The injustice of it all!
I can handle a few dodgy decisions, even a few unanswered penalty appeals but when a referee decides that an innocuous tackle is worthy of a red card, not once but twice, even a placid guy like me has a tendency to foam at the mouth.
There`s no doubting that the 49th minute sending off of Erik Nevland was a major factor in our defeat in Rome yesterday and some of the opposition players even looked embarrassed when it happened, but to lose a second player, albeit in stoppage time, for another run-of-the-mill tackle was enough to even get Roy Hodgson`s goat up!
In the, now familiar, after match interview it was a restrained Roy Hodgson, fearful of any sanctions UEFA might impose if he really spoke his mind, that muttered,
“I can`t always be happy, not in the face of injustice.”
“We`ve had three sendings off in the two games and quite frankly I haven`t seen one sending off offence. But that`s me, I`m not making the decisions.”
“I accept the decisions because the referee makes decisions and you have to abide by them but you can`t expect me to be happy about it.”
“In the first half we were clearly the better team but to play most of the second half with 10 men as we had to in the home game, it`s a bitter pill to swallow.”
“Now I could struggle to get 11 players out for the remaining two games because of the suspensions.”
“I`ve not got 60 players. I`ll be hard pressed to find 18 players to represent the club. I`m not completely writing us off.”
“It`s been an interesting experience. A lot of good things have come out of it.”
Although we can still qualify for the next stages, the defeat in Rome makes it a tough road and reading between the lines you get the impression that Roy Hodgson may well have, almost, given up the ghost.
Can you blame him with decisions like those we witnessed yesterday?
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