Not good enough first half.
Credit to Benitez, the team came out second half a completely different side and worked themselves to a 2-1 lead. The first time half time has seen a positive change from the team (against a PL team anyway).
Losing the 2 goal leads against Southampton and Reading, I wanted Benitez shooting for those games. Losing today, no issue with Benitez at all. It was a proper, decent game and we happened to lose. That's football.
But now I turn to Howard Webb. Ba gets kicked in the face when he's heading a head high ball towards goal. The ball goes wide. Howard Webb gives the goal kick. WTFF? It's the clearest penalty you can ever see. The defenders foot is high, it is dangerous, he doesn't win the ball, he kicks Ba in the face and breaks his nose. How can you not give a pen for that?
And then Cisse leads with his elbow directly at a players head for an aerial challenge. From memory, I don't think he made contact, but just the leading with the elbow is a borderline yellow/red offence. Ref gives nowt. Ashley Cole was either saying something to the lino or having a dig at Cisse. Cisse then goes up to Cole, grabs him by the throat. Cole doesn't react and and lets it go. Webb books them both. I think the stupid FA rules don't allow yellows to be rescinded, so Cole can't his removed, but Webb had better be reporting that as a red card offence from Cisse that he missed.
But I know that ain't happening. Nothing will result from that travesty of a decision. Cisse's got a 3 1/4 game bonus where he can play when he shouldn't have been. Cole has another yellow card against his name that he shouldn't have. But it's against Chelsea, so the media and FA won't be giving any ***** this weekend.
I don't think we're a good team right now. We've got some great players, we have a potentially excellent team, but we're not strong enough to rise above the ****. But we are regularly screwed by refs. I bet we're getting close to averaging a clear pen per game that we're not being given. If Jose Mourinho was our boss right now, World War 3 would be starting and the referees would know that if they don't give us pens when there's a clear pen in front of them, they'd be barraged with bombs. They'd be instinctively pointing to the spot over these incidents.
I don't blame Benitez for that. I don't think he has the remit to go to war with refs. I blame our board. I think they don't want controversy and because of that sew their manager's mouths shut. And because we're accepting of bad decisions, bad decisions keep on happening. I hate our board. I hate out board so much.
So, Ba's picked up a broken nose. That means he could be out for a month or two. So we're now left with Torres as all of our striking options. Brilliant. Good work board. You really know what you're doing. Good job Torres is playing so well, sky high with confidence and immune from injury himself. (Thought Torres played pretty well when he came on today though. No problem with him from me today.)
