Column: Old Trafford VAR debacle should be Howard’s End
Graham Dougan was a youth prospect at Arsenal in the 1970s but never quite made the grade, forging his career in the upper echelons of the old division two.
He was also a Scottish U25 international. He is a regular pundit on TV in Malta and Luxembourg, and an after-dinner speaker of some repute.
He writes exclusively for the site and we’re sure you will enjoy his keen and unique insight into the game.
In this column, he looks at the officiating disaster at Old Trafford on Sunday, and refereeing standards in general.
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Like most of you, I sat down to watch the Manchester derby last Sunday hoping for an entertaining game of football. Or, if the two teams couldn’t produce that with the ball, an gratuitous orgy of ultra-violence, cynical fouls, and nipple-twisting without it.
When Phil Foden stupidly reacted to the provocation of Bimbo Fernandes midway through the first half, I thought ‘Here we go!’, and I pulled the metaphorical box of Kleenex closer to me on the sofa. I did the same with the actual box of Kleenex too. Hay fever season lasts longer in these warm Maltese climes.
Sadly, it was all a bit of a damp squid in the end, but of course there was controversy when Erling Haaland scored the goal that ultimately won Man City the game. The Norwegian giant, like some kind of seafaring Scandinavian warrior for whom there is no accepted generic term, looked offside in the build up. Nowadays though we have the technology to show that, because of a Manchester United player’s extended foot, he was actually in an onside position.
Unfortunately, much like with governments and most broadcasters, we have allowed this technology to be manned by complete idiots. As the two VAR officials went through the processes to see if Haaland was off or on, they neglected to notice the presence of Enzo Fernandez who threw himself at the ball like a Ku Klux Klan member throwing himself into his robes on initiation day.
Clearly he was interfering with play because his efforts to play the ball distracted Listerine Martinez, the United defender who would otherwise have just whacked it to safety. It’s not as if Fernandez wore a cloak of invisibility. He was right there, with his teeth shining in glorious tribute to Brendan Rodgers, but somehow these two officials didn’t even mention it when we heard the audio of the incident played back on Sky Sports.
Referee boss Howard Webb was there with his small friend Michael Owen ready to explain what happened. Which is a bit like asking a tiny idiot who used to play football to interrogate a former policeman in a position of power he will cling to like Gianni Infantino clings to despots and dictators. It can only end one way: with a load of bullshit and a sense that you have wasted valuable time in a part of your life where that commodity becomes more and more precious.
What you want in these circumstances if for someone in power to take responsibility, instead Webb basically gave two fingers to anyone complaining by saying, “They take a lot of personal pride in what they do. And they’re obviously hurting now, having fallen short in this situation. They’ll not be officiating again until after the international break.”
So, his solution to this debacle is … to give the lads some time off. Lovely, wouldn’t we all appreciate a job like that? You make a mistake, it has serious repercussions for one club, and your boss says ‘Don’t worry fellas, have an all-expenses trip to Bali, get yourselves on the Mai-Tais, meet some nice girls or boys, go back to your hotel rooms, caress each other all over in increasingly erotic ways, perhaps using some scented lotions, and come back after the international break and do better’.
It’s no wonder the world is in the state it is these days if that’s the way he’s going to deal with things! He has to go!
I remember back in my playing days, I didn’t track my man and he ran off the back of me to score a winning goal. It’s fair to say my manager was less than impressed. The next day I was brought in for extra training, I had to run up and down the terraces for 9 hours while he sat in a deck chair calling me a ‘Scotch prick’, and when I fell into a hypothermic coma in the late afternoon, he waited two hours before calling the club doctor who said if he’d been delayed any more, I might have lost a couple of toes to frostbite.
It taught me a valuable lesson though. Chief of which was to make sure that when you knew who you were marking, as soon as the ref’s back was turned, you two-footed him in the ankle so he was too sore to sprint. Thankfully we didn’t have multiple cameras from multiple angles back then, and unless the linesman had egret eyes, you could hobble your opponent at will.
The Old Trafford incident came just a day after Arsenal were involved in a contentious incident of their own. The referee adjudged that Ezri Konsole fouled former Gunner Dan Bollard and pointed to the penalty spot. I was aghast when I saw the replays. This was, as Mikel Arteta put it, a judo roll. Or, to put it another way, the same way Charlie Nicholas once got thrown out of Springfellows one Tuesday evening after he got a bit rowdy on the Veuve Clicquot.
Thankfully for us, David Raya stretched out a big hand to make the save, before Sunderland were made to pay by the fantastic goal from Bruno Gimmerice. As an ex-Newcastle player that will have chapped their hides extensively, but much like Howard Webb and his motley crue of dimwit officials who can’t see a man even though the man is there, it’s least they deserve.
Until next time, your pal. GD.
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ps – I am aware my columns are more sporadic these days. I continue to work on my memoir with a ghost writer, but I think the ghost rider has ghosted me as I haven’t heard from him in months. The irony of being Ghosted by a ghost as I try and create ‘Graham Dougan –Phantom menace: the story of football’s binational hero‘ is not lost on me.
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