Do Enough Cards Get Dished Out in the Prem?
By: Rob | March 4th, 2010
So in the aftermath of that horrible injury for Aaron Ramsey, after a reckless tackle from Ryan Shawcross the talk about the physical side of the English Premier League has been on everyone’s lips a bit again.
Tomas Rosicky was talking yesterday about how Arsenal players aren’t very protected by referees, as players can lunge in and not get booked for dangerous challenges.
So it might come as a bit of a surprise, amongst all this talk, the news that the Premier League is sitting in the top three of UEFA’s Fair Play league, meaning that, assuming we stay there, we’ll be gifted an extra UEFA cup spot.
Obviously the fair play stuff is based on cards, theres no other real way to do it. But it does beg the question as to whether we have referee’s that are a bit too lenient.
Obviously in this country there is a bit of a tradition with big tackles and the so-called physical side of the game. If you’ve ever been to a game in this country, you’ll know that – goals aside – the biggest cheer of the afternoon usually goes to a player who puts in a crunching tackle on a player on the other side. Especially if its an away player who is known as a bit of a fancy-dan.
Referee’s obviously have to respect this to some degree – at least as far as the laws allow. And I don’t think they should be booking every challenge and ruining the rhythm of the game.
But referee’s are sometimes reluctant to give out cards. You only have to watch the Champions League and you’ll know that what players get away with week-in-week-out in England just isn’t tolerated on the continent.
So shouldn’t referee’s dish out more cards, and help stamp out the kind of reckless tackle that causes these accidents to happen? Sure, not every reckless, clumsy challenge results in a broken leg, but enough do. Surely defenders would think twice about “setting the tone” of the game with a brutal challenge if they knew they would be on the recieving end of a booking?
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Category: EPL Ramblings
Comments
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I wonder if there is a corrolation between the lack of cards being shown and that extra UEFA spot. That being, the english game is known for its ‘physical’ play already, and now combine it with a 6th club in England being able to go to Europe, generate forgein cash to an English club and (more importantly?) more exposure of the EPL world wide, generating more TV revenues.
If it’s the case, then why would the FA ever want to change this?
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I wonder if there’s any way UEFA can step in. I mean, England’s lax standards are pretty well violating the spirit of the Fair Play Rankings. The award is supposed to reward fair behavior that avoids the kind of thuggish challenges and “setting the tone”. By just not giving any cards for that behavior, England is “winning” the letter of the law, but making a mockery of its existence.
Surely UEFA should be able to say something to prevent the Fair Play rankings from becoming just a meaningless joke or worse, other leagues deciding to do the same.
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Doesn’t matter what will happen, the refs will get blamed. They will always lose whether it will be taking a principled stand or letting things go. They can’t win.
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I do think the game would benefit by having refs go to their pocket more often. You can talk all you want about tradition, and the “Englishness” of the English game, but the bottom line is that having to watch a Stoke-Blackburn match is boring as hell. Forcing teams to stop kicking each other and start kicking the ball can only enhance the game from a neutral’s point of view.
Slightly off topic, I think an even bigger refereeing problem in the Prem is the lack of uniformity among referees. Some refs are quite quick to bring out the cards, but with others it takes a drive-by shooting to get so much as a yellow. Just weird to me that in a world class league such as this, you can basically be required to play a completely different game depending on who the referee drawn is.
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