Being a Liverpool suporter I’m not a fan of Manchester United so sat down to watch the Carling Cup final hoping for a Villa win. Sadly that was not to be and not for Villa’s lack of trying, they were cheated out of the game by a referee clearly biased towards Manchester united. Agbonlahor was through on goal when he was brought down by Vidic who personally received NO punishement from the Referee. There is some debate as to whether it should have been red or yellow but for him to receive nothing is just outragous. My understanding is that if a player is denied a goal scoring opportunity then their team is awarded a penalty and the offending player is sent off. So for at least 85 minutes Manchester United should have been down to 10 men, or at least vidic on a yellow.
However the story just gets better as shortly after that, Owen is brought down by Villa defender Collins, who you can guess what happened to him, yes a yellow card. Stuart Downing makes a late challenge on Evra and yet again is given a yellow card. So currently that is 0 cards to United and 2 for Aston Villa. Carrick tackles Emile Heskey and brings him down to the floor but gets away with a warning. It almost seemed as though Phil Dowd was evening out the penalty that Villa got by not booking any Manchester United players. Another united player Rafael was cautioned by the referee twice but never received a card. Finally after 41 minutes Dowd decide to book a united player so that should have been by my count at least 5 yellow cards with 2 possible red cards compared to Villa’s 2 yellows. To rub salt into the wounds Vidic was finally booked just after the hour mark for a challenge on Ashley Young and the Villa fans gave a sarcastic cheer for Dowd when he gave the booking. The Manchester United fans would argue that sending Vidic off so early would have “changed the game” well tough! That’s his fault for bringing Agbonlahor down in the first place, regardless of whether it’s a cup final or not the rules are rules! For me the most amsuing outcome of this game was Graham Poll telling everyone who would listen that Phil Dowd was right, it wasn’t a red card. This is coming from a man who gave the same player, 3 yellow cards in a World Cup match, like most people, I just ignored what he had to say.
It seems it was a similar situation in our game against Blackburn Rovers which thankfully we won 2-1. From what I could hear on the radio we were battered and I mean litteraly by an inferior team who knew they couldn’t beat us using skill so decided to injur as many of our players as they could. Rafa did get the last laugh though, during the press conference he had this to say about Sam Aladyce “I think he is a model for all the managers all around the world. He is a model, the style of football, his behaviours, everything is perfect for the kids. I am sure Barcelona will be thinking about copying this style.”