Michael Oliver

kouroux said:
That's who I meant by "we", the other fans or neutrals, their views would have been different obviously.
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Ah, fair enough. I misunderstood you. I think we're in agreement then. Obviously United fans would have defended him if he'd let Di Maria off, because we would have directly benefitted, even if it was the wrong decision. I agree with that.

But he made exactly the right call in doing what he did. Letting Di Maria off would have been exactly the wrong call, even if Untied fans might have preferred it.
 
Fellaini gave more fouls than anyone this season in a match. Broke Akinfewa's record (vs LFC). Like he, I thought Fellaini was refereed very harshly last night (and most other games) due to his strength. He has to undercompensate whenever going into 50-50 challenges. Meanwhile other players are overly physical (understandable) when coming up against him. Yet refs always wave it on. This is especially evident when going in for headers. He on the other hand has perfectly win all his headers. One moment yesterday, he was clearly backed into by Arsenal player but no foul given. This leads to him tripping up the player = foul!

Back to Oliver, he was consistent in being inconsistent yesterday. ADM was fouled couple of times but got nothing. Once I initially thought he'd dive only for replay to show Monreal kicking him in the calf on his calf. Most quick./flair players will exaggerate contact to win fouls. This is nothing new. It worked for Sanchez. Going down easily != foul. Likewise it's not a dive. I just wish players were more like Eden Hazard in staying on their feet. He wins more fouls because of this.
 
steve zizou said:
Fellaini gave more fouls than anyone this season in a match. Broke Akinfewa's record (vs LFC). Like he, I thought Fellaini was refereed very harshly last night (and most other games) due to his strength. He has to undercompensate whenever going into 50-50 challenges. Meanwhile other players are overly physical (understandable) when coming up against him. Yet refs always wave it on. This is especially evident when going in for headers. He on the other hand has perfectly win all his headers. One moment yesterday, he was clearly backed into by Arsenal player but no foul given. This leads to him tripping up the player = foul!

Back to Oliver, he was consistent in being inconsistent yesterday. ADM was fouled couple of times but got nothing. Once I initially thought he'd dive only for replay to show Monreal kicking him in the calf on his calf. Most quick./flair players will exaggerate contact to win fouls. This is nothing new. It worked for Sanchez. Going down easily != foul. Likewise it's not a dive. I just wish players were more like Eden Hazard in staying on their feet. He wins more fouls because of this.
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Fellaini is treated unfairly by referees but at the same time he does nothing to improve his reputation, there was an instance when he made two stupid fouls in quick succession.
 
Rado_N said:
Had anyone actually said this?

You tried to accuse me of this same shit last night but then unsurprisingly disappeared when the truth was pointed out to you.

I'll ask this again, because nobody has answered it yet: why can't a person criticise a referee without being accused of blaming him for the result?

Plenty of people think Oliver made mistakes last night. I'm definitely amongst them, but that doesn't make them whiners and doesn't automatically mean they blame him for the result.

People also criticise ref mistakes when we win - where are your strange rants then?
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Did you see the match day thread? It was full of that those sorts of insinuations. People were screaming about Oliver, about how he was a cnut or inept, how he was bent or biased or out of his depth. He was giving Arsenal everything, we were the victims of some terrible calls; every 50/50 went their way, we got nothing at all etc. Some outright claimed he was crooked, but even saying he was a cnut and biased and got everything wrong still heavily implies he was an important factor in our defeat, which just isn't true.

And I didn't try to accuse you of that last night, actually. I was speaking about the accusations flying around on the forum in general. I only addressed a response at you when you directly quoted me.

I stopped talking because you seemed to be taking every accusation or point being made by any poster (even those made in general) quite personally. I wasn't the only poster you responded to getting all defensive because you thought they were making a personal attack on you, even if they hadn't tagged you, mentioned you, or quoted you in a post. Has it occured to you that people rationally pointing out the things that Oliver did wrong (like @Alex99 did) weren't the people we were aiming our complaints at?

So again, I'm not addressing that point at you. I was responding to another poster entirely just now, but again you've attacked my post, claiming that last night I "accused you" as if you're a victim or an unfair target. If you didn't do what I'm accusing some people of, then maybe I'm not talking about your viewpoint on this issue at all? Maybe it's not one I disagree with? Shocking as it may seem, not every one of my posts is about Rado_N! ;)

Also, I stopped talking last night because you seemed to be getting very tetchy with me and you're a mod. I had no faith that continuing to argue with you wouldn't get me temp banned, so I chose to leave it.

Tldr: Stop taking everything so personally. I'm obviously not referring to people calmly pointing out that the ref made some mistakes when I have a go at those crying about bias.
 
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Count Orduck said:
Ah, fair enough. I misunderstood you. I think we're in agreement then. Obviously United fans would have defended him if he'd let Di Maria off, because we would have directly benefitted, even if it was the wrong decision. I agree with that.

But he made exactly the right call in doing what he did. Letting Di Maria off would have been exactly the wrong call, even if Untied fans might have preferred it.
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Yes, the anger makes a lot of us look for things to blame for the result but at the end of the day, the players and the coaches weren't good enough. It had nothing to do with Oliver.
 
His decision to yellow card Di Maria and not Sanchez is almost identical to the Rafael and Vardy incident; both situations played a part in changing the game.
 
Rado_N said:
Had anyone actually said this?

You tried to accuse me of this same shit last night but then unsurprisingly disappeared when the truth was pointed out to you.

I'll ask this again, because nobody has answered it yet: why can't a person criticise a referee without being accused of blaming him for the result?

Plenty of people think Oliver made mistakes last night. I'm definitely amongst them, but that doesn't make them whiners and doesn't automatically mean they blame him for the result.

People also criticise ref mistakes when we win - where are your strange rants then?
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It's the same shit as usual. If you criticise a ref when your team loses you're blaming him for everything, and if you criticise him when your team is winning you should just focus on the win and not on the ref.


Oliver did by no means have a "perfect" game - or even a good one - as some people say. The second booking for Di Maria was spot on (again, it's laughable that it comes from the ref who let Hart do that to him, but at least he improved in that regard), but he got a ton of other things wrong. The foul that could've seen Bellerin walk was so clearly a booking, and he bottled that decision because he didn't want to send a player off. A lot of refs do this, so apparently it's now become acceptable for whatever reason. There can be no arguments that Bellerin should've been booked if he hadn't already been. As for the counter-arguments ("yeah, but Fellaini and Rojo should both have been booked earlier") - well, probably. But that would've been the first booking and there's no reason to expect them to be sent off later on if they had been booked earlier (well, maybe Fellaini). And that doesn't really make Oliver look better anyway.

The booking for Di Maria's "dive" still pisses me off. In isolation I have no problems with it - it was slight contact and Di Maria made a meal of it. If the refs lay down a line and said this is unacceptable and you'll get booked for it, then I'd be more than happy. But that's just not how it works. What Di Maria did is what 99% of other footballers do, and it's exactly the same thing Arsenal was doing the entire game - and getting free kicks for the entire game. As highlighted in the clip @drdoityourself posted a few pages back:

Oliver had already let 2 or 3 fouls on Di Maria go unnoticed (again, while giving Arsenal a free kick every time we got near them), so the conspiracy theorist might suggest he had an agenda.

Once again; I'm by no means blaming Oliver for the loss. He was utter shite yesterday, but he still did better than half our team and our manager. We deserved absolutely nothing from the game, but that doesn't mean you can't highlight the fact that he was inconsistent as feck.
 
Annihilate Now! said:
Not really - he's said it's a really shit ref performance.

Suppose the only way to find out @chriswt - are you implying that the referee was the whole reason we lost last night?
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He said the referee took cash. It's hard to imagine a scenario where a referee takes cash, makes several controversial calls and doesn't determine the outcome of a game.
 
Count Orduck said:
Did you see the match day thread? It was full of that those sorts of insinuations. People were screaming about Oliver, about how he was a cnut or inept, how he was bent or biased or out of his depth. He was giving Arsenal everything, we were the victims of some terrible calls; every 50/50 went their way, we got nothing at all etc.

And I didn't try to accuse you of that last night, actually. I was speaking in general about the accusations flying around on the forum in general. I only addressed a response at you when you directly quoted me.

I stopped talking because you seemed to be taking every accusation or point being made by any poster (even those made in general) quite personally. I wasn't the only poster you responded to getting all defensive because you thought they were making a personal attack on you, even if they hadn't tagged you, mentioned you, or quoted you in a post. Has it occured to you that people rationally pointing out the things that Oliver did wrong (like @Alex99 did) weren't the people we were aiming out complaints at? Yet you're still at it now.

Again, I'm not addressing my point at you. I was responding to another poster entirely just now, but again you've come wading in, claiming I "accused you" as if you're a victim or an unfair target. If you didn't do what I'm accusing some people of, then maybe I'm not talking either about you or to you? Shocking as it may seem, not every one of my posts is about Rado_N.

Also, I stopped talking last night because you seemed to be getting very tetchy with me and you're a mod. I had no faith that continuing to argue with you wouldn't get me temp banned, so I chose to leave it.

Tldr: Stop taking everything so personally. I'm obviously not referring to people calmly pointing out that the ref made some mistakes when I have a go at those crying about bias.
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You quoted me and started banging on about how people feel they need to blame the ref, to me that's pretty clearly aimed at me, and as I said before you've got a way of making wide sweeping statements as if every second person is doing something that maybe one or two have actually done.

People are pissed off at the massive inconsistencies and are venting about the things he got wrong. I've still not seen someone directly blame him for the result but if they did then they're daft.

The point is there's a big difference between saying a ref is shit and made errors and actually saying he's bent or biased or cost us a match and sweeping strawmen help nothing.

The bit in bold is just utter nonsense, by the way, nobody is banned for having differing opinions and I wasn't getting tetchy at all, I was just making the point that you shouldn't tar everyone with the same brush as a few.
 
Eboue said:
He said the referee took cash. It's hard to imagine a scenario where a referee takes cash, makes several controversial calls and doesn't determine the outcome of a game.
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Or it could be a reference to the fact that he gets paid (quite a lot of money) to do a shit job?
 
Captain Hindsight said:
Given the circumstances both teams find themselves in, a heated clash, resembling the past, is definitely not what either teams, or supporters, would have wanted. Once the players on either side were flustered, we seemed to have lost any control we had, and were completely useless for the last 30-35 minutes of the game. A better (more strict approach) performance from Oliver would have been more favourable for us.
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So you don't want to have matches that become heated then? None of the Rivalries between players? Don't think I would enjoy that myself. I loved the Man Utd vs Arsenal games of old as when we won during a heated game it meant so much more! What about Man Utd vs Liverpool too, there usually heated and I wouldn't want to change that at all, otherwise it will become like every other fixture. This is what football rivalries are about and long may it continue!
 
Rado_N said:
You quoted me and started banging on about how people feel they need to blame the ref, to me that's pretty clearly aimed at me, and as I said before you've got a way of making wide sweeping statements as if every second person is doing something that maybe one or two have actually done.
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That's fair. But if you know I do this, why take such offence when you can probably be sure I'm just exaggerating? ;)

Rado_N said:
People are pissed off at the massive inconsistencies and are venting about the things he got wrong. I've still not seen someone directly blame him for the result but if they did then they're daft.

The point is there's a big difference between saying a ref is shit and made errors and actually saying he's bent or biased or cost us a match and sweeping strawmen help nothing
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There is. I totally agree. I have no problem with people pointing out his inconsistencies (though I think they're being blown out of proportion because of the magnitude of the red card and our loss). But some people were going further than that, as Eboue has pointed out. It was at them I was ranting, not at people like yourself or Alex or Wowi above. Perhaps I could have made that clearer, though I didn't feel I needed to at the time; in my anger I thought it was obvious. Evidently it was not. I'll remember that for the future and try to be more precise in pointing out exactly to whom my criticisms are aimed.

Rado_N said:
The bit in bold is just utter nonsense, by the way, nobody is banned for having differing opinions and I wasn't getting tetchy at all, I was just making the point that you shouldn't tar everyone with the same brush as a few.
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That's fine, I didn't mean to suggest you were an ogre on the verge of banning me or anything, but if you were addressing my posts directly then my head was obviously above the parapet and I decided to wind it back down even if I didn't think I was wrong. That's all.
 
I don't think Bellerin would have always gone off - but a decent chance on 'a difficult away ground' that a red card would have been dished out - kind of thing a home player gets away with and is then conveniently subbed. As has been said, the Rojo incident cut across this. All refs love an easy way out, except when they're having their shirt pulled, obv.

None of this is why we lost or played a poor 2nd half, though.
 
Eboue said:
It's clearly not, since he doesn't get paid via wads of cash stuffed up his ass.
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Touche - but it sounds better than wage slip shoved up his ass.

Regardless, it's just a expression to say he was biased. To imply a referee was biased, does still not automatically mean you think they cost you the game. Clattenburg was massively biased/shit in that Leicester game, but we only have ourselves and our ability to play like a bag of dicks to blame on losing that game.
 
MancFanFromManc said:
I think Oliver did okay. Its wrong to blame the ref, we just didnt come out in the second half (which was especially sad, as I thought we were in control and playing well). We need to look at ourselves rather than look for excuses.

I dont blame Di Maria either, we was MUCH better than his last two poor showings. Frustrating that his confidence will have taken another knock
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This notion frustrates and irritates me a lot. I think nobody sane will argue that we lost the match because of the referee. We made mistakes, Arsenal profited from them. We lost because of that. Period.

But why on Earth do we need to come up with imaginative narratives like "It is stupid to blame the referee. We are to blame. Referee got the big calls right." Why is it not possible for us to lose a game because of our mistakes and referee to have a bad game at the same time? Because that is what happened yesterday. Why the glorification like it was sort of a second coming in refereeing a football match. Just because United lost and he had the balls to sent-off DiMaria? Utter garbage. He got most big calls wrong, was completely inconsistent etc. That is what happened yesterday. However as long as we will consider this sort of referee performance as acceptable, the refereeing standards won't improve a little bit.
 
Matty7 said:
So you don't want to have matches that become heated then? None of the Rivalries between players? Don't think I would enjoy that myself. I loved the Man Utd vs Arsenal games of old as when we won during a heated game it meant so much more! What about Man Utd vs Liverpool too, there usually heated and I wouldn't want to change that at all, otherwise it will become like every other fixture. This is what football rivalries are about and long may it continue!
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Of course I do, but only when the time is right. The game yesterday and against Leicester illustrates exactly what happens to us when a game gets heated.
 
Count Orduck said:
That's fine, I didn't mean to suggest you were an ogre on the verge of banning me or anything, but if you were addressing my posts directly then my head was obviously above the parapet and I decided to wind it back down even if I didn't think I was wrong. That's all.
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Well next time call me a cnut instead so I can get Cina to ban you :)
 
Count Orduck said:
Except they're entirely different circumstances!

Giving a yellow card for a foul is a matter of interpretation. Not every foul is a yellow card. That one might well have been, but Oliver obviously decided it wasn't quite there and would give him one more chance. You often see referees be a touch more lenient when it comes to a second yellow card for a foul like that. They're given scope by the rules to apply their own judgement as to whether it warrants a card.

But laying hands on the referee has no room for interpretation or leniency. It's not something you make a judgement call on and ask him to calm down. If a player touches the referee, he goes in the book. It's very, very simple. Di Maria grabbed him and got booked. Oliver had no choice but to send him off. All this absolute bollocks that he should have "taken the size of the game into account" and "given him a warning or spoken to the captain" is just that - absolute bollocks. There is no one to blame in this incident except Di Maria himself. Oliver did exactly as he should have done.

Not that I expect the whiners in this thread to understand that. They've already made their mind up: that we were robbed by a crooked referee out of his depth. We were wronged, oh the injustice of it all! Get a grip. You sound like Liverpool fans with all the persecution complex wailing.
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Please spare me.....'not every booking is a yellow card' is a cop out. That's all it is. It's random. It's deciding just not to make a decision. Why? Even Arsenal knew the boy was lucky. It was a yellow card offence and the ref turned a blind eye. So within a few minutes, the player was off the pitch. Their lad didn't even get a warning. The ref acted like nothing ever happened.
 
Captain Hindsight said:
Of course I do, but only when the time is right. The game yesterday and against Leicester illustrates exactly what happens to us when a game gets heated.
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Then surely that's the managers and players fault? LVG should be telling them not to rise to it. Not the referees fault.
 
Matty7 said:
Then surely that's the managers and players fault? LVG should be telling them not to rise to it. Not the referees fault.
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I don't want to get into a huge debate about the referee as there are plenty in this thread. I, like man others, felt that had Oliver been slightly more consistent, we wouldn't have seen the tempers from some our players. For example, Di Maria was fouled twice in the 2nd half (maybe more) by Sanchez and Monreal; however, both were waved away which meant the officials suggested that they were dives. The third instance, where he was sent off, was the icing on the cake. Due to Oliver's, incompetency, Di Maria, needlessly, lashed out as he would have felt like a victim. What makes the situation even worse is the Sanchez dive a few minutes before.

Nevertheless, we didn't play well enough in the second half for the loss to be undeserved and there's, truly, no point in bashing the referee - he was just as sh*t as us.
 
Captain Hindsight said:
I don't want to get into a huge debate about the referee as there are plenty in this thread. I, like man others, felt that had Oliver been slightly more consistent, we wouldn't have seen the tempers from some our players. For example, Di Maria was fouled twice in the 2nd half (maybe more) by Sanchez and Monreal; however, both were waved away which meant the officials suggested that they were dives. The third instance, where he was sent off, was the icing on the cake. Due to Oliver's, incompetency, Di Maria, needlessly, lashed out as he would have felt like a victim. What makes the situation even worse is the Sanchez dive a few minutes before.

Nevertheless, we didn't play well enough in the second half for the loss to be undeserved and there's, truly, no point in bashing the referee - he was just as sh*t as us.
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I've said earlier about the Sanchez and Welbeck dives, he gave Di Maria 2/3 before he actually booked him, Di Maria spent a lot of the game rolling around on the floor and deserved the yellow tbh. Sanchez was given a bit of leeway there as t was his first one too which is more than fair. I thought he did as good as he could considering the fixture and he tried to keep it at 11vs11 only Di Maria let the club down by basically sending himself off.

The tempers of our players was our own doing because we were loosing. Had we been 2-0 up Di Maria wouldn't be throwing himself to ground or grabbing referees shirts. LVG/Rooney should of calmed all the players down and focused on the game not throwing tantrums and trying to find a scape goat. We lost the match ourselves not through he referee.
 
Thought he did well actually. Didn't get everything right but it was a pretty balanced affair. United players let themselves down and you can't point to Oliver for much.
 
Matty7 said:
I've said earlier about the Sanchez and Welbeck dives, he gave Di Maria 2/3 before he actually booked him, Di Maria spent a lot of the game rolling around on the floor and deserved the yellow tbh. Sanchez was given a bit of leeway there as t was his first one too which is more than fair. I thought he did as good as he could considering the fixture and he tried to keep it at 11vs11 only Di Maria let the club down by basically sending himself off.

The tempers of our players was our own doing because we were loosing. Had we been 2-0 up Di Maria wouldn't be throwing himself to ground or grabbing referees shirts. LVG/Rooney should of calmed all the players down and focused on the game not throwing tantrums and trying to find a scape goat. We lost the match ourselves not through he referee.
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They weren't dives, though. He was clearly fouled. Like I said, Oliver was incompetent.

Agreed.
 
Oliver got the Di Maria first booking wrong as Di Maria got tugged back. This led to Fi Maria acting like a fool. On the Arsenal lad that's a second booking he should have been off. The rest were pretty much spot on.
 
I've calmed down from last night and it's still abundantly clear that Oliver refereed the game excellently.
 
To those of you saying that Di Maria dived for his booking (not talking about the 2 incidents beforehand where he did):

Have you ever had your arm pulled back when sprinting at full speed? Of course you're going to take a tumble, it properly throws you off balance. He did dive during the match, but the incident he was booked for was not one where he was in the wrong.
 
Matty7 said:
I've said earlier about the Sanchez and Welbeck dives, he gave Di Maria 2/3 before he actually booked him, Di Maria spent a lot of the game rolling around on the floor and deserved the yellow tbh. Sanchez was given a bit of leeway there as t was his first one too which is more than fair. I thought he did as good as he could considering the fixture and he tried to keep it at 11vs11 only Di Maria let the club down by basically sending himself off.

The tempers of our players was our own doing because we were loosing. Had we been 2-0 up Di Maria wouldn't be throwing himself to ground or grabbing referees shirts. LVG/Rooney should of calmed all the players down and focused on the game not throwing tantrums and trying to find a scape goat. We lost the match ourselves not through he referee.
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Minor detail: Sanchez wasn't given leeway - he was given free kicks.
 
Lawman said:
Oliver got the Di Maria first booking wrong as Di Maria got tugged back. This led to Fi Maria acting like a fool. On the Arsenal lad that's a second booking he should have been off. The rest were pretty much spot on.
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Agreed I thought it was a harsh yellow but Di Maria doesn't help himself with officials by looking for it too much and the embarrassing feigning of injury.
 
Kag said:
I've calmed down from last night and it's still abundantly clear that Oliver refereed the game excellently.
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This. Both diving bookings were great calls. The ref was excellent last night. Him booking Bellerin in the third minute was good too as he pretty much made it clear he wasn't going to tolerate rash tackles. Fellaini got away with one foul too many but that kind of thing happens every game.
 
Krovv said:
This. Both diving bookings were great calls. The ref was excellent last night. Him booking Bellerin in the third minute was good too as he pretty much made it clear he wasn't going to tolerate rash tackles. Fellaini got away with one foul too many but that kind of thing happens every game.
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Januzaj yes. Di Maria no. Clear sending off though.

I also felt he gave 90% of the 50-50s to Arsenal, but he wasn't the reason we lost. Van Gaal was the first reasons and the players the next. He was a far distant third.
 
Krovv said:
This. Both diving bookings were great calls. The ref was excellent last night. Him booking Bellerin in the third minute was good too as he pretty much made it clear he wasn't going to tolerate rash tackles. Fellaini got away with one foul too many but that kind of thing happens every game.
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The bookings for the dives were the correct calls, but he should have booked Di Maria for it much earlier in the game, as he should have done with Welbeck and Sanchez. He set a precedent by booking for Bellerin for that challenge, as well as Herrera later in the half, but then completely ignored that precedent by failing to book Rojo for his first rash challenge, and completely bottling it when Bellerin committed another rash foul. Fellaini got away with about 4 fouls too many, and only got booked on about his 7th one, and I'm fairly sure he only got booked then because it was his second in quick succession.

The ref was bloody awful.
 
Why when people explain that Oliver got it wrong vs Hart does noone who referenced the Hart incident respond? Its like they know its stupid logic yet make the point anyway.
 
NM said:
Januzaj yes. Di Maria no. Clear sending off though.

I also felt he gave 90% of the 50-50s to Arsenal, but he wasn't the reason we lost. Van Gaal was the first reasons and the players the next. He was a far distant third.
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Fair play to you for knowing why you lost the game, but I don't think the Di Maria booking was a wrong call. He had a lot of space and the wrist tug was minor, not enough to go down. Throughout the game and this season I've seen Alexis get tugged back like that and he keeps trying to take the ball forward rather than fall over. A player of Di Maria's calibre should be looking to stay on his feet and take a shot from that distance. He instead was looking for a free kick when he could have easily carried on.

The sending off no one can argue with and what stumped me was why he did it. He's easily the best player in the team and was having a good game after a long time. Instead of driving the team forward, he had a mental breakdown of the Gervinho kind. That was sad to see.
 
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