HEY, PUNDITS, LEAVE THOSE REFS ALONE

ROB WATSON SAYS IT'S TIME THAT THOSE WHO TALK ABOUT THE GAME LIMIT THEIR SNIPING AT MATCH OFFICIALS

- By Rob Watson

IN THE last weekend of the Premier league season, something happened that sent shockwaves through football and sent pundits spiralling. This seismic occurrence was... a human made a mistake.

Or at least several other humans felt strongly that another human had made a mistake.

The incident I am referring to that got many pundits throughout the English game into an apoplectic state was when Aston Villa had a goal disallowed at Old Trafford because, in the opinion of the referee, Morgan Rogers had kicked the ball from Altay Bayindir's grasp.

As with lots of laws in and outside of football, the law that covers a situation like this could accurately be described as vague and open to some interpretation.

Included in the law is the line that the ball being 'between two hands of the goalkeeper' means that a player is not allowed to kick the ball. The ball was between the Manchester United goalkeeper's hands.

Quite why it was not firmly in his grasp will be a head scratcher for all goalkeeper coaches. Maybe that's why the referee blew his whistle so quickly, he felt that surely the goalkeeper must have picked the ball up.

I can empathise with Unai Emery and anyone involved in Aston Villa. I am sure Mr Emery has put thousands of hours of hard work into his quest to guide Aston Villa back into the Champions League.

That makes it easy for me to understand his anger at a sense of injustice in the final game of the season. Yet he was able within an hour of the conclusion to the game to have enough sense of perspective to acknowledge that their performances in the first half of the season were a far bigger contributing factor to them missing out on the top five than any one refereeing decision.