There were 4 minutes of added time, and Owen's goal came at 95:28. If you consider that City wasted the first minute of added time celebrating, and that a sub was made, allowing the game to run to (at least) 95:30 made perfect sense. I think that's how Atkinson saw it too. It was only controversial because "Fergie time" and perceived United bias.The only thing I could say in his defence which is often forgotten is he was the ref when Owen scored the winner against City about 3 mins after the alloted time for no apparent reason. Just a terrible ref. I think he's swayed too often by a home crowd
Martin Atkinson
- Thread starter Smoking_Owl
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Imran (@Annihilate Now!) look forward to a new life under Ruben Amorim. What system will we be playing? What players will impress? and how will it all go? We also say goodbye to Ruud Van Nistelrooy and review United's 3-0 win at home against Leicester City.
Backlash by who exactly? There is no accountability of refs - managers cant say a thing. Ole was smiling when talking about these decisions and mentioned we can’t say much. Sky didn’t even talk about this.
Premier league sides should unite and demand better officiating. Leicester got done by VAR today as well and I can not understand why the feck is it so difficult to get things right on a fecking monitor. You can literally see everything frame by frame.
The VAR referees are either dumb or corrupt. There should be fines for awful decisions like these. I liked when Andy Gray and Richars Keys mentioned no one can stand up to Atkinson.
Referees should be ridiculed in the media for their awful performances, should be fined and suspended for a few weeks, they are not doctors or scientists serving humanity. They are paid to do a job and most of them suck at it.
Maybe they'd stop making their clearly biased and shit calls because they will have to publically justify their actions at full time.
Aye.
One of the most experienced refs in the Premier League, with more years in than Antony Taylor and Michael Oliver, and yet he never reffed a major European game in the CL, Europa or international when he was eligible, unlike those two. One guess why.
Of the same ilk as Steve Bennett, for those that remember that fecker.
Refs indicate why the make decisions if you watch them. Having a microphone solves nothing. Refs will still make bad calls and so will VAR (which was supposed to solve those bad calls)
It's literally done in rugby and pretty much everyone that watches both sports prefers being able to hear the ref explaining their decisions. It's such an easy improvement to implement and makes the viewing experience so much better for the people actually paying for the product.
I can only imagine the reason it isn't already in place is that the refs are terrified of exposing how clueless and/or bent they really are. The weird refusal to use VAR for fouls like the ones on Ronaldo yesterday also points towards this. Fragile egos that can't handle being proven wrong even once.
He tried hard to screw us.
Maybe just get the FA to review the Ref's if they screw up demote them to the conference leagues. Managers get sacked for wrong decisions, so the Ref's should have the some consequences. They generally have no direct consequences so just ride out the storm and onto the next match. Missing 3 penalties in 1 game is not right
Mic’ing them up makes sense. It’s been done in other sports too so that calls are recorded and refs are held accountable.
The whole ref team was off their rocker today. Atkinson was bad (missing 2 clear pens in Ronaldo, weird call in AWB’s favour) but the VAR team was bad too. I thought the whole point of VAR was to help the ref with calls that he could’ve missed? And it was clear as day that Ronaldo was fouled, twice, in the penalty box.
If VAR didn’t pick it up, it’s on them. If the VAR team did and Atkinson overruled them, it’s on him. Either way, these are the games that do get managers fired. The refs MUST be held to more accountability.
The whole ref team was off their rocker today. Atkinson was bad (missing 2 clear pens in Ronaldo, weird call in AWB’s favour) but the VAR team was bad too. I thought the whole point of VAR was to help the ref with calls that he could’ve missed? And it was clear as day that Ronaldo was fouled, twice, in the penalty box.
If VAR didn’t pick it up, it’s on them. If the VAR team did and Atkinson overruled them, it’s on him. Either way, these are the games that do get managers fired. The refs MUST be held to more accountability.
Atkinson was rubbish today, but who in the feck was in VAR room today? How did they not communicate to him on either of those fouls by Coufal/Zouma to have another look on the monitor? This is especially puzzling because he saw the Shaw handball and waved it away for a corner but was immediately spoken to by VAR room to have another look but then they said nothing in regards to those pen calls?
Premier League refereeing is so inconsistent, de Gea saved us today or we’d been royally fecked over for 3 points today.
Premier League refereeing is so inconsistent, de Gea saved us today or we’d been royally fecked over for 3 points today.
Maybe.
I felt that his decisions on the penalties reflected his general take on the game. There were many fouls in midfield he did not call either.
Is it perfectly normal that I woke up today still fuming at Twatkinson?
Those kind of moments in the box are now about a "take on the game", or a desire to let the game flow. Ronaldo being hacked down by Zouma is not a question of perception or of a refereeing style, it's a straightforward decision to make which he got completely wrong. It was a dreadful call.
Not just him, the quality of the refs in the PL is baffling tbh. You watch the big tournaments and basically you don't see any of them.
This is basically it, with the futher caveat of Atkinson being a Leeds fan. This is common knowledge.
I now live in West Yorkshire and the hatred for MUFC is on another level. The rivalry for them means as much as the Liverpool one does for us, probably more.
Imagine a United-supporting manc reffing a Liverpool game and being trusted to make impartial decisions. How does this happen?!
He was match fixing bad yesterday.
The problem with VAR is that they've implemented it without a clear strategy for its use and a clear outline of why it's being used. It's just there, and they seem to make up what they're doing with it week by week.
We keep hearing "clear and obvious" but last season that meant analysing everything to the nth degree, to the point that offsides were being called because of armpit hairs being off, and it seemed almost any decision referred to VAR was being overturned.
This season the "clear and obvious" line is still about, except we're also hearing about "flow" and it now seems that almost every decision the on field ref makes stands regardless of how bad it is.
Seemed like he had decided in advance, that Ronaldo couldn't get a penalty yesterday. The Coufal one in particular was blatant. Those are almost always given.
That was 2008 as bad a decision it was, it didn't cost us the title.
2010 was when he gave a nothing free kick against Fletcher on Cole, allowed John Terry to pull down Rio as the ball was played in goalwards, then ignored Drogba in an offside position and interfering with play and gave the goal.
In the same game Valencia was brought down in the box and Rooney went clean through when well onside only to be given offside.
That game arguably cost us the title that year.....
Exactly!!
Yeah plenty of reasons to dislike the prick
The zouma dive did it for me. It was ridiculous and right in front of the prick. The way he somersaulted over pogbas leg was like he'd been hit by a car.
He's the only referee I've ever thought could be bent. Most are just incompetent, but he is so biased towards certain teams and against others it makes you think. He is a Leeds fan after all.
Something else i noticed if you look at the referee list is that not one of them supports a big club. I'm not sure i believe that, are they lying to make sure they are not excluded from the big games.
Something else i noticed if you look at the referee list is that not one of them supports a big club. I'm not sure i believe that, are they lying to make sure they are not excluded from the big games.
Allowing David luiz to kick lumps out of Rooney another time then gives Chelsea an absolute bullshit pen later on handing them the result.
Wasn't he also the lino that didn't notice Drogba was 5 yards offside at old Trafford?
Inconsistency was my great issue. I don't mind a referee setting the bar on either side of the spectrum, I do however mind when it changes from challenge to challenge. Atkinson had a very poor game in my opinion.
You don’t even make sense.
He was truly awful - a 2 out of 10 at tops but he was also let down by whatever oaf was on VAR duty! I mean, was the guy even looking?
Nope - no offside as they showed on MOTD2.
Also Soucek wasn't offside so even if the linesman flagged it shouldn't have matter... AWB just cleaned him out.
He should be demoted for that shit show yesterday.
Basically there is no accountability. It is fun to be in a job where you can screw up week after week and your bosses will be like who cares. We get the money anyways.
To answer that question, it need to be found out what is the instruction to the VAR ref. If VAR ref and on field ref are just there to pat each other's backs, then there is no point.
Is he really a Leeds fan? If he is, then why is he even allowed to officiate our games? In fact, having him in charge of any premier league games could be considered problematic.
Now we have VAR I really think an inquest should be held into why some decisions are deemed not worthy of scrutinizing when to most fans and ex players, their decisions are bewildering. Only way the standards of refereeing get better in my honest view.
God I remember that one and I was fuming, but you know United get all the decisions don’t they….
The standard of reffing in this country is awful & he is right at the top of the list of shite. Him, Oliver & Moss.
AWB was actually the right side of the Soucek to make the challenge and slid in front of him as they both attempted to reach the ball and both failed. The contact was absolutely minimal and not enough to bring him down. Look for yourself:
Soucek basically just leaned into the challenge and folded his legs.
I can't agree.
AWB took his legs as the West Ham player was running onto the ball. I'd have been furious if the referee denied us that.
I think all 4 incidents were penalties. The ref didn't give any of them and VAR failed us by only asking the referee to consider overturning 1.
It is a classic case of "who will bell the cat?". The managers/players won't get talked because FA sanctions. Media may talk, but they have their own agendas to follow. Besides they will be criticized for undermining the tough job of refs, if they constantly target poor refs.
FA is least interested and PL bosses are more concerned about protecting their people, rather than trying to improve.
There is no motivation to improve the refereeing standards.
I was thinking this, AWB attempts to get the ball sliding in front of Soucek and misses it but Soucek actually comes in from behind AWB and falls into AWB also missing the ball,
It's extremely convenient for pundits these days to just completely ignore the most obvious of points that need to be referenced if it doesn't fit their agenda or there just plain thick , probably the latter tbh but it's infuriating