Keith Hackett is the latest referee to add his view of Bobby Madley’s refereeing decisions.
Writing in the Telegraph Hackett says: “I have every sympathy with West Ham United manager David Moyes over the two big controversies in Tuesday’s match at Bournemouth.
Managers need referees to get the big decisions right and on both counts Bobby Madley was emphatically wrong.
Simon Francis’s studs-high challenge on Cheikhou Kouyate was a definite red-card offence. The Bournemouth defender’s boot was high and dangerous and could have caused serious injury to the West Ham midfielder. Officials have a duty of care to protect players. Madley was also letting his colleagues down by failing to adequately punish such as reckless challenge as this. It sends out completely the wrong message.
As for Bournemouth’s third goal, I cannot understand how Madley overruled his assistant, who appeared to flag for offside when Nathan Ake headed to Callum Wilson and was in a much better position to see the infringement.
I think Madley was trying to be too clever by ignoring his assistant and he has to show trust in his colleague. I was instrumental in introducing communication kits for match officials so Madley must have been aware of his assistant’s viewpoint.
I also believe subsequently there was contact between Wilson’s arm and the ball before it went into the net. Not an impressive start to the festive programme for match officials I am afraid.”
Will the panel be reviewing this incident after all Callum Wilson unfairly gains a advantage
Of course they won’t because it would show what a pillock the refereee was.
Having said that West Ham have again gone back to the bad old ways of defending Moyes must be desperate to improve his defence but will Sullivan stump up the cash.
Agree Claret, can’t say I am surprised, although I am not happy abut it Bournemouth have had nearly as many shockers against them as we have, Eddie Howe probably just thinks this is one or two back in the decisions for column, the fact is the referees are very poor these days, I can’t remember officiating ever being this bad, yes there were the odd shockers but these were kept down to a few matches a season it seems now almost every game has many, we have had video replays for many years so that can’t be an excuse, the ridiculous complexity and changes to the offside rule should be done away with, just switch back to the old rule it was easy to police and never left any doubt, you were either onside or offside and that was that.