Left back - a football blog

It’s a small man who takes pleasure in another’s misery.

I look at John Terry’s weeping countenance and I admit it freely, I am that small man. I also enjoyed Drogba, the great big bottler, getting sent off. He didn’t fancy a penalty and took the easy way out. English football won’t miss his drama and histrionics no matter how many goals he scores.

What’s great is that basking in the pain of Terry allows me to ignore the fact that United won it. Thank you, JT, thank you.

On the other hand Avram Grant was quietly dignified, consoling a man who many suggest might have been one of those voices from within the dressing room leaking stories to the press about the Israeli’s supposed ineptitude.

On another note, what the hell was Peter Kenyon doing leading the team up to get the medals? He really is a despicable man - but then as a ‘life long red’ his night surely had a silver lining.

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…Always, always, always dive right. It’s amazing how ‘keepers still dive the wrong way against such a high-profile spot kick taker.

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After watching Emmanuel Eboue take a theatrical flop in the penalty box against Milan last night, Richard Keys tried to stoke up his usual post-match controversy by insisting it could have been a penalty. His reasoning for this - which he gave repeatedly - was that “there was contact”.

So what? There’s quite often contact between players in the penalty area. If every bit of contact was awarded a penalty, we’d see rugby scores.

There are ten reasons a player might be penalised, but none of them involve simply making contact. Stop stirring, Keys, you tiresome sod.

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You could have said ‘okay, he got a couple of things wrong’, and I can, but the one in the final second is so blatant that to get that wrong on top of everything else was just incredible.

I have to question whether you can referee if you don’t see that foul on Joleon Lescott by Jamie Carragher.

David Moyes

I don’t think that could be better expressed at all. It’s understandable that referees decisions aren’t always popular (or even correct), but Mark Clattenburg was beyond the pale on Saturday.

Even if you accept that the foul on Gerrard was inside the area, and the first incident with Lescott was backing-in, and there was no recklessness in Kuyt’s two-footed, two-feet-off-the-ground tackle… even if you accept all that, there’s no excuse for changing the colour of the card on Gerrard’s say-so, and definitely no excuse for not awarding a penalty for the blatant foul on Lescott at the end.

This wasn’t some borderline incident which could only be determined by the use of close-ups and slow motion, this was a clear-cut case for a penalty.

A performance like that makes you wonder; is Clattenburg incompetent, or is he biased?

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With about 5 minutes of the Liverpool Chelsea match to go, the bloody commentator keeps banging on about how awful it would be for the match to go to penalties. He’s talking bollocks. It’s great to watch penalties. There’s always some idiot who ruins it for his team by blasting wide or trying to chip it over the keeper or something.

Goals are always best when someone is left sprawling on their arses, and with the fun of a penalty shoot-out, you get the bonus of seeing a whole team doing that stupid jig in the middle of the pitch, only to get their over-paid, coke-stuffed noses rubbed in it.

The sheer joy I experience from seeing a team I don’t like coming within a gnats whisker of glorious success, only to have it snatched away at the last moment, is second to none.

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