but looked like we had come out with a purpose after 1/2 time. Good things , even with 10 men we looked like we wanted the win and played some nice football, but with 10 men just too exposed at the back. Bad thing, we are not a bad team but just seem to suffer from really poor lapses in concentration that always lead to goals and just not clinical enough in front of goal,(which is odd as we have actually scored a lot of goals if we did something with our chances we would be 60-70 goals a season which is top 6 territory). I’m not sure we will ever get a 15 goal a season striker but do need people like Pereya / Doucoure to be tapping a few more in, that are both quality and more than capable. No idea what will happen next week , probably lose 5:0 but you never know perhaps our luck will be in and we will walk away with the cup. I think it’s good Gomes will be in goal as I think foster needs a rest and must have had enough of his defence letting people walk past them. We go again
In an attempt to provide a factual basis for discussion, I googled 'Holebas macsot'. This came up: It prompts various questions.
Why are you lying about this? Did holebas **** your fat gf or something? Proof that this whopper is lying:
Inconclusive. There's no eye contact and no holding hands. Looks like they've "had words". Capoue is so tired he has fallen asleep on H's shoulder - worrying if true.
