I have read elsewhere that this is "the first game we can win away this season". Well if we do it will be the first we HAVE won away this season but I'd argue we could have won a few others with a fair wind and tide. We know that none of the games whoever they are against and wherever they are in the table are easy. The question is can we build on Saturday's success or was that just our day. I think we are going in the right direction and we can build on it. The Ref for this one has apparently mostly done his worst in League 2 this season with just 3 of his games in the Championship thrown in. He is another one with a record of yellows 37 and one red in 8 games. Is it me or are the Refs a bit eager to pull a card out this season? I know they were told to get tough for certain things but almost every Ref seems to be into multiple booking in every game. COYG
And yet my impression is they are giving far fewer free-kicks. There has to prima facie evidence of actual bodily harm to get a free kick this season. We should know, refs have twice (at least) failed to give us what would have been free kicks in any other season which led to break-aways by the opposition, goals conceded and points dropped, Similarly, there was the trip on Bundu that ought to have been a red card for the offender but wasn't. Coventry beat Millwall 0-3 on Saturday.... jus sayin.
Dan Scarr, Bali Mumba and Kaine Kesler-Hayden are all on four yellow cards and will get a one match suspension if they get one more against Coventry or Stoke. Both KKH and Mumba were booked on Saturday. We have a few options at full back, including Miller and at a push Gillesphy, Pleggy or Galloway. I thought Pleggy and Gibson did OK on Saturday in a clean-sheet game so I don't see a need to bring Dan Scarr back in. But Mumba is a problem. On his day, he's one of our best performers but he is what you might call mercurial, both in his play and his temperament.
Apparently yet another decision we were on the wrong side of. Everyone says that things even themselves up over a season so we are due at least 3 penalties and I don't know how many dodgy decisions over the course of the rest of this one. WE NEVER seem to get the rub of any green anywhere.
**** A scrappy game between two poor sides on the night. The only two Argyle players I’d name who played to their usual standard were Cooper and Houghton and that’s not going to win you anything. Mumba and Azaz were rightly subbed off. Waine didn’t affect the game and even Whittaker didn’t shine. But again we’ve been done by incompetent refereeing. The ball was CLEARLY out of play before it was knocked across for the Coventry goal. Too many Argyle players stopped playing but they did have reason. That reason was trust in the officials and increasingly that trust is misplaced. We weren’t good enough but that doesn’t excuse.that sort of gross error. It’s hard to explain the disparity between our home and away form. Perhaps with Bali Mumba way off his best, now’s the time to revisit 3:4:2:1.
This is hard to say but nonetheless it is how I feel. I am getting more and more disillusioned with football as the days pass. The Officials these days are just feckin pants and they are ruining the game one way or another. VAR was supposed to stop all the doubt and now it seems the bigger the club you are the more you get decisions even from that. PSG apparently tonight for a late penalty is an example. Lower down the food chain there isn't any VAR. Now I can accept it when a Ref and Lino get a close decision wrong even if it is shown to be wrong with a thousand slomo frames of a replay. They are human. I have thought a decision should be this or that myself and been proved wrong in replay so I can't criticise them too much there. But, when something is totally blatant then there really is no excuse for not seeing it. Their sole job is to watch the play and nothing but the play. Even in the lower reaches it seems that a smaller side will get shafted by that sort of thing far more than the percieved bigger ones. I am getting to the point where I could easily walk away from football altogether and simply not bother anymore.
Photo shot on pasoti shows the ball clearly out of play.....we can only assume the linesman/assistant ref was checking his train time home or was completely un-sited at that precise moment.
But he can’t be unsighted. It’s his job not to be unsighted. With the ball that close to the goal line, there’s no question of offside and part of the lino’s job is to help the ref decide if the ball has entered the goal. So he’s GOT to be at the corner flag looking toward the goal. OK, he’s looking through 2 pairs of legs but that ball is so far out the ball-boy was more likely to be unsighting him. The officials can’t say “I couldn’t see so I couldn’t make a decision”. They don’t have VAR to fall back on, so they have to make a decision on what they can see. Not making a decision is making a decision: in this case to wrongly play on. We all see those episodes when a defender makes a mistake and perhaps concedes a corner. He’ll usually tentatively raise a lonely arm claiming a goal kick and then all his teammates join in. That didn’t happen here. A forest of arms went up simultaneously. I understand they can’t let the players run the game but in the situation where it was damn close and there’s a reaction like that, I think circumstantial evidence should be admitted. In any event, he had to be at the corner flag and he should have seen.
I assume we'll get a belated apology.............................................................................hopefully.
What's the point of an appology? They got it wrong and we have lost at least a point. That won't change no matter what they do now. The punishment should be both the lino and Ref get shot at the very least. I would also add to that. I have looked on the Beeb football site and there are a shed load of comments from supporters about the decision. Most of the Coventry comments say it was well out and Argyle were unlucky. However, some are saying we are just whinging and it wasn't. They should be added to the "to be shot" list as well. If a decision was close I could happily take a result if it was for us. I could not be happy under any circumstances if we gained a result in this way and I absolutely could not defend being happy about it either.
Just watched the video.....dear oh dear oh dear......a blind man standing on the Hoe could see that was out of play. Ref and Lino should be relegated to the local Rec league for the next six months.....a Specsavers moment.
I accept they didn’t see it from the same angle as the TV camera but you can see grass, the line, more grass and then the ball. How far out is that? If the lino couldn’t see it because of the legs then the ref is supposed to run the diagonal and so should have had a very similar angle to the camera, albeit without the elevation. Did he see it? It’s clearly out. The lino apparently said “it was only half out” which is clearly wrong. That means he couldn’t see it properly or wasn't looking at all. If he hasn’t seen it clearly, but knows it was at least half out. surely with something so clearly in his remit and in the face of such a convincing mass appeal, he has to err on the side of caution and give it out? Did the ref and lino even discus it in the face of such a big appeal? I bet they didn’t.even though they are mike-ed up for just such situations. I suppose the bigger question is why are we so poor away from home? It can’t be the opposition because most teams in this league would consider themselves “bigger” than us and therefore do not pay us the compliment of packing their defence at Home Park. They come expecting to win just as most teams do at their own grounds. We take a large and noisy group of fans to every away game, which in some ways may be more encouraging to the players than the more routine home attendances. So if it’s neither of those things……
From reading various match reports...it seemed to me that we had a few players who weren't up to two games in quick succession.....Mumba, Azaz were two obvious ones. Having browsed through some very boring Coventry match chat....and having been given a disgraceful goal decision.....they were of the opinion that the Ref and his Linos were utterly useless.
It’s possible: Azaz and Whittaker played 88 minutes on Saturday and Mumba was still there at the final whistle. But they had just had a 2 week break before that and it doesn’t explain the difference between home and away form. I thought Mumba was below par on Saturday BTW.
