BFTG - Blackburn (a)

[3points]

The ref hasn't exactly got much help from the lino there has he? Not that he should need it.

[paddy20]

Dear god just seen the penalty call, how obvious do you want it?

Awful! It's farcical in this day & age that the yellow card will stick as well.

I believe that the club can ask the ref himself to review it but how many officials are good enough/confident enough to put their hands up and admit they made a mistake? Instead, the clown in charge yesterday will convince himself that he did no wrong and had a good game, despite very clear evidence to the opposite.

Doing well at palace though.

Kebe wasn't even in the Palace squad yesterday. Injured? Coach journey too long? Too cold? The going was getting too tough for Palace?

Good player when his head was in the right place, which was nowhere near often enough.

Wasn't there yesterday because he wasn't picked. Not had any sort of look in at Palace. Just one first half away to Liverpool where he was played as a central forward??? and a couple of short sub appearances. In the prem he had to play a much more defensive role but still scored 5 goals until he was injured in March. According to adkins had he remained fit Reading would have not been relegated. Some people have a very short memory of our better players.

[paddy20]

in his early days yes when he wanted to utilise it, towards the end of his Reading career he just couldn`t be assed.

Wrong way round.

At the beginning he was a bit shit, but he was a joy to watch for his is last four years at the cub. He scored a few, set up lots, took loads of defenders with him, and was incredibly exciting. He took time to get up to full speed after his injuries, but that is true of many players with extreme pace, but there was rarely a game when he didn't do something brilliant, and loads of game where he made it worth coming on his own.

If you can't appreciate a player like Jimmy Kebe, then you don't get Reading FC in particular and football in general. Are Man Utd on the telly today for you?

Also. Assed? Wtf

+ 1

[LoyalRoyalFan]

It's all well and good that Obita is a decent young player, but should he be ahead of McAnuff in the side? No. Another Adkins mistake, purely because he is a McDermott player no doubt.

[BrianMünchen]

It's all well and good that Obita is a decent young player, but should he be ahead of McAnuff in the side? No. Another Adkins mistake, purely because he is a McDermott player no doubt.

+1, I like Obita and support youth team players getting their chance but nobody can honestly argue Obita should be in that starting 11. McAnuff is a proven, experienced player at this level, HRK, albeit a shadow of last season, is still a match winner and capable of turning a game.

[winchester_royal]

It's all well and good that Obita is a decent young player, but should he be ahead of McAnuff in the side? No. Another Adkins mistake, purely because he is a McDermott player no doubt.

You don't really understand the concept of building for the future do you? Yes, McAnuff might do a marginally better job at this very moment in time, but not only does Obita have the potential to be better (potential that will only be realised by playing games) but having an academy player in the first team brings plenty of intangible benefits in terms of motivation to the rest of the academy players who will work harder to improve themselves as a result of seeing that there is a pathway into the first team if they apply themselves. Not to mention the fact that McAnuff is ageing quite rapidly, has lost his pace, and is out of contract at the end of the season so building a team around him would be utterly pointless.

Adkins was brought in on the remit of bringing academy players through into the first team. He doesn't deserve abuse for therefore playing the guy widely considered to be the best prospect we've produced since Gylfi.

[Platypuss]

It's all well and good that Obita is a decent young player, but should he be ahead of McAnuff in the side? No. Another Adkins mistake, purely because he is a McDermott player no doubt.

Which one's the McDermott player again?

[stealthpapes]

in his early days yes when he wanted to utilise it, towards the end of his Reading career he just couldn`t be assed.

Wrong way round.

At the beginning he was a bit shit, but he was a joy to watch for his is last four years at the cub. He scored a few, set up lots, took loads of defenders with him, and was incredibly exciting. He took time to get up to full speed after his injuries, but that is true of many players with extreme pace, but there was rarely a game when he didn't do something brilliant, and loads of game where he made it worth coming on his own.

If you can't appreciate a player like Jimmy Kebe, then you don't get Reading FC in particular and football in general. Are Man Utd on the telly today for you?

Also. Assed? Wtf

Game vs Arsenal. Possibly his debut. One on one with the Arsenal player, little shimmy and the ball is shinned into touch. Arsenal player looks up with a genuine "WTF" expression.

[Ian Royal]

Video of Gunter's dive http://t.co/ltVODilXIE

Ok, I was dubious when I think you said it was the most stonewall penalty ever not given. Now I've seen it I am literally gobsmacked at how that not only wasn't a penalty, but also was worthy of a yellow card. He clean took Gunter's legs out and got nowhere near the ball.

That's so bad the ref's either corrupt or or truely incompetent. Either way that should be his last game for quite a while.

[Ian Royal]

Obita was beating men yesterday but being left isolated by the rest of the team and surrounded by 3 or 4 more players as he was the only one near them to mark.

Fair enough - my comment was based on his displays at home. Looks talented, but always seems to want to play the Beckham ball (ie bend it around the defender rather than go past the defender first)

Yeah I wasn't having a go, just letting you know!

That video is incredible, the slow dawning upon our fans, the shock on the keepers face that he's got the free kick, almost questioning the ref, and Gunter's anger at the lino, you'd think the referee would clock all that.

It's the desperate finger wagging from the defender who's feeling so guilty he's just assuming the ref's given a penalty that gets me.

[handbags_harris]

It's an absolute stonewaller. Hanley cleans him out, no question. However, I'm going to give a bit of a backhanded defence of the referee in this instance. Referees are trained to look at the body language of a player when they are falling in close proximity to an opponent, it is in 99% of cases a key giveaway because the language is so different. One of the major aspects a player does when exaggerating a fall is to fall with the arms outstretched above the head. A natural fall would see the arms instinctively look to break an unintentional fall, the arms generally point downwards so the palms of the hands hit the floor first. Gunter's body language when he falls is very much the former, couple this with the referees positioning (he is somewhere in the vicinity of the penalty area D) which is with Hanley's back to him leading to possible obscuration of the contact, the referee can only go by what he sees and he has incorrectly deemed it a dive. So Gunter's instinctive body language does him no favours unfortunately, despite the fact that his feet were wiped from under him.

However, what that neglects to consider is that in these instances he absolutely must look to his linesman for assistance in coming to the correct decision to see if there was any contact but at absolutely no point does he do this. There is no pause between challenge and whistle and the instant the whistle is blown he is striding towards Gunter to book him. That is utterly p*ss poor refereeing, utterly incompetent and smacks of a referee who is content to trust his own judgement without using all of the tools at his disposal (unintended pun there, but very apt actually). On a tangent from this, the linesman, when realising the referee was looking to book Gunter, should have been screaming in his ear that it was a foul, but I can only assume the linesman didn't want to seek to "overrule" the ultimate authority.

All we can hope is that the referee in this case does the decent thing and admits he made a massive, embarrassing mistake publically and agrees to get the booking rescinded.

Interesting isn't it? We've been on the receiving end of rare opposites this season. This penalty incident at Blackburn, and the penalty against Watford where the referee blew his whistle immediately after the challenge without knowing what he was blowing for, seemingly started to walk towards the Watford player to presumably book him for diving before the linesman bailed him out completely by putting the flag across his chest. One of these was a clear penalty, I'm absolutely convinced that the other wasn't.

[SydenhamRoyal]

It's an absolute stonewaller. Hanley cleans him out, no question. However, I'm going to give a bit of a backhanded defence of the referee in this instance. Referees are trained to look at the body language of a player when they are falling in close proximity to an opponent, it is in 99% of cases a key giveaway because the language is so different. One of the major aspects a player does when exaggerating a fall is to fall with the arms outstretched above the head. A natural fall would see the arms instinctively look to break an unintentional fall, the arms generally point downwards so the palms of the hands hit the floor first. Gunter's body language when he falls is very much the former, couple this with the referees positioning (he is somewhere in the vicinity of the penalty area D) which is with Hanley's back to him leading to possible obscuration of the contact, the referee can only go by what he sees and he has incorrectly deemed it a dive. So Gunter's instinctive body language does him no favours unfortunately, despite the fact that his feet were wiped from under him.

However, what that neglects to consider is that in these instances he absolutely must look to his linesman for assistance in coming to the correct decision to see if there was any contact but at absolutely no point does he do this. There is no pause between challenge and whistle and the instant the whistle is blown he is striding towards Gunter to book him. That is utterly p*ss poor refereeing, utterly incompetent and smacks of a referee who is content to trust his own judgement without using all of the tools at his disposal (unintended pun there, but very apt actually). On a tangent from this, the linesman, when realising the referee was looking to book Gunter, should have been screaming in his ear that it was a foul, but I can only assume the linesman didn't want to seek to "overrule" the ultimate authority.

All we can hope is that the referee in this case does the decent thing and admits he made a massive, embarrassing mistake publically and agrees to get the booking rescinded.

Interesting isn't it? We've been on the receiving end of rare opposites this season. This penalty incident at Blackburn, and the penalty against Watford where the referee was about to book the opposition player for diving before going with his linesman. One of these was a clear penalty, I'm absolutely convinced that the other wasn't.

You neglect to mention Yeovil, where we on the receiving end of an embarrassing penalty decision, and boy did we receive. it evens out. We live with it.

[Big Ern]

You can forgive the ref for missing the penaltym every team has been on the bad end of decisions. What annoys me though is his booking for Gunter. The Penalty decsion on itls own was terriboe, but the yellow card was a disgrace.