FA have granted Andy Carroll and West Ham an ‘arbitration hearing‘ before their fixture with Aston Villa. This will presumably happen today, since it’s the last business day before the weekend’s matches. In case you’ve been hiding under a rock: Carroll was red carded by Howard Webb last weekend for hitting Chico Flores in the head with his arm. Flores overacted,
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Mark Clattenburg is the Man to Watch this upcoming week. But then, when isn’t he? He’s got Everton (5th) at Spurs (6th) on Sunday, then takes a break and does Arsenal (1st) v. Man United (7th) on Wednesday. A single bad call from him this week could impact next year’s Champions League spots, and maybe even the title race. No
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According to this exclusive in Daily Mail, the big kahunas of football were so aghast at Mike Jones’ horrendous day at Newcastle that they’re just throwing money at refereeing now. The highlights of the story: The amount of money spent on refs is due to nearly triple, to somewhere around 1 million pounds annually The goal is to both raise current
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Ever wonder what (if any) thought goes into the Premier League referee appointments week in and week out? While it’s something of a trade secret, I’ve managed to dig up an old list that seems to still be relevant. While these may not be the only criteria PGMOL use, this list seems pretty comprehensive. The referee’s current form – We saw
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The big game this week is Manchester City v. Chelsea. Mike Dean will officiate that one. He’s near the top of the charts on yellow cards, and only Andre Marriner and Martin Atkinson have handed out more red cards. It’ll be interesting to see how he handles these two teams of prima donnas footballers. Elsewhere, Phil Dowd is managing the Anti-Mark
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Let’s state this right up front: ManU are collapsing. So there’s no reason to go over their calamitous 3-1 defeat at Chelsea. What is worth discussing are two calls Phil Dowd made in injury time, one to send Nemanja Vidic off with a straight red card and one to keep Rafael on with a yellow. Either way, ManU ends up with
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There are Premier League games scheduled for mid-week next week, January 28-29. While the official appointments are not out on the refereeing site yet, Premier League did tweet a number of upcoming appointments. The biggest news is that Clatts is back! Mark Clattenburg was injured before the Stoke v. Crystal Palace game, and was unable to officiate. He’s also skipping
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Update, March 1: The referee for the Capital One Cup final on Sunday, March 2 between Manchester City and Sunderland is Martin Atkinson. It’s a Cup week, with the Capital One Cup semifinals on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the FA Cup fourth round on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Cups are always exciting, because we get to see some new faces along with the
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How cute is this picture of Howard Webb photobombing his uber-serious (and uber-cold, looks like) refereeing team? You just keep being you, Howard. You just keep being you.
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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
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PLAY THE ADVANTAGE 