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"This one says FIFA and this one says FA |
José Mourinho seemed particularly unimpressed from his seat in the crowd. Roberto Mancini certainly wasn't keen. Even Sven Goran Erikssen, the kind of man you imagine has difficulty finding anything disagreeable enough to warrant raising his voice, bristled at the mere mention of the Consett Controversial.
Mark Clattenburg, it seems, can boil rabbits wherever he goes.
Sometimes you really hate yourself
for getting ideas in your head that a referee might just have it in for your
team. You start harbouring the preposterous thought that an actual
English-born official - upright, pale, given to gentle smiles whilst propelled by strangely inappropriate legs - might be anything other than 100% straight laced.
As the gradual erosion of Typical City continues on its meandering path, the slow release from Cup for Cock Ups, the washing away of Cityitis, so the men in black look upon Manchester City in a different light. Calmer, more benign, more understanding and forgiving of the team's gallant efforts to play Pep's attacking football.
Those faded memories of Ged Brannan
slicing the ball crisply into the Kippax and Craig Russell running like his legs were
being gradually worn away by an intricate process of long-shore drift. Those sweet little moments you thought had all but gone.
As City have evolved into Premier League heavyweights, Champions League shoe-ins, yearly contenders, so those dodgy decisions
that referees and their starry-eyed assistants always managed to conjure in
favour of Ferguson's United and whoever was in charge of Chelsea that half
season, seem to have started happening to City too.
It was a little slow
working to start with. Poor Mark Hughes saw the Big Money float in but didn't
stick around long enough to benefit from it or from the softening gaze of the
men in black. Instead he had to put up with a Manchester derby where his
City side made a wonderful fight of it only to lose to Michael Owen's strike in
the 7th tremulous minute of the five added on. Hughes, jabbing wildly at his
wrist, had been on the end of one of the last great inexplicable
things.
Before that Svennis had dragged his tiring
City side to St Andrews and, as a handy little warm-up for the season's unforgiving denouement at Middlesbrough (eight-bloody-one), had witnessed a refereeing decision
that -- until last weekend -- was probably the worst against City in recent
history.
In a match where Rob Styles, for it was he, had already kind of sent
off Radhi Jaidi then changed his mind because he wasn't sure who had committed
the foul, you just knew the hapless man was merely warming up for the big one. Sure enough,
Sun Jihai, that block of solid defensive muscle, happened to enact the merest of touches, shoulder-to-shoulder with the home side's visibly more muscular Gary McSheffrey. It was not even an incident worthy of a second
look, never even the slightest whiff of foul play, but the penalty was given.
Sun gave one of his
best "what's happening now" looks, better even than the delightful face he pulled after City's 4th at Tottenham in the FA Cup comeback game, that said "How this? What the fuh?". The world turned a little slower with a weird grating noise audible in the background. Mild mannered Svennis called it "crazy" in his best just-bordering-on-peeved voice.
Those were very much the days, consigned,
as we thought, to the great footballing dustbin.
Now it is City more often than not pulling rabbits out of injury time hats. It
is City benefiting from referees too busy smiling at David Silva's lovely hair to
book him for telling them their mother is a lady of the night in
Spanish and it is on City's behalf that they are no longer so very bothered
about offside when it's Sergio tip-toeing his way through a nervously exposed
opposition defence.
Except that, occasionally, owing to the
power of the sheer hopelessness of some people, it does still
happen.
Which brings us in a round-about way to Mr
Mark Clattenburg of Consett, County Durham.
Mark Clattenburg, you imagine, loves the
roar of the crowd. He enjoys the shouting and the clapping and, perhaps just as
much, the booing and the swearing, the noises of the pent up masses, watching
powerlessly as he carves up their teams chances of success. It is, you imagine,
immaterial which noises he can hear from out of camera as long as there is some
focus directed towards the bristling man on centre stage, the man with the
whistle and the reborn hair, the Man Who Decides Things on the
Television.
Clattenburg has been deciding things in
his own inimitable way for well over a decade now. He has been making the
news rather than helping football players do so for a long time, with his
special brand of firm but poised, his take on stiff, manly arbitration liberally
juiced with a slightly theatrical presence that smells like it might have come from the goofier outtakes of Zoolander.
He has his way, does Mr Clattenburg. From
allegedly calling John Obi Mikkel inappropriate names during a Chelsea match
through asking City's bench how they put up with Craig Bellamy, minutes before
issuing the same player with two quick yellow cards, to body-popping across the
turf in excitement when giving a Stamford Bridge penalty against City, the
trotting vanity project from the North East has always had a whiff of the night
about him.
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Manchester
United v Tottenham, January 2005
Remember the classic moment when Pedro
Mendes' astute lob had travelled so far over Roy Carroll's line and into the
net that few saw the need to even appeal. Carroll, lying prone and embarrassed
in the back of his net, had fished the ball out from two feet inside his goal,
but the officials steadfastly refused to see what a full Old Trafford had seen.
It was not a goal, not according to the ref that day. You'll never guess who it
was.
Everton v.
Liverpool, 2007
In the usual cut and thrust of a Merseyside
derby, the ref appeared to have decided to give Everton defender Tony Hibbert a
yellow card but was interrupted in his act of frisky self-confident policing by man-with-a-mission Steven Gerrard. After a brief cordial chat with the Liverpool skipper,
Hibbert's punishment was suddenly and freakishly upped to a red card, leaving
the hollow-brained official persona non grata at Goodison for
the following five years. Who was this unique chap? Well, it'd be some kind of
a coincidence, but....
Result: Not a single Premier League game
officiated by the Confident One at Goodison between 2007 and
2012.
Manchester
United v Portsmouth, Charity Shield August 2009
Controversially pulled from reffing the
curtain raiser to the new season after revealed to have racked up £60,000 worth
of business debt. Suspended by the Ref's Association, owing to "issues
to do with his business affairs", but was reinstated some months
later. Clattenburg that.
City versus
Arsenal, 2010
“Then an early red card.
Clattenburg is no stranger to odd decisions, both on and off the football
pitch, and his manner when reffing leaves a little to be desired (wide eyes,
slicked hair, bit-fond-of-myself strut, high volume go-aways accompanied by theatrical arm movements)
and he seems very keen to join a long line of men in the middle who don't wish
to go quietly about their business. Not often is there a match refereed by this
guy that reaches the 15 minute mark and people are asking "who's reffing
today?". Here, by broad consensus, Boyata's ungainly lunge from behind
left him with an easy red card option, but still...."
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Just keep asking yourself the same old questions |
“That Arsenal took City
to the cleaners was partly a historical inevitability (look up the scores over
the past ten years or so), given wings by Dedryck Boyata's naivety and Mark
Clattenburg's willingness to feature in the morning after's headlines as often
as is decent....”
Bolton
v City December 2009
"I
don't appreciate it when referees go out for the second half and tell my
support staff who they like and do not like in my team," - Mark
Hughes
"Mystifying"
and "laughable" just two of the words used to describe the referee's
performance on this occasion. It was of course, once again, Clattenburg, who
having sent off Craig Bellamy for being heavily tackled by
the notoriously "lightweight" Paul Robinson, was heard to ask manager
Mark Hughes "How do you put up with him?"
“Referees would come into
sharp focus during 2012 and here was a grand start by the infamous Chris Foy
dispatching Vincent Kompany for a daring and expertly executed sliding tackle
in the Manchester rain, reminding many of the performance by Mark Clattenburg,
who had sent off Craig Bellamy for being tackled at Bolton the previous season.
Foy and Clattenburg, like all poor referees, would be high profile on many more
occasions in 2012. The good ones, of which there are still mercifully a few, go
about their jobs largely unnoticed. Clattenburg could not do more for his
self-promotion if he wore a belisha beacon for a hat and brandished an eight
foot steel mace as he ran around....”
Chelsea v City,
December 2011
Here Clattenburg managed to get rid of
Gael Clichy with one of his characteristically flourished red cards. He watched
disinterestedly as José Bosingwa upturned David Silva in the box for a penalty
as obvious as his hair replenishment project.
Big Match Verdict: Get on with the game
and stop looking at me like that, otherwise you'll be joining your little
French mate in the bath.
Chelsea v City 2014-15
“Fernandinho in the
centre was immense, shutting out the threat from Matic and making up for
Fernando's lack of zip. Matic is an immense player and can run riot through the
central areas if left
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Au revoir, Gael |
unchecked. Much like the missing Yaya Touré, if allowed
to boss the middle areas, he will do just that with consummate ease. It is
curious that City's raids on the Portuguese Liga for defensive midfielders has
brought Garcia and now Fernando northwards but never alighted on Matic, easily
the best of the lot. With Clattenburg generously allowing a string of his fouls
to go unpunished, whilst booking Fernando for leaving a loose leg hanging,
Matic could maintain a robust presence and City needed all of Fernandinho's
wiry energy to stunt the big Serb's progress...”
Tottenham
v City and City v Tottenham 2015-16
“Manchester
City v Spurs at
White Hart Lane, which created some hot air. This latter game attracted
attention for good reason, as there was some short-sighted refereeing and the
game also featured a linesman, who was unable to see Kyle Walker straying two
yards offside three paces in front of his eyes, which were glued on the action
at the time.
To add insult to injury, the third of
Tottenham's goals was clearly offside too, with Harry Kane stroking in the
rebound from Eriksson's majestic free-kick. Kane was clearly offside when the
free kick was taken, rendering his effort when the ball smacked back to his
feet off the crossbar illegal.
That he appeared to have
ramped up his ideas on offside and how it should be interpreted was strange in the extreme, as, by the time Spurs came north for the return game, the rule did not appear
to bother him unduly at all. He had at least significantly reinterpreted his views
on how handball works and Raheem Sterling's backwards blocking of a free-kick, which ended up hitting him in the kidneys, went down as a special moment in the career of a special referee.
That he has now stirred the loins of City's red cousins after the Premier League derby, when he allowed Claudio Bravo's erratic debut shenanigans to go unpunished with red. More recently he again did them the disservice against Burnley of apparently playing such an active part in the away side's 0.0 draw that Mourinho had to volley abuse at him in the tunnel at half time. This altercation saw Mourinho sitting sullenly in the stands for the 2nd half, having received a red card from Clattenburg. That he was also the man in the middle for City's 6-1 Old Trafford demolition in 2012-13 will not have been forgotten in those parts.
Unfortunately, the well-used homily that my enemy's enemy if my friend, doesn't quite work in this case. For Clattenburg's every appearance at the Etihad brings sighs of disappointment from the stands.
When he has finally left the green fields of England for the last time, he will be
remembered for the enormous fuss he has caused down the years and you get the feeling
that is probably how he would have liked it.