What you missed while the U.S. men’s curling team was losing all of their round robin matches…
- Your Champions League roundup: Bayern Munich 2-1 Fiorentina, FC Porto 2-1 Arsenal.
- Your Premier League roundup: Wigan 0-0 Bolton.
- Arsene Wenger took full responsibility for Arsenal’s loss blamed referee Martin Hannson for gifting free kicks to Porto; Sol Campbell agrees with Wenger.
- Meanwhile, Tom Henning Øvrebø is back in the news after a series of controversial refereeing decisions in the Bayern-Fiorentina match.
- Wolves were slapped with a £25,000 fine for fielding a weakened side against Manchester United back in December.
- Rangers chairman Alastair Johnson thinks that winning the title will cure his club’s financial problems.
- The FA has charged Patrick Vieira with violent conduct for kicking out at Stoke’s Glenn Whelan on Tuesday.
- Kenwyne Jones is fully committed to Sunderland now that it’s not possible for him to be sold to Liverpool.
- Nemanja Vidic has denied the speculation that he wants to leave Manchester United.
- Steven Gerrard plans on taking all of this season’s frustrations out on Unirea Urziceni in today’s Europa League match. Which is all well and good, except that there’s still nobody to score goals, which is what caused all this frustration in the first place.
- Glen Johnson has won everything with Liverpool on his Championship Manager save…which is quite a feat, considering that they always enter administration, get relegated, and have to sell off their best players on my saves.
- Jose Mourinho isn’t all that impressed with Samuel Eto’o.
- Bundesliga champions Vfl Wolfsburg are facing relegation after a 12-match streak without a win.
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How are these referees still allowed to be in charge of big matches? I don’t understand the logic. Both men made HUGE match changing decisions that influenced the Champions League final (I’m not still bitter…) and qualifying for the World Cup. I would have thought (maybe wrongly) that after such high profile mistakes, FIFA/UEFA would give them some sort of probationary period before letting them World Cup/CL matches. I haven’t watched either Champions League match, but it sounds as though neither has handled dealing with the pressure of big games well.
I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but…I think I’d rather have Howard Webb ref the Inter v. Chelsea match.
I think that having one bad match shouldn’t cause a ref to be dropped, but both of them are now on their second bad game in a calendar year; it may be time to drop down to the Europa League to regain confidence.
That said, the only time we ever know of referees is when they screw up; Massimo Busacca can’t ref every match, and every ref has made a mistake (or a perceived mistake, as is also often the case). The talent pool is thinning, too, as a lot of people probably don’t find the prospect of being attacked by Didier Drogba to be all that attractive.
Stupid curling team!
Concerning the Wolves:
I had no idea that you could be fined for the player that you used on the field. You would think losing the game and losing fan support would be punishment enough. (Although for some teams, a 25,000 pound fine would be a drop in the bucket next to weekly players’ salaries.)
Concerning Eto’o:
See, there was a reason Guardiola traded away this striker. I wonder if underneath what was reported are personality conflicts between Eto’o and Mourinho, since after all, Eto’o's departure from Barcelona may have been due to conflicts between him and Guardiola. Basically, there’s no shocker here.
RE: Wolves – “The Fiver” pointed out that Manchester United should be awaiting a cumulative fine for the weakened side they sent out against Hull last May as well. It’s part of the game, and while I understand the difference it seems like an awfully silly thing to fine a team over.
RE: Eto’o – Yeah, Eto’o seems like he might be a little bit of a pain in the ass…although Mourinho may also be trying to get a little bit more out of him by calling him out. He’s been known to do things like that.