Michael Oliver

SER19 said:
Some Michael Oliver Stats


United have 18 wins from 45 matches reffed by Oliver.

They have 5 red cards and 92 yellows.

In the same time, hes shown our opponents 1 red card and 62 yellows.

Are we that much dirtier?

By contrast, hes reffed Liverpool 60 times (thats 16 times more) and shown them just 1 red. City 53 times and shown them 1 red.
So we get a red card, once every 9 games with Oliver. For Liverpool its once every 60 and for city its once every 53. For opponents against us, its once every 45 games.

This season, he decided to let Romero's blatant handball go by, and send Dalot off for nothing.

Like Anthony Taylor, there just seems to be a genuine bias at best, and something corrupt at worst.
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Yesterday, especially towards the end, felt like petulance from him in punishing our players, but in defence of his overall record against us - he’s been refereeing for the past decade, in which we have been pretty consistently ill-disciplined as a club. So I think this high punishment ratio is largely a poor showing of our own misbehaviour on the pitch.

Essentially I’d imagine that if you compare most refereeing records between us and Liverpool/City, you’d probably find that we receive more bookings and sendings off than them with pretty much any referee.
 
For the posters trying to justify why it's a red the entire Football Subreddit which normally consists of absolute hatred of Man united and laughing at anything negative about us is united in their opinion that this is a joke of a decision and Oliver is a complete egotisical clown who makes games all about him.
 
Matt Varnish said:
No it's not.
Just because you don't agree with it, doesn't make it wrong.
Just because for reasons known to him he didn't issue other yellows in the game, doesn't make it wrong.
Dalot showed dissent at two different decisions, one moment of dissent was directed directly at the referee, it's a yellow, end of.
You can direct as much vitriol and abuse at Oliver, as you want, but it doesn't change the fact he was right.
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Might want to log out of here, Michael. Read the room.
 
Matt Varnish said:
Referee's have to declare any allegiance to a particular team.
He has never officiated at a Newcastle game because of his allegiance, or a Sunderland game because he was born there.
You have the audacity to call him a poor Ref, when you don't know the conditions of being a Ref, or know the laws of the game!
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Oh he's not a poor referee but makes one think about'ulterior motives' maybe?
And by not officiating Newcastle or Sunderland doesn't mean that he can't influence other teams in a good or bad way.

Oranges038 said:
It's probably not wrong. I'd blame Dalot for being stupid and think referees should be more inclined to book players for this type of behaviour.

But the problem here is how he decides Nunez doesn't deserve 2 yellows for a foul, kicking the ball away and sarcastically clapping the officials all in the same incident. Liverpool players didn't get booked for waving imaginary cards. But Dalot deserved 2 yellows for his reaction to a throw in.

He's clearly decided it was worth 2 yellows and that's fine, but as with most of these referees it's their consistency in the application of the rules that is the bigger issue, not the decision itself.
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Now i agree with this because Oliver showed these inconsistencies in his reffing yesterday.
There was also the blatant diving incident.
Why no yellows in these?!
 
iHicksy said:
For the posters trying to justify why it's a red the entire Football Subreddit which normally consists of absolute hatred of Man united and laughing at anything negative about us is united in their opinion that this is a joke of a decision and Oliver is a complete egotisical clown who makes games all about him.
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:lol:
 
NotChatGPT said:
Shame he forgot to book Salah for waving an imaginary yellow card in the same situation, considering he's reading the rulebook word by word.
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If you meant the Dalot situation, I watched it again; Salah was waving players to come over, not for a yellow
 
There’s always one or two people who will come into any refereeing thread after any game with the classics

“The letter of the law says it was a correct decision”
or
“We were shit so stop complaining about decisions because they didn’t affect the game”

According to the laws of the game, a player looking at the ref angrily twice in the space of five seconds can be construed as two different counts of dissent, but to actually give that player two yellow cards would be as ridiculous as this decision was, especially in the same game as a player on the other side escaped being booked for two blatant acts of dissent (booting the ball 60 yards which he was booked for, and then sarcastically clapping the assistant referee to his face), clearly separated in time, due to that sort of thing never happening (except for 70 minutes later in the same game for the other team).
 
Oranges038 said:
It's probably not wrong. I'd blame Dalot for being stupid and think referees should be more inclined to book players for this type of behaviour.

But the problem here is how he decides Nunez doesn't deserve 2 yellows for a foul, kicking the ball away and sarcastically clapping the officials all in the same incident. Liverpool players didn't get booked for waving imaginary cards. Gravenberch doesn't get booked for a clear dive in the box. But Dalot deserved 2 yellows for his reaction to a throw in.

He's clearly decided it was worth 2 yellows and that's fine, but as with most of these referees it's their consistency in the application of the rules that is the bigger issue, not the decision itself.
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Totally agree with this, and it's a real bug bear with officiating, only Oliver knows the answers to the rest. This is the point, those posters saying the decision was wrong, are in fact wrong.
During my training as a Ref I was always told it doesn't matter if it's the first minute or the last, an offence is an offence, I've carded players in both minutes.
The problem is, especially in the EPL, is that if you card a player early in a game you set a precedent, and you should live up to it, unfortunately Ref's don't seem to do that, that is my bug bear.
I would add as a caveat that moving from amateur to pro-am is a different game, you go through further instruction, and certain laws at amateur level are not always applied in the same way at por-am and pro level.
 
christinaa said:
Oh he's not a poor referee but makes one think about'ulterior motives' maybe?
And by not officiating Newcastle or Sunderland doesn't mean that he can't influence other teams in a good or bad way.



Now i agree with this because Oliver showed these inconsistencies in his reffing yesterday.
There was also the blatant diving incident.
Why no yellows in these?!
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Edited and added that in after.

Definitely worthy of a yellow.

Matt Varnish said:
Totally agree with this, and it's a real bug bear with officiating, only Oliver knows the answers to the rest. This is the point, those posters saying the decision was wrong, are in fact wrong.
During my training as a Ref I was always told it doesn't matter if it's the first minute or the last, an offence is an offence, I've carded players in both minutes.
The problem is, especially in the EPL, is that if you card a player early in a game you set a precedent, and you should live up to it, unfortunately Ref's don't seem to do that, that is my bug bear.
I would add as a caveat that moving from amateur to pro-am is a different game, you go through further instruction, and certain laws at amateur level are not always applied in the same way at por-am and pro level.
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And I think this is why people are so annoyed by it and think it was ridiculous. Ultimately if he'd sent Nunez off and sent Dalot off, or if that Nunez incident never happened and he did this.
Nobody would really be that pissed.

But to let one go and send a player off for less is bad refereeing even if the decision was right.
 
Matt Varnish said:
Totally agree with this, and it's a real bug bear with officiating, only Oliver knows the answers to the rest. This is the point, those posters saying the decision was wrong, are in fact wrong.
During my training as a Ref I was always told it doesn't matter if it's the first minute or the last, an offence is an offence, I've carded players in both minutes.
The problem is, especially in the EPL, is that if you card a player early in a game you set a precedent, and you should live up to it, unfortunately Ref's don't seem to do that, that is my bug bear.
I would add as a caveat that moving from amateur to pro-am is a different game, you go through further instruction, and certain laws at amateur level are not always applied in the same way at por-am and pro level.
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But going by this logic and disregarding how football is actually refereed then no decision involving any sort of subjectivity would ever be wrong, because like I said in a previous post, a player looking at a referee in what’s perceived as the wrong way can be booked twice, or even sent off for unsportsmanlike conduct, but it would be a ridiculous decision to give it in an actual football game.

The least we can expect is consistency within a game and if loudly moaning and then sarcastically clapping your hands at the referee is not punishable as even one count of dissent then flailing your arms twice within five seconds is not two yellows in the same game, because common sense would dictate that as opposed to the laws of the game. If everything that could be a red or a yellow in a game would be given as yellows (you can give a yellow card for the lightest push with you saying that the laws allow it) then every game would be abandoned within 20 minutes due to a lack of players on the pitch.
 
Oranges038 said:
Edited and added that in after.

Definitely worthy of a yellow.



And I think this is why people are so annoyed by it and think it was ridiculous. Ultimately if he'd sent Nunez off and sent Dalot off, or if that Nunez incident never happened and he did this.
Nobody would really be that pissed.

But to let one go and send a player off for less is bad refereeing even if the decision was right.
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I have no doubt that Oliver will go through a review on this game, there being more than one incident where his decision making was questionable, and he will be given guidance on it. Whether he acts on that or not is up to him.
We wont see the Ref's report, maybe just maybe Dalot said something, or swore at Oliver to prompt the second yellow.
 
At this point most of the blame has to fall on the club and Ten Hag for not doing anything about him and letting him away with it every time.

Clattenburg was unofficially banned from reffing at Everton for 6 years because of a dreadful performance in a Merseyside derby.

Will/have the ref and VAR who made the Newcastle goal against Arsenal reffed Arsenal since?

Same with the ref/VAR for Liverpool's goal against Spurs?

Raise some fecking noise about these cnuts.
 
Matt Varnish said:
Referee's have to declare any allegiance to a particular team.
He has never officiated at a Newcastle game because of his allegiance, or a Sunderland game because he was born there.
You have the audacity to call him a poor Ref, when you don't know the conditions of being a Ref, or know the laws of the game!
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Well, if I can speak briefly having grown up in the household of a fully qualified referee, I was always told the ref's job is take charge of the game. It's not to be a robot - almost all of the 'laws of the game' are actually guidelines of how to interpret situations. Football is a dynamic, constantly-moving sport.

In this case, one can make an argument that Oliver has both applied the laws of the game in a defensible manner and also been a terrible referee. There are many times in each and every half of football that a player could be booked, but isn't, because the referees are encouarged to use judgement, help the game flow and apply common sense. This is the big problem with VAR too - if you freeze frame about half the tackles in a match you could make a case for them being dangerous. But that's not what football officating is designed to do.

If Oliver maintains consistency now, there will be no matches finished. Dalot's second protest - and his first - are both things that happen dozens of times a match. So he won't maintain consistency.

I think he was just knackered, out of breath, and wasn't sure his decision on the throw in was correct. And he got flustered, and defaulted to his true personality - one of trying to be the man. My dad always said he never went to his top pocket without taking 5 deep, long breaths, and that a lot could change in his mind in that time. Oliver could learn from such things.
 
Uniquim said:
I know we're being mad at him and all, and rightly so, because it was a shit decision, but your post is a bit selective, innit?
You make it seem like United is the only outlier. Oliver gives a red cards once every 9 games to United, as you say, but it's not like United is the only team getting red cards with that sort of frequency from Oliver.

11.66 — Aston Villa
10.75 — Leicester City
9.60 — Spurs
9.16 — Arsenal
9.16 — Everton
9.00 — Man Utd
8.66 — Burnley
3.75 — Huddersfield (only 15 games, 4 reds, wonder what they did to him)
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No, its not really selective. The stats Ive shared arent defnitive of anything, they are just added context as when people say they believe a ref to have a bias against united they get accused of their own confirmation bias. So Michael Oliver constanly fails the eye test when refereeing United. @Pexbo predicted almost all of the things Oliver would do in terms of influencing the match, pre match. And when people discuss him in these terms they get accused of conspiracy theories. Ive used stats for United obviously, and for City who I believe he disproportionately favours with decisions. Overall, despite us being a poor team for a decade, it still makes more sense to compare us to clubs around us than to huddersfield (who he has only reffed 15 times, likely not all even in the PL). Again, these are only used for some further context not some sort of proof of anything but to the eye test I would have predicted that Oliver gives us far more red cards than he does City or Liverpool, and sure enough he does.

Only he and his team can explain why Kovacic wasnt sent off for two terrible tackles in the space of a few minutes, but Dalot was. Or why Nunez wanst double booked for dissent, but Dalot was. Or why Ake's goal against Fulham was awarded despite being magnitudes offside.
I can keep going. He is consistently awful where United are concerned. So we talk about it, and he proves it and people say we're paranoid. Then he proves it again and we try bring some stats in and people say youre cherry picking stats. What exactly does he have to do to raise genuine concern among football fans that he isnt on the straight and narrow?

You shouldnt be able to all but predict the outcome of a game based on who the referee is, but for Oliver and Taylor, you almost always can.
 
Matt Varnish said:
I have no doubt that Oliver will go through a review on this game, there being more than one incident where his decision making was questionable, and he will be given guidance on it. Whether he acts on that or not is up to him.
We wont see the Ref's report, maybe just maybe Dalot said something, or swore at Oliver to prompt the second yellow.
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Yeah, I don't the blame the referee for sending him off for dissent. That's Dalot's fault. But he needs to show some consistency in his decision making if he's going to go down that route.
 
Matt Varnish said:
Dissent is yellow card offence, he committed it twice, he got sent off for two yellow cards, not dissent.
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Factually true but you have to question getting two yellow cards for the same incident.

If you reply back to this saying I am wrong then will it be part of the same argument/discussion/incident or will you be starting a brand new debate?

If someone is done for assault for punching an annoying person twice is that two assaults or one?

If I shoplift two pairs of trousers from a shop is that one lot of shoplifting or two?

If I burgle your house and steal all of yout tv and your teddy bears os that two burglaries or one?
 
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Oranges038 said:
Yeah, I don't the blame the referee for sending him off for dissent. That's Dalot's fault. But he needs to show some consistency in his decision making if he's going to go down that route.
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How do you even make that argument work? You can’t blame him for sending Dalot off but he has to show consistency if you’re to accept it, but we’ve already seen the lack of consistency in the same game as he’s watched Darwin first shout and remonstrate, and then clap his hands at the assistant without judging those as two, or even one act of dissent.

How do you view the fact that he’s set the bar for what dissent constitutes in the game and then completely abandoned that bar to send a player off for the other team for two separate incidents within three seconds, with the second one happening as he received the first booking, and got to the conclusion that it was the right decision?

Would you now expect any player who complains verbally with more than one sentence to receive one yellow card for each sentence used? Because that would obviously be acceptable in the laws of the game and this the correct decision, yeah?
 
Beachryan said:
Well, if I can speak briefly having grown up in the household of a fully qualified referee, I was always told the ref's job is take charge of the game. It's not to be a robot - almost all of the 'laws of the game' are actually guidelines of how to interpret situations. Football is a dynamic, constantly-moving sport.

In this case, one can make an argument that Oliver has both applied the laws of the game in a defensible manner and also been a terrible referee. There are many times in each and every half of football that a player could be booked, but isn't, because the referees are encouarged to use judgement, help the game flow and apply common sense. This is the big problem with VAR too - if you freeze frame about half the tackles in a match you could make a case for them being dangerous. But that's not what football officating is designed to do.

If Oliver maintains consistency now, there will be no matches finished. Dalot's second protest - and his first - are both things that happen dozens of times a match. So he won't maintain consistency.

I think he was just knackered, out of breath, and wasn't sure his decision on the throw in was correct. And he got flustered, and defaulted to his true personality - one of trying to be the man. My dad always said he never went to his top pocket without taking 5 deep, long breaths, and that a lot could change in his mind in that time. Oliver could learn from such things.
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I was taught by a very experienced Ref, all I kept in my top pocket was a tissue, yellow card in right shorts pocket, red in my back pocket, you had to make a conscious decision to use either.
I agree on the consistency too, he has set a bench mark, but we both know that his next game may or may not show the inconsistencies shown in this one.
 
Anustart89 said:
How do you even make that argument work? You can’t blame him for sending Dalot off but he has to show consistency if you’re to accept it, but we’ve already seen the lack of consistency in the same game as he’s watched Darwin first shout and remonstrate, and then clap his hands at the assistant without judging those as two, or even one act of dissent.

How do you marry the fact that he’s set the bar for what dissent constitutes in the game and then completely abandoned that bar to send a player off for the other team?
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I've already made that point.

Dalot's reaction is what got him sent off. But the referee hasn't shown any consistency, that's the bigger problem.
 
Matt Varnish said:
I was taught by a very experienced Ref, all I kept in my top pocket was a tissue, yellow card in right shorts pocket, red in my back pocket, you had to make a conscious decision to use either.
I agree on the consistency too, he has set a bench mark, but we both know that his next game may or may not show the inconsistencies shown in this one.
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Tissue’s for games where a player scores a cracking goal, yeah?
 
Oranges038 said:
Yeah, I don't the blame the referee for sending him off for dissent. That's Dalot's fault. But he needs to show some consistency in his decision making if he's going to go down that route.
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Yes you can, call the player over and tell him why he’s being booked and bring the captain over as well to tell Dalot to calm down and even that’s ridiculous.
It’s not even for something he said, it’s fecking two examples of frustrated gesturing. It’s abysmal refereeing
 
Oranges038 said:
I've already made that point.

Dalot's reaction is what got him sent off. But the referee hasn't shown any consistency, that's the bigger problem.
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Any ref can send any player off for basically anything. It doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

Like when Lemina was sent off (second yellow) for “aggressively running towards the ref”. Yes you can give a yellow for aggressive running, but to single out the third furthest player away from you for that and send him off would generally be perceived to be a ridiculous decision despite the fact that posters like you would’ve been in here saying “well the laws say he can get booked for aggressive running so that’s that”
 
Matt Varnish said:
I was taught by a very experienced Ref, all I kept in my top pocket was a tissue, yellow card in right shorts pocket, red in my back pocket, you had to make a conscious decision to use either.
I agree on the consistency too, he has set a bench mark, but we both know that his next game may or may not show the inconsistencies shown in this one.
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Well maybe if this experienced ref had counted to ten, instead of reacting without thought, he could have approached Dalot, reached for his top pocket and lent him his tissue and told him to stop crying about being booked and defused the situation. Yea maybe he thought his tissue was in his back pocket and realised too late! That’s the only explanation that makes any sense to me
 
Oranges038 said:
I've already made that point.

Dalot's reaction is what got him sent off. But the referee hasn't shown any consistency, that's the bigger problem.
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I thought it was fairly fecking innocent, unless Dalot has said something obscene to Michael Oliver. It's an instantaneous reaction to receiving a yellow card, he doesn't walk towards the referee in a threatening manner, he doesn't keep shouting or keep waving his arm, it's one reaction to the decision and that's it, he then turns around and positions himself for the throw in. I'd be amazed to see anyone get sent off for something similar in the next years. A bit like Rooney being banned for swearing on live tv.

You expect common sense to be applied, and you almost never see referees interpret the laws of the game in such a harsh manner that Michael Oliver has done when sending off Dalot. To top it off, he goes from completely ignoring Salah waving an imaginary yellow card to signal Dalot should be booked, which is a yellow card offense in itself, to sending Dalot off the first chance he gets.
 
Bale Bale Bale said:
This footage?




It's quite clear that he reacts to the throw in and then reacts again to the yellow. Seems that anyone but Utd fans can see that.



He "calms down" and turns away sheepishly after his 2nd strop knowing he could be in trouble. He threw his arms around when he saw he was being booked.

Again, I don't think it merits a sending off and Oliver is being extremely petty.
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The only thing thats clear to me from that video is that Nunez didn't get a yellow for waving the imaginary card. Wasn't that supposed to be a clear yellow??
 
I thought that he had a good game till Dalot incident. But the incident was shocking, first time in over 20 years of watching football that I see a player getting two yellows for the same dissent. When he gave the second booking, I thought that Dalot clapped or anything like that, but no, he actually did nothing after getting the first booking.

United should definitely look at whatever tools they have to appeal this, and even if it is an unprecedented move, to ask the league to not send Oliver again in United's matches.
 
Ayoba said:
The only thing thats clear to me from that video is that Nunez didn't get a yellow for waving the imaginary card. Wasn't that supposed to be a clear yellow??
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Given the fact that it's Salah, you're not left with much being clear.
 
cyberman said:
Yes you can, call the player over and tell him why he’s being booked and bring the captain over as well to tell Dalot to calm down and even that’s ridiculous.
It’s not even for something he said, it’s fecking two examples of frustrated gesturing. It’s abysmal refereeing
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Anustart89 said:
Any ref can send any player off for basically anything. It doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

Like when Lemina was sent off (second yellow) for “aggressively running towards the ref”. Yes you can give a yellow for aggressive running, but to single out the third furthest player away from you for that and send him off would generally be perceived to be a ridiculous decision despite the fact that posters like you would’ve been in here saying “well the laws say he can get booked for aggressive running so that’s that”
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NotChatGPT said:
I thought it was fairly fecking innocent, unless Dalot has said something obscene to Michael Oliver. It's an instantaneous reaction to receiving a yellow card, he doesn't walk towards the referee in a threatening manner, he doesn't keep shouting or keep waving his arm, it's one reaction to the decision and that's it, he then turns around and positions himself for the throw in. I'd be amazed to see anyone get sent off for something similar in the next years. A bit like Rooney being banned for swearing on live tv.

You expect common sense to be applied, and you almost never see referees interpret the laws of the game in such a harsh manner that Michael Oliver has done when sending off Dalot. To top it off, he goes from completely ignoring Salah waving an imaginary yellow card to signal Dalot should be booked, which is a yellow card offense in itself, to sending Dalot off the first chance he gets.
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Look back at my other posts. I can't be arsed going through it all again.

The decision in itself might be right one, we don't know what Dalot said. But it's the consistency of his decision making, especially in this game where he let a worse incident go with a yellow that is the bigger problem.
 
No one switched on the game to watch Michael Oliver. He needs to get a grip and learn how to run the game properly
 
It’s his insistence on being seen as the “hard man” that is the most infuriating thing, yet he’ll almost cower away in his shell when knobheads like Joe Hart physically headbutt him. He only picks on targets he knows won’t put up much of an argument.

He’s a fecking weasel and I’m sure he’s trying to make up for something in the past.
 
Matt Varnish said:
Totally agree with this, and it's a real bug bear with officiating, only Oliver knows the answers to the rest. This is the point, those posters saying the decision was wrong, are in fact wrong.
During my training as a Ref I was always told it doesn't matter if it's the first minute or the last, an offence is an offence, I've carded players in both minutes.
The problem is, especially in the EPL, is that if you card a player early in a game you set a precedent, and you should live up to it, unfortunately Ref's don't seem to do that, that is my bug bear.
I would add as a caveat that moving from amateur to pro-am is a different game, you go through further instruction, and certain laws at amateur level are not always applied in the same way at por-am and pro level.
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By your own logic, Oliver made multiple wrong decisions in not booking Liverpool players for the same dissent he booked Dalot for twice.

The posters saying the decision was wrong are more in the right than your defence, because Oliver set the precedent for the match by explicitly allowing dissent, only to decide it was an offence and worthy of a yellow later on. The only explanations for his inconsistency are bias or incompetence, either of which should be punished.
 
Mixed bag yesterday, he was fantastic on the ball and brought a calming presence, but he got glided past on a few occasions by Liverpool players which could be exploited in future games.
 
Matt Varnish said:
Referee's have to declare any allegiance to a particular team.
He has never officiated at a Newcastle game because of his allegiance, or a Sunderland game because he was born there.
You have the audacity to call him a poor Ref, when you don't know the conditions of being a Ref, or know the laws of the game!
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I know the conditions of being allowed to referee in the Premier League. The majority proclaim to support lower league sides which is clearly rubbish and a way to get around this rule.
 
pascell said:
Mixed bag yesterday, he was fantastic on the ball and brought a calming presence, but he got glided past on a few occasions by Liverpool players which could be exploited in future games.
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To be fair, I think most referees are supposed to be glided past. If they are in the way, it can influence the game.
 
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