PGMOL and Michael Oliver – Here comes the cover-up
Wait for it everyone, because it’s coming…..
The reaction to Myles Lewis-Skelly’s laughable red card against Wolves on Saturday has pretty much been universal disbelief from across the football world, aside from the odd Spurs fan of course.
Everyone who knows football knows that was never a red card. It never has been and you can pretty much guarantee it never will be again.
“One of the worst decisions that I’ve seen in a long time,” said Alan Shearer. “It’s a joke,” blasted a bemused Ian Wright.” “A bar so low even a limbo dancing snake couldn’t get under it,” a stunned Pet Nevin said on BBC 5Live.
Even Soccer Saturday’s PGMOL puppet Mike Dean eventually said it was ‘harsh’ and when he admits that it is pretty much an admission that it was one of the worst decisions you will see in a long time.
But despite all that, the cover-up is coming. So prepare yourselves for it…..
The usual suspects will start to stir and the messages will begin to filter out about how PGMOL are backing their man and that he is being unfairly criticised.
They will tell us how Michael Oliver was factually correct to send Lewis-Skelly off for tripping Matt Doherty 90 yards from goal and how the cowardly Darren England on VAR duty was right not to tell his mate he had made an embarrassing mistake and to go to the monitor to look at it again.
You can set your watch by it, because it’s going to happen.
PGMOL in its current guise is not fit for the purpose. We all know it. Even rival fans who are trying to make out that Oliver was correct know it deep down. And they will be the first to complain when something like this inevitably happens to their team by the way….
This is supposed to be one of the top referees in the country. Yet time and time again we see things like this from him when he takes charge of Arsenal. The evidence is there and it’s undeniable. There was very little trust left in Oliver before yesterday’s events, there is absolutely none now.
Leandro Trossard summed it up when he walked over to Joao Gomes after the Wolves player had been booked for kicking the ball away in the first half at Molineux. “He has done it to me,” he said, with a look on his face which told it’s own story about how everyone at Arsenal feels about Oliver.
“Hopefully we don’t need to,” A furious Mikel Arteta said when asked after yesterday’s 1-0 win whether Arsenal would launch an appeal over the red card.
But the club will need to because I just don’t see Howard Webb and his cronies at the PGMOL accepting that they were wrong.
They just won’t do it. They will lie and they will twist the laws of the game every which way they can to try and justify why it was in fact a red card and why the officials got it right, despite everyone else on the planet knowing that it wasn’t.
They don’t care how they are viewed now. It’s obvious. All they care about is being centre of attention and trying to make themselves the real stars of the game.
It’s just not good enough and until that changes, the Premier League is going to be worse of it. In the words of Mikel Arteta, desgracia……
Anyway, enough of the moaning. Arsenal did actually win a game of football yesterday and if you want to hear more from me on the battling victory at Molineux, including my thoughts on the game itself and my Arsenal player ratings, you can listen to my Inside Arsenal show below.