Styles a hero?

[Mowen]

Interesting post in the F365 mailbox that might cause some debate on the state of referees:

 

Rob Styles: A Hero Of Football

What has Andy Gray ever given to football?

 

He's taken plenty. Medals, fame, and plenty of fans' money while a player. Piles more fans' money while a pundit. But what has he given back?

 

Has he ever been a club secretary? A fixtures secretary? A referee? He probably hasn't put a net up in forty years.

 

Compare to Rob Styles. Twenty or so years ago, he spent season after season running across boggy pitches in freezing rain getting sworn at for doing his job. He will have been rewarded with no changing rooms, precious little thanks, and a tenner a game.

 

But he kept coming back. Why? Because he loved the game. Plenty of others claim it: he proved it. He turned up so twenty-two others could have their morning match.

 

And now Andy Gray, a bloated bully, humiliates him in front of millions for making a mistake. Tortures him for making an error on a split-second call. What a disgrace; what an abuse of power. He should be ashamed of himself. He won't be.

 

Football could live happily without Gray and his cohorts: parasites who add nothing but bullying, banality, and cliche. Football would become extinct if referees packed it in.

 

Styles made a mistake, but Gray's comments were massively more damaging. Referees need praise, not persecution from pathetic has-beens like Gray.

 

It seems to be taking it a bit far, but the lack of respect for refs in football at the moment is ridiculous. Needs to be addressed imo.

 

[Dave]

The comments and actions of Keith Hackett over this incident are far more damaging than anything Andy Gray has said.

[madras]

argued about this yesterday.has the standard got worse or  is it just that every game is now covered and analysed so much more ?

[Guest alex]

Raises some good points like. Without officials the game is dead.

[Optimistic Nut]

A bit overboard but I agree with the sentiment.

[Guest gggg]

The F365 mailbox has to be the shittest thing on the internet. What a load of bollocks, He was incompetent in one of the biggest games of the season and should be held accountable for it, whatever someone bitter about Andy Gray says.

 

 

[McCormick]

 

A family member Imo

[Optimistic Nut]

If a footballer misses a simple chance, he normally laughs it off. Never ridicules him as much as he ripped into Styles anyhow. Styles was going to get punished for that decision regardless of whether Gray took the p*ss, so why do it?

[Dave]

It was a rubbish decision. Why can't he call a spade a spade?

[Wullie]

Styles is a card happy arsehole though, regardless of Sunday. He's always been the same, another ref who thinks the crowd come to watch him.

[Slugsy]

Styles is a card happy arsehole though, regardless of Sunday. He's always been the same, another ref who thinks the crowd come to watch him.

 

Totally agree

[Keefaz]

Depends how much Gray's been banging on about it. I haven't heard his comments, but if he's taking the piss out of an official, I don't think it's fair. It's a difficult job and one in which every mistake is analysed to death. Pundits and like the go on like officiating a match is a piece of piss.

[BONTEMPI]

Who gives a shit he only cost the dippers 2 points! About time they had a decision go against them for once! 

[Northern Monkey]

Best thing was Steven "Stevie G La" Gerrard's pathetic response to the whole thing, the hypocritical, twisty-faced cunt.

[NSG]

Best thing was Steven "Stevie G La" Gerrard's pathetic response to the whole thing, the hypocritical, twisty-faced cunt.

 

Aye, what goes around, comes around. In this case, it was within 7 days.

[Northern Monkey]

Best thing was Steven "Stevie G La" Gerrard's pathetic response to the whole thing, the hypocritical, twisty-faced cunt.

 

Aye, what goes around, comes around. In this case, it was within 7 days.

 

Yup. i thought that was class.

 

Clearly Styles hasn't read the rule book about the Red Shite. There'll have ben some very cross faces on the planes back to Ireland and Denmark......

[M4]

Styles' decision WAS a disgrace... there's no two ways to describe it... But putting all the blame on him is ridiculous, especially when you have certain managers like Mourinho saying things like this:

 

'My players? I think I have a naive team… They are naive because they are pure and they are clean. We don't have divers, we don't have violent people, we don't have people with nasty tackles or people diving into the swimming pool. Chelsea are a pure and naive team.'

 

[Guest Brazilianbob]

In the Liverpool v Villa game the dippers got a free kick from which Gerrard scored the winner.  It was blatantly not a foul by the Villa player.  Gerrard simply jumped into the player, claimed a foul and the ref fell for it.

 

Instead of bleating about the Chelsea penalty decision, they should thank their lucky stars refs do get decisions wrong, otherwise they wouldn't have got the winner against Villa.

 

As every fan knows these decisions tend to even out over a season, but the overiding factor involved in these decisions is the fact that on all but a few occasions the players cheat in order to win free/penalty kicks.  They only have themselves to blame when another team cheats better than they do themselves.

[Guest alijmitchell]

As much as it was clearly the wrong decision, and as much as Styles is a card happy wanker, The post on 365 has a point. It is not up to ex professionals to lambast and bully referees on national television, it should be the football authorities dealing with the matter of bad refereeing decisions. It was not long ago that sky sports news ran a series of 15min programmes on the abuse referees recieve in the game, citing players crowding round the referee, managers, and in lower league games, aggressive spectators as major problems. It was for these reasons apparently, that less and less people were willing to become referees. It did strike me that there was very little mention of the combined press and media's role in all this, week after week highlighting referee decisions, telling the nation that they got it horrendously wrong. In this sense the blame culture perpetrated by people such as Andy Gray, Lawrenson, Hansen, Shearer etc. only gives the impression that the referee should always get the decision right, when clearly they are only human.

[Dokko]

The reaction because it was Liverpool is unreal.

 

Yet again just shows the biased towards the bigger teams and the bigger games.

 

It was a terrible mistake, but his positioning i think most would of bought it, not his fault. Do something about diving not the refs being fooled. Gray should of thrown his toys at Malouda for simulation or whatever you want to call it, not Styles for getting it wrong.

 

However he deserved a bollocking for the branding of a card in players face who he wasn't booking, this reason alone is why the FA have demoted him for the weekends games, but they can use the pen as the excuse for doing so without delving into another Poll fiasco.

 

 

[Mowen]

It was a rubbish decision. Why can't he call a spade a spade?

 

What about Tevez's miss against City at the death? That was a mistake that shouldn't have been made and changed the outcome of the game, but he won't get anything like as much stick for it.

 

I'm not against criticising referee's when they make a mistake, but the extent to which it happens is stupid imo. It amazes me that people criticise referees for wanting to be famous: they're going to be the main talking point after many a match. It's a job that makes you famous, and that's fuelled by the people who supposedly don't want these 'attention-seeking' referees.

 

Something needs to be done about the respect shown to referees in football, and it needs to be done soon.

[Mowen]

The reaction because it was Liverpool is unreal.

 

Yet again just shows the biased towards the bigger teams and the bigger games.

 

It was a terrible mistake, but his positioning i think most would of bought it, not his fault. Do something about diving not the refs being fooled. Gray should of thrown his toys at Malouda for simulation or whatever you want to call it, not Styles for getting it wrong.

 

However he deserved a bollocking for the branding of a card in players face who he wasn't booking, this reason alone is why the FA have demoted him for the weekends games, but they can use the pen as the excuse for doing so without delving into another Poll fiasco.

 

 

 

A superb point in the middle paragraph. Referee's shouldn't get the blame for being conned by cheats, it's fucking hard to spot the difference between a dive and a clip at high speed from ground level.

[Robster]

In the Liverpool v Villa game the dippers got a free kick from which Gerrard scored the winner.  It was blatantly not a foul by the Villa player.  Gerrard simply jumped into the player, claimed a foul and the ref fell for it.

 

Instead of bleating about the Chelsea penalty decision, they should thank their lucky stars refs do get decisions wrong, otherwise they wouldn't have got the winner against Villa.

 

As every fan knows these decisions tend to even out over a season, but the overiding factor involved in these decisions is the fact that on all but a few occasions the players cheat in order to win free/penalty kicks.  They only have themselves to blame when another team cheats better than they do themselves.

 

Great point. Its always someone elses fault as far as the players are concerned

[Guest gggg]

Has anybody here actually seen the incident? Nobody dived, Malouda jumped forward stopping Finnan getting to the ball.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

It was a rubbish decision. Why can't he call a spade a spade?

 

What about Tevez's miss against City at the death? That was a mistake that shouldn't have been made and changed the outcome of the game, but he won't get anything like as much stick for it.

 

I'm not against criticising referee's when they make a mistake, but the extent to which it happens is stupid imo. It amazes me that people criticise referees for wanting to be famous: they're going to be the main talking point after many a match. It's a job that makes you famous, and that's fuelled by the people who supposedly don't want these 'attention-seeking' referees.

 

Something needs to be done about the respect shown to referees in football, and it needs to be done soon.

 

Completely agree, the refs are entitled to make mistakes as much as any player or manager. Will Tevez be dropped because of the sitter he missed? Clearly not, and I don't think Styles should be either.

 

Refs could help themselves by applying the dissent laws more thoroughly though, but for that they would need the support of the authorities.