Ratings & Reactions: Crystal Palace v Villa

[Vive_La_Villa]

Pretty much everyone in football is shocked by what happened yesterday.  

It really was a joke.

[Davkaus]

Still fuming.

Even when we were absolute dogshit every week, I don't think I've felt so turned off from football as I do watching these **** jokers ruin matches with their shit decisions.

[Lord Willard]

The thing that pisses me off the most is the FA will just ignore it and there will be no consequences. 

We were poor and Palace should of won but at the end of the day we scored just as many goals as them. We should of gone away with a point and palace should be 2 points lower! 

[Kiwivillan]

9 hours ago, srsmithusa said:

i quite like that.  appeal the card.  however the Premier League will likely balk because I THINK a card is a critical decision that VAR can review, so they COULD have overturned the card.  But like I said earlier in this thread, I haven't stayed current on the laws for several years and that includes all the VAR rules.   

You can't appeal yellow cards. Only straight reds

[Kiwivillan]

5 yellow cards in 37 minutes before 1 against Palace. I didn't see full game but this seems excessively one sided or were they all deserved?

[srsmithusa]

56 minutes ago, Kiwivillan said:

5 yellow cards in 37 minutes before 1 against Palace. I didn't see full game but this seems excessively one sided or were they all deserved?

Each was defensible, the problem was that CP would do the same or worse with no call or no card.  

[Vive_La_Villa]

Ayew was different class to be fair. Constant nuisance for our defenders. He would be great in this team now.

Easy to forget he actually scored 10 goals in the season we got relegated. 

[VillaCas]

Still fuming at the decision - for me one of the most glaring mistakes I’ve ever witnessed 

All that said, I may be naive but I find it hard to believe that an English PL ref is deliberately cheating.

To make sense of it, my thought is that Friend believes (wrongly) that Jack has initiated the knee-to-knee contact with Cahill in the box

That said, he should receive a substantial ban and never referee a Villa game again

[hippo]

3 minutes ago, VillaCas said:

Still fuming at the decision - for me one of the most glaring mistakes I’ve ever witnessed 

All that said, I may be naive but I find it hard to believe that an English PL ref is deliberately cheating.

To make sense of it, my thought is that Friend believes (wrongly) that Jack has initiated the knee-to-knee contact with Cahill in the box

That said, he should receive a substantial ban and never referee a Villa game again

How convinced are you though that Friend refereed that game impartial y ??

37 mins 5 villa booked 0 for palace - yet the foul count was even. - the dive alone could possibly be viewed as an error - but that booking count put a different slant on it.

 

[VillaCas]

24 minutes ago, hippo said:

How convinced are you though that Friend refereed that game impartial y ??

37 mins 5 villa booked 0 for palace - yet the foul count was even. - the dive alone could possibly be viewed as an error - but that booking count put a different slant on it.

 

I’m not defending Friend who had an appalling game and I’m not saying that a referee can’t be biased but (maybe I’m naive) I really don’t see English refs as setting out to deliberately cheat or to manufacture a result - I could well be wrong mind

[Five Ken McNaughts]

With regards to Kevin Friend's overall display, as opposed to just the key incident, I have been looking up some stats to put it in context (and just to keep myself busy while I continue to fume). Statistics can be a blunt instrument, of course, but for what it's worth... 

In Villa's first three PL games we committed a total of 29 fouls and received 2 yellows (7%).

In the first half at Palace we were penalised 10 times and received 4 yellows (40%).

Despite receiving a total of 6 bookings (compared to Palace's 2) only one Villa player committed three fouls or more (Guilbert 3)

Palace had three players In that same category (Kouyate 3, Milivojevic 3, Zaha 4).

Only one Villa player committed more than 1 foul without ending up in the book (McGinn 2)

For Palace, Zaha never saw yellow despite committing 4 fouls. 

 

My eyebrows are staying raised. The phrase "serious questions to answer" springs to mind.

[Teale's 'tache]

36 minutes ago, VillaCas said:

I’m not defending Friend who had an appalling game and I’m not saying that a referee can’t be biased but (maybe I’m naive) I really don’t see English refs as setting out to deliberately cheat or to manufacture a result - I could well be wrong mind

Match fixing has occurred in pretty much every other major league in the footballing world, with the amount of money in the Premier League I think it would be just as naive to assume it doesn't happen here. Why wouldn't it? 

I'm really not one for conspiracy's, but we've dealt with incompetent referees in the championship, this doesn't feel the same... and I can't quite put my finger on why.

Just an open question to everyone, what would have to happen during a game before you'd believe a match was being fixed?

[Raver50032]

Friend - the new Dowd.

Friend - a proper misnomer.

We were crap against Palace, and Heaton was my MOTM. On balance, we deserved to get beat, but fate can play tricks and intervene. We had a glorious chance to equalise, the ball even went in the Palace net. But Palace had a Friend in Jesus. Absolute word removed.

A point of note I have seen spouted in here several times in 20 pages... Palace, an 'established Premier League Club.' Apart from us, Sheffield Blades and Norwich City, are they not all now established Premier League sides? Everyone else has been here longer consistently than us new three. I don't get this 'they're an established PL side' narrative to justify some sort of sense of fear going into a game. Palace, away, with their lack of goals at home lately should be reason enough for us to ride our momentum to be hopeful of getting some sort of result. And, but for Friend, we would have had a draw.

Another could have, would have and should have.

On to West Ham... let me guess... another established Premier League club that we should be fearful of. Those fixtures will just keep coming. We'll either be good enough, or we won't. Stature has little to do with it. Palace got their first win against United in what, 19 or 20 attempts if I heard MoTD correctly. Considering how established they are, that was their first ever win in the Premier League at Old Trafford.

Respect West Ham... but don't fear them. We won't do anything good if we fear every one. I mean, if we're setting all our hope on beating just Norwich and Sheffield Blades this season, look at our results against them last season.

[lexicon]

We can't just expect to just pitch up and turn teams over away from home, as we're a newly promoted side with an almost entirely new team. Palace had more points than anyone else bar Man City and Liverpool in the last 6 months or so, didn't they? They're a well-organised, settled side. 

As a team we have to go for it, and we did, but as fans we need to be realistic and patient. 

[tom_avfc]

18 minutes ago, lexicon said:

We can't just expect to just pitch up and turn teams over away from home, as we're a newly promoted side with an almost entirely new team. Palace had more points than anyone else bar Man City and Liverpool in the last 6 months or so, didn't they? They're a well-organised, settled side. 

As a team we have to go for it, and we did, but as fans we need to be realistic and patient. 

Completely agree with this. I still think a lot of our fan base has a level of arrogance where we expect to rock up and beat teams like Bournemouth and Palace relatively easily. I'd have thought a few years out of the premier league would have given people a bit of a reality check but going in to the Bournemouth game in particular all I heard was how we'd beat them easily etc.

These teams have been in the Premier League for a number of years and have relatively settled squads of proven Premier League players. By all means we can go into the games without fear and try to win and I'd argue that we have done that by and large. However the overreacting to defeats and the complete disregard to the quality of the teams that we're coming up against (relative to our own side who have played at most 4 games together) is extreme.

[villalad21]

The problem isn't VAR. The problem is incompetent refs.

 

[srsmithusa]

8 hours ago, Five Ken McNaughts said:

With regards to Kevin Friend's overall display, as opposed to just the key incident, I have been looking up some stats to put it in context (and just to keep myself busy while I continue to fume). Statistics can be a blunt instrument, of course, but for what it's worth... 

In Villa's first three PL games we committed a total of 29 fouls and received 2 yellows (7%).

In the first half at Palace we were penalised 10 times and received 4 yellows (40%).

Despite receiving a total of 6 bookings (compared to Palace's 2) only one Villa player committed three fouls or more (Guilbert 3)

Palace had three players In that same category (Kouyate 3, Milivojevic 3, Zaha 4).

Only one Villa player committed more than 1 foul without ending up in the book (McGinn 2)

For Palace, Zaha never saw yellow despite committing 4 fouls. 

 

My eyebrows are staying raised. The phrase "serious questions to answer" springs to mind.

Well done.  now if you have more time, look at Friend vs. Villa in previous matches.   Some on here said that he was the 4th that didn't see the stomp on Jack at Wembley.   Some on here said he was the referee that didn't see john terry smack the ball out of the air with his hand, in the penalty area at Stamford Bridge  (until this match, the worst (non) call I could remember in the Premier League).   I have even wondered if the link is Chelsea (protecting Cahill by calling a dive)

finally, I would like to see someone do a clip of zaha stamping on Taylors foot (and the free shot a CP player took on Jack after it)   then show the yellow card against Taylor.   Put both in slow motion and ask which deserved a caution.   Taylor received a caution for a much lesser offence, where Zaha -whose body language communicated "Oh crap, I stomped the hell out of his arch "- received a simple foul call.

99.9% of the time, referees try to be completely impartial, but if Kevin Friend was trying, he sucked at it.  It was the least impartial performance I have ever seen.   Mind you, we were awful and didn't play well enough for 90 minutes to "deserve" a point.  But we did "earn a point" (or should have).  And it's impossible to say how much fear of more cards and light calls impacted our play and our ability to be aggressive.  I will not forget this travesty for a long, long, time.  I don't think any Villan should.

[OutByEaster?]

3 hours ago, villalad21 said:

The problem is incompetent refs.

I'm increasingly convinced that what we saw yesterday wasn't incompetent or accidental.

 

 

[Davkaus]

10 hours ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Ayew was different class to be fair. Constant nuisance for our defenders. He would be great in this team now.

Easy to forget he actually scored 10 goals in the season we got relegated. 

Palace fans are raving about Ayew. Blows my mind that a few years after they were both here, Ayew is starting and they love him, and Benteke is past it and sits on the bench. Never would have seen that coming.

[Davkaus]

20 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

I'm increasingly convinced that what we saw yesterday wasn't incompetent or accidental.

 

 

I can't shake that feelings. People will think it's paranoid nonsense, or us making excuses, but a couple of days later, I'm mostly calmed down, but part of me still believes that what we saw was a referee that for one reason or another, did everything he could do to sway the game in favour of Palace.

The one thing that adds an element of doubt is that I think it'd have been so easy for him to have given the penalty against Luiz. That was literally the one decision he didn't give in their favour all afternoon, but it was a massive one. 

Edited September 2, 2019 by Davkaus