McClennan wrote:
RE: Suarez diving and the baggage that comes with it.
There's an age old story called Peter and the Wolf that Liverpool fans should read first before having a pop at refs. Refs do as good a job as can be expected and when you have charlatans trying to con them even further it's understandable if they find it hard to interpret theatrics correctly. The only way to address that issue is for the player themselves to take responsibility for their own actions. Blaming the ref for not seeing it is the bed you've made and one that you must lie in until others start to believe you. If a player continues to pepper genuine fouls against with what can only be described as cheating lies (looking to win a foul when one hasn't occurred is deliberately misleading and therefore a lie) resets any good work done. Suarez and players like him are to blame not the referees who, we should remember, are trying to do an honest job.
I agree with most of what you say.
But the problem is in the huge grey area over fouls. If a defender impedes an attacker just enough to cause his team mate to make a clearance that is still a foul. But good luck finding refs that are strong enough to make that decision. They need the player to go down to force them to actually make a decision.
An honest striker is one that defenders will love. They'll just hang all over him all game, knowing that as long as they don't actually cause him to go to ground they'll be able to foul all the time and get away with it. Just look at the ludicrous situation over free kicks into the penalty area. If an attacker looks at a defender the wrong way the refs will instantly give a free kick against him. At the same time if a defender picks up an attacker and carries him into the stand the referee will fail to see anything wrong.
Then there's the issue of players going into challenges as though they are going to clatter into someone and then pulling out at the last minute. That's a foul according to the rules.
Managers then cause more problems with their mind games. Pulis has been on a roll over diving and bad tackles against his side. Don't think he was too bothered by Crouch's hand ball before he scored against Citeh though, and he's quick to defend his players after they've hospitalised another player.
Then we've got the Shearer's, Lawrensen's and the Gray's who are the main voices on refereeing decisions. While they are all ex pro's, they don't really demonstrate that they have any extended knowledge because they've played the game. Have they gained at all from their years of "analysing" the game, or are they basically spouting the same drivel they talked when they first got their paying gig after stopping playing?
Suarez is an awful diver. He's got a rep for it, we've laughed at the videos. But the fact is that he is still the victim of many more fouls against him than he is of winning free kicks by diving. But somehow a defender deliberately fouling him doesn't get classed as ***CHEATING*** but him diving once after been kicked a few times is the worst kind of cheating imaginable.
