Agreed! He is a very odd man. I can forgive an ex pro being a little rotund,or making daft comments,making a twit of himself or being rude. However for a man with little pedigree,either as a player or manager (I know he has achieved two promotions with Rotherham)* to be all of the above, he has no credibility in my eyes. * I don't remember him as a player but happy to be corrected. As Peter Lorre says in 'The Maltese Falcon' 'You fat fool!'
If we do somehow get to the semis, there will be nothing too scary for us to face, although Chelsea are looking better and better each week and are now probably favourites. Man Utd are often awful , Everton can be brilliant but very beatable, West Ham are good now Payet is back but nothing to be scared of, Palace are yeah whatever, Chelsea we ve drawn twice with and have come reasonably close to beating. Dont think we ll beat Arsenal at the Emirates because QSF will probably set us up as a 4 6 0, but weirdly enough I feel Hull are more likely to beat them than us. Away to Hull and I fancy us, obviously.
Watching the contentious issues in replay on MOTD I can't see that Oliver got much wrong with any of them. Capoue's penalty claim was soft and he made such a meal of it, he effectively ruled out any chance of it being given. Neither of the handball shouts looked like penalties. It may have been soft. But Deeney steamed into the back of the covering defender for the disallowed goal. We'd have fumed if the goal had been given against us despite a foul on our defender. I don't think we were hard done by.
Deeney didn't steam into the back of the defender at all, contact was minor and had no bearing on the outcome. If Leeds had scored that goal, I wouldn't have had the slightest problem with it, any more than I did when Beattie put Robbo and the ball into the net at Villa Park: it's a contact sport and Oliver is a pedantic, self regarding pil1ock
There are always posters that will argue the alternative view. Some will say the decision Oliver made when knockaert dived was also the correct call. It's written to create a reaction. If you take each incident in isolation you can make a case (however ridiculous) to back every decision he made. He could have even disallowed the own goal and awarded a penalty, kept having it retaken until it was saved or missed, and some will still have backed his decisions. Even UEA thought the disallowed goal should have stood......so Moog has matched and raised him. It's what makes the forum.
You could also claim he only indicated advantage straight after the own goal to appease Deeney and safe in the knowledge he would not actually have to give the penalty ... :]]
Question for you.......who would you rather have officiating our next "big" match? Michael Oliver, Lee Probert, Anthony Taylor or Robert Madley?
Wasn't on the list, but he's another one. Happily he's hung up his whistle now. The point I'm making is that there are some truly awful referees out there who regularly give us a hard time. Robert Madley has always been excellent for us and whenever he's officiating one of our games I know we are likely to get the more favourable decisions.....unlike his brother Andy, who is probably the worst of the lot. Whether there is something more behind this or just coincidence, who knows.......but it usually pans out that way.
Evans comments are ridiculous, how can he think that parking the bus and not attacking makes his team look premiership class! Embarrassing
I'm not sure why you seem so keen to defend the guy. Even if those decisions were not so bad by themselves, the fact that he made so many fussy and overly officious ones in one game in Leeds' favour suggests more than a hint of bias towards a big club he clearly didn't want to see humiliated by "little" Watford (either that, or he has it in for us for reasons best known to himself if previous Watford games he's officiated are anything to go by). And let's not forget the ridiculous five minutes of second half injury time, not to mention him allowing Leeds to finish an attacking attempt long after those minutes were up (credit to us for stopping them in their tracks with the offside tactic that has proved so effective this season). And as for "fuming" if the goal had been given against us, I doubt more than a fraction of us would have even noticed the supposed foul as it all happened so quickly; plus I'm not sure why people criticise Capoue for making a meal of the penalty claim - it seemed to me like a pretty acceptable fall after he was tripped and initially struggled to regain control on a slippery surface, it was hardly a dive of outrageous Rivaldo-esque proportions. I don't know what you mean by "Even UEA" - isn't he a ref (or used to be), so in fairness he ought to know more about the rules of the game in progress than most of us here?
Moog isn't the only one. I don't think Oliver did much wrong. I watched the game without knowing it was the knockeart referee and therefore didn't pre-judge as you have done. The only thing you have is that there were a number of calls that all went against us, the fact that none of these calls are blatant mistakes mean jack to you and your usual tirade of conspiracy about the ref. Deeney would have got away with it - if he'd not put his hands on the back of the defender, I learnt aged 10 to not put my hands on the opposition. One handball was possibly hand, but one of those ones where it's ball to hand and sometimes given, more often not. The other "handball" was a chest. Capoue's fall was a clipped foot, I think this was wrong and should have been a penalty, but there's plenty of sources saying Capoue fell over in stages so I can't berate the ref for it.
If you give refs a decision to be made that's hard to call then half the people in the stadium will disagree with him. Like Pete said above, don't put your hands on the oppo defender and the chances are the goal would have stood. Likewise that notorious game against Leicester, had Briggs not completely switched off, (again), then the run into the box wouldn't have been made by Knocktart. However, the standard of reffing in the Prem is still 500 times better than the Championship standard which was a shocker.
I'm really surprised to read this, as I didnt come away from the game with anything like this impression. Funny how people see things differently. He's still a **** though (oliver, not you)
Oliver could Learn a lot from Keith Stroud. Now that is one brilliant ref, seriously. Clatenburgs not bad either, but Oliver is appalling
I don't think anyone wants him to get it wrong forever.....quite the opposite. Personally I would like to see him officiate fairly and consistently. I firmly believe Michael Oliver is one of those that deliberately looks for incidents where ha can be controversial so he can get noticed and make a name for himself.
Well done, putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 6. No, if he deems the Knockaert challenge as a penalty, then by his standards the challenge on Capoue should be a penalty as well as there was contact - even the commentators on my stream thought it was a penalty. It's about consistency, he was giving free kicks for minimal contact in other areas of the pitch. I know anything positive in Watford's favour causes you pain because you can't play the 'I was right' card but on this I disagree with you.
There is a case to say that the defender effectively blocked Deeney's run illegally, so the subsequent push by Deeney was actually caused by the defender's initial foul play...would have been an interesting place to give an indirect free kick! He really should not have ignored the initial offence to give the second one. I also thought that before Deeney fouled the defender for the other disallowed goal, he had been subjected to 2 equally (if not more) illegal challenges, 1 of which was in the box...again he ignored the initial offences to penalise Deeney. Maybe Troy made it too obvious he doubted he was going to give the penalty before the own goal... 5 mins added time looked OK to me with 6 subs & the injury to their defender.
Perhaps he has seen the other occasions this season where Capoue has needlessly dived (in installments like he did again Saturday) and thought hmmmm, not too sure about this. best air on the side of caution. The standard of refereeing has been excellent this season compared to the last few seasons in the Premier League and us in the Championship. People need to face up to the fact that referees will make mistakes and sometimes they go for us, sometimes against. I wouldn't have though Deeney would have got a penalty against Palace a week ago, but we did and it helped us get 3 points, that was relatively similar in physical contact to Deeney's so called foul this week.
Just as we survived one buffoon, we get another on Saturday. Anthony Taylor is refereeing our match against Bournemouth.
I enjoy HB1's posts and respect his opinion on almost every topic. But his blinkered, obsessive view on ref's & Watford games is tedious and slightly embarrassing IMO. There is no conspiracy theory, sometimes people make mistakes...
Well Bournemouth seem to think all the refs are against them and favour anyone else so something has to give.
5 mins was easily reached when you think about it. 6 subs at 30 seconds a pop is 3 minutes and that Leeds defender was down prone in front of the Rookery for at least 90 seconds and had the physio on. 30 seconds for remaining stoppages and a goal celebration and bingo, you're at 5 minutes. As for Leeds finishing their attack - aside from the fact it's 'a minimum of X minutes added on' there was also the interlude where the ball got stuck between two sets of ad hoardings and wasn't retrieved for ages in injury time. Oliver was just asking for a new ball from the bench when it reappeared. That took best part of a minute I bet. So all in all nothing to see there.
I must admit they are massively down on their penalty count this season. I think they've only had six so far.....mind you that will go up once Wilson is fit.
Durham in fairness to him on talk sport this evening put the ref in his 'heads gone' section for both the penalty and disallowed goal
Amazing to hear. Reading the last few pages on here I got the impression the referee had an excellent game. Good job Durham doesn't write on this forum.
I've only ever seen this guy's name mentioned in outrage at how much of a buffoon he is. Now he's the expert witness for the referee witch hunters?
