It's been a strange start to the season, both for me as a ref and at the professionel level. I've spent half the time being gobsmacked that those involved in the game can sink to new lows of bad behaviour and the rest of the time, to be brutally honest, a little bored.
But finally my ire has been piqued enough by the behaviour of Alex Ferguson and Sam Allardyce and the crass reaction of the British media to their incredibly shallow diversionary tactics. Let's look at the facts shall we. Man Utd were outplayed on Saturday by Sunderland, Ferguson chose the wrong team, dropping several top players and Utd were lucky to survive for a draw. For years, Ferguson has adopted the trick of slagging off the referee when his boys play badly because he realises how easily the media can be manipulated. And what happened? Were Ferguson's tactics called into question and the quality of his team doubted? Of course not. Instead we're buried in ridiculous stories of Alan Wiley being unfit and (again) not adding pn enough time. I'm not sure who has been more useless; Man Utd or our beloved sports press. Ands Allardyce is up to the same tricks. His defence ships six goals at Arsenal and interviewers stare goggle-eyed as he shamelessly berates the ref for not giving a penalty that would - of course - have transformed his defenders from Under-12 players into premiership pros.
My season so far has been very peaceful - apart from one nasty match a little while ago that saw me send off two and wave the yellow card with gay abandon. More later on that one.
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