PLAY THE ADVANTAGE

It’s starting to get a little boring.

Apparently, whenever a team starts to go completely lousy, the manager comes out and says something stupid about the referees to try and obfuscate the issue: that his team suck.

First, there was good old Brendan “Geographically Correct” Rodgers. Then there was the Great Adam Lallana Affair over at Southampton. Both were smear campaigns (of varying levels of effectiveness) against the referees in question: Lee Mason and Mark Clattenburg, respectively.

But Manchester United’s caretaker manager David Moyes has taken it a step further, by going after not one, not two, but every referee in the game.

It all started when Howard Webb didn’t call a penalty against Tottenham’s Hugo Lloris for upending Ashley Young in the box (which, looking back on it, he probably should have.)

Moyes said it was “scandalous”, and if he’d stopped there, he would have been okay.

But so incensed was he with Andre Marriner during ManU’s 2-1 loss to Sunderland in the Capital One Cup, that he lost all sense of perspective and said this:

Yeah…. You can’t say that, David. You can’t claim that the reason you’re losing is that your opponents have a 12th man. You can’t openly mock these guys who are just trying to do their jobs. Not only will it get your ass fined, it’s just not sportsmanlike.

Also, let me point out that the men he’s upset with are Howard Webb and Andre Marriner.

Howard Webb

And Andre Marriner

Even when they make mistakes, these are widely recognized as some of the best and most neutral officials in the English game. (In fact, up until the Tottenham match, you’d more likely hear jokes about Webb working for ManU than the other way around.)

Naturally, the FA isn’t going to let this go. Here’s what they had to say:

“Manchester United manager David Moyes has been charged for misconduct by The FA in relation to post-match media comments he made following his side’s game against Sunderland on Tuesday 7 January 2014,” an FA statement read.

“It is alleged the comments called into question the integrity of the match officials appointed to that fixture and/or appointed to Manchester United fixtures generally, and/or implied that such match officials are motivated by bias; and/or brought the game into disrepute, in contravention of Rule E3(1).”

We’ll see if he owns up to it the way Brendan Rodgers did (sort of) and accepts the charge. With the crazy way he’s been acting lately, I would guess not…

Update: Well, what do I know? He accepted the charges.