The last Toon goal scored by Cisse which wasn’t ruled outIn case you missed it, Papiss Cisse had yet another perfectly good goal ruled out as offside against Norwich on Saturday, yet another linesman seemingly judging Cisse on his reputation, rather than what he could actually see.
Luckily for Newcastle United, they still won 2-1 and got the three points so all was well that ended well. Even so, that hasn’t always the case and it is getting absolutely ridiculous now, to the point where lazy linesmen are just saying “oh it’s Papiss Cisse, it must be offside.”
I use the word “reputation” above, though it might come as a surprise to some so called fans (and Sports Direct News rent a quote, Malcolm MacDonald) that Cisse is not the most ‘offside’ striker in the Premier League by any means. Romelu Lukaku, Christian Benteke and several others were caught offside more often last season.
However, when it comes to having perfectly good goals wrongly ruled out as offside, Cisse in in a league of his own. He had seven wrongly ruled out last season, including two in one game against Metalist Kharkiv, and one which robbed us of a derby win against Sunderland. This means that he would have scored at least twenty goals last season had those seven goals stood. (more…)
A disappointing stalemate. Whilst Maratimo displayed some good build up play and passes into the box from players such as Sami, as I predicted in my preview of the game, they couldn’t really have anyone who could supply a killer finish. Then again, neither did we! (more…)
O'Neill: Tales of irregular ref visits from Toon.Speaking in a post match interview, Mackems manager, Martin O’Verrated O’Neill, cast light on the unusual sending off of Sunderland’s bad boy hatchet man, Lee Cattermole, who was given a straight red card by Wirral whistler, Mike Dean, a full two minutes after the final whistle had sounded. It brought his total number of bookings up to 64 yellow cards and 7 red cards in a total of 193 senior appearences so far.
It was a match marked by controversy, which of course is not an unusual thing in Geordie / Vagrant derbies. No less than seven yellow cards and two red cards were brandished by the Wirral whister. The indiscipline also spread to the dugouts, where Alan Pardew and O’Neill were shouting and waving their handbags at each other on two occaisons, with goalkeeping coach, Andy Woodman, also being banned from the dugout for the second half after what was reported as a “scuffle in the tunnel” at half time.
Coming back to the original story though, it transpired that “Clattermole” had taken issue with Dean’s second half decisionmaking in a not altogether polite fashion as the players and officials were walking off after the game. According to O’Neill, the Sunderland camp had also heard that a Magpie mafia had paid a visit to Dean’s dressing room at half time, possibly to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse?
Speaking on the incident, the Ulsterian explained that although Cattermole was a very naughty boy, there were mitigating circumstances, saying:(more…)
