Match reaction: Pardew talks about Joey, Raylor and the ref
Posted on February 27th, 2011 | 35 Comments |
It was a game I felt we should have won both from the outset and after watching the first half, but once we’d gone down to 10 players I was happy to settle for the point.
The ref came in for some stick from the fans and that’s reflected a bit in Pardew’s comments below although, to be fair, Bolton haven’t been pushovers this season and that’s reflected in their reasonably healthy league position.
Alan Pardew first talked about Ryan Taylor’s tackle (oh I say missus):
“It wasn’t high, but it was late and with that kind of take off you’re going to get sent off in this day and age.
“If I go back 10 years the boy isn’t getting sent off. He might not even get a booking.
“Unfortunately for Ryan he had a bad touch and tried to make up for it, but made a second mistake by going in with too much venom.
“He’s not got a malicious bone in him and I’m genuinely disappointed. He just knew he had to make up for his bad touch and in doing so was over zealous and got himself sent off.
“There will be no punishment from me on that. I don’t think he meant to harm the player in any shape or form.“
Personally, I think it was a dreadful tackle; it was petulant, unnecessary and – some might argue – might be what cost us two points. As I’ve said in previous articles, I actually think referees sometimes react too quickly to ‘hard’ (but in my opinion ‘good’) tackles but I agreed with the ref about Ryan Taylor’s sending off.
Pardew then goes on to have a bit of a moan at the referee in general, although he stresses that he’s not actually being critical of the refereeing (which is wise considering they hand out fines for that sort of thing these days):
“I thought the referee was a little bit antagonistic towards the home team.
“I think sometimes the referees, when the crowd gets on them, it doesn’t work in your favour.
“That is human nature. I don’t mean it as any criticism, I just think he got wrapped up in it a bit.
“The crowd were booing him and he almost thought ‘Oh, that looks like another one’.
“It was no reflection on the result. I’m not trying to hide behind it at all.”
Pardew might have a point there. He then goes on to talk about Joey’s late withdrawal from the game and that he felt things simply ‘went against us’:
“I just felt events worked against us in the end.
“It all started on Friday because Joey had felt his thigh a little bit, but he turned up on the morning and everything seemed OK.
“But as soon as he started hitting a couple of balls in the warm-up he just didn’t feel right.
“That was a set-back, but Ryan came into the team and we didn’t really look any different. To be fair to Ryan, I thought he did very well in the first half and we created enough chances to win the game.
“But it didn’t come and we then gifted them a goal, which was a bit of a blow to us. I thought in the second half we could kick on and regroup, but it changed again.
“We were struggling a little bit and I took the option of trying to win the game, what with the position we’re in in the league. I put two strikers on and I thought we were better after that.
“Chances came and went. There were two good teams on the pitch and I actually thought it was a good Premier League game. A draw was probably the right result.”
Summing up the result and looking to approach the next game positively, Pardew said:
“We had to take a point but it was a well-deserved point.
“In light of the fact I’ll have Stephen Ireland training on Monday and Shola (Ameobi) will be available for Everton, hopefully along with Joey back, it wasn’t a bad result. It was probably a fair reflection.
“So we go to the next game and hopefully we can get ourselves a win that propels us up the league. It is congested – it is a tight league, but two or three wins can take you to a very nice place.”
I actually think Everton will be pretty tough opposition next week too. I would normally say the home advantage would tip it in our favour, but we can’t seem to get anything better than a draw at home recently so I think it’ll be a close game.
NUFCBlog Author: Hugh de Payen
I'm a baby-boomer of the punk rock persuasion, currently exiled in Somerset for crimes committed in a previous life where locals keep trying to poison me with something called 'scrumpy'. Hates sprouts, coat-hangers, Cilla Black, ornaments, Steven Seagull movies and 50 Cent (he's not worth 10).
Hugh de Payen has written 634 articles on this blog.
sorry alan pardew but ide say we looked alot diffrent withoot joey ,taylor no where near as good ,and ya wouldnt catch our joey being sent off ;)hes a good boy now