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Why Chelsea Fans Must Avoid Manchester United Ref Witchhunt

By Oct 30, 20124 Comments

Football is facing a new racism scandal, with Chelsea making formal allegations about the conduct of referee Mark Clattenberg during our game against Manchester United on Sunday..

These allegations are very serious and leave this referee’s career hanging in the balance. For this reason I implore Chelsea fans to be objective and separate what was an abject refereeing performance from the alleged inappropriate comments, particularly if they have a racial element.

If these allegations are true and proven then this may well be the end of the Clattenberg’s refereeing career with the men in black unlikely to be given the same opportunity of redemption as players charged with using racial language by the FA.

As others have stated as a referee the standard that referees are held to should be higher than than the players as they are supervising the game and are the inforcers of the rules.

The FA cannot risk their refereeing appointments being bigger news than the game, particularly after the controversy over the recent Kick It Out week of action that attracted the wrong kind of media attention and called into question action being taken on an important issue.

Unlike the FA I believe in nnocent until proven guilty and this should be applied to this case.

Therefore as tempting as it is to transfer anger at the result on Sunday onto the allegations against Mark Clattenburg, we should refrain.

Due to the seriousness and the fall out, we should wait for the evidence to become clear and let others judge guilt or innocent, in turn avoiding rash judgements or letting the influence of bias impact our opinion on this issue.

For now Clattenberg is just a shocking referee, is he a racist? Well that’s for somebody else to decide.

4 Comments

  • Gaz says:

    As you say, we must wait until more evidence comes out.

    In the worst case scenario however, I think the FA should seriously consider replaying or nullifying the result of the match.

    A referee must be a disinterested party, that is the number one core tenet of his profession.
    If he is racially abusing members of one team whilst refereeing, particularly in a game where he also got 2 key decisions wrong, and in contradiction to refereeing guidelines, his integrity is called into question.
    In addition, the FA are drawn into this, as they have appointed a biased and clearly unfit man to referee one of the biggest games of the season.

    If that is the case, the FA cannot let a result like this stand – it ridicules the FA, the Premiership and the game in general.

    • grangerp says:

      Your suggestion is spot on, but do you think this FA is competent enough to carry out such a decision, mainly when Man u is involved? This board has put the game of football in shambles. I think its high time to reshuffle the board before things go worse.

  • Desmond Bey says:

    I agree. I also hope that CFC have an ironclad case.

  • grangerp says:

    As the saying goes, you reap what you sow, so here we go FA. The way this board (FA) handled the cases of Suarez and their own Terry seems to be backfiring. You can’t have two rules for the same case just because one player is a foreigner, that was ridiculous. If one takes a close observation, one could easily see that the football game in plunging, look our teams the way the are featuring in champions and europa leagues, its a disgrace. FA NEEDS to be reshuffled immediately if things are to change.

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