In the wake of Michael O’Neill’s dismissal for criticising match officials, JOE.ie’s Dessie Baker says he would like to see more consistency from the men in the middle.
It was hard not to take notice of Derry’s 7-0 victory over UCD at the weekend; they recovered well from the setback against Sligo last week and seem to be going from strength to strength as the season goes on.
As I was saying last week, Stephen Kenny knows the league inside out and he’s one of those people that gets the very best out of his players. I met Stephen a couple of times during my career and talked to him about the possibility of playing for him. He’s very clever in the way he speaks to you and he certainly left an impression on me.
At the moment it seems to be one set of rules for one referee and a completely different set of rules for another.
He’s certainly been the getting the best out of his Derry side so far this season and the longer they keep getting the good results they’re getting, more and more Derry fans will start coming to the games and they’ll be a real force to be reckoned with. I know UCD are a young side, but to score seven goals in one game in this league is quite remarkable and above any other team in the league this year, Derry have probably surprised me the most.
In Eamon Zayed and Gareth McGlynn, Stephen has added proven quality to the side and when you put them alongside the likes of Eddie McCallion, you can see that they’ve got a nice mix of youth and experience and it’s been working for them so far.
Worrying signs for the Bit O’Red
I’ve been saying all along so far this year that I think that Shamrock Rovers and Sligo Rovers are going to be the two main teams battling it out for the title, but after seeing them play each other at the weekend I’m not so sure. I was at the game and I was sitting beside Gary Twigg and Craig Sives and I was saying to the lads during the game how disappointed I was with the way Sligo went about things on the night.
For whatever reason, things don’t seem to be right with Sligo at the moment. Players were reacting badly to being taken off and there seemed to be a few arguments between players on the pitch and between the players and the manager as well, so maybe there’s a few internal arguments going on that we don’t know about.
On Friday night, the two centre halves for Shamrock Rovers had nothing to do for the whole game and I think the ‘keeper only made one save. Sligo completely lacked ambition. They had Joseph Ndo playing in the hole behind the front man, but he was isolated and Conor McCormack didn’t give him a kick all night. Every time Ndo got the ball he either gave it away or Conor won it back off him and to be fair to Conor, he was my man of the match, he impressed me more than anyone else on the pitch.
Like shit to a blanket – Conor McCormack never let Joseph Ndo out of his sight
Looking at the table prior to last night’s victory over Bray Wanderers, the Sligo fans wouldn’t have been happy to see their team lying fourth from bottom and although they’re back on track and up to third after last night’s result, they’re still well adrift of Shamrock Rovers at the top.
With the squad and the high quality individual players they have, you’d have to think that Sligo will eventually turn it around. They’re not clicking at the moment and they certainly didn’t look like a team last Friday. Maybe it is a case that the new players that have come in haven’t gelled with the players already there so it will be interesting to see how that unfolds over the next few weeks.
Refereeing inconsistency is infuriating
As for Shamrock Rovers, one of the biggest stories of last week was Michael O’Neill giving a bit of stick to a referee because he never gave Rovers a penalty in their match against Dundalk. Knowing Michael as I do, he can be a bit fiery at times, but I think he was justified in his criticism of the referee in this case. I didn’t see any of the incidents myself, but anyone I was talking to – including Dundalk fans, said that there were probably three blatant penalties on the night – two for Rovers and one for Dundalk, and the ref didn’t give any of them.
Michael has a very high standard when it comes to his players and he expects the same from referees. It’s alright if a referee makes one or two mistakes, but four or five high profile ones in a big game like that is a bit much. From what I heard, it wasn’t just the penalty shouts either, he was poor throughout the game and that doesn’t help when it’s a game like Rovers v Dundalk, where there’s always a bit of needle between the players and the fans and you need a strong referee to keep a handle on things.
Having played in the league for a good few years and watched a lot of it so far this season, I think the standard of refereeing could be better all round. There are maybe two or three referees in the league that are very good, but after that they can be very inconsistent. It could be that there needs to be more referees brought on board because it always seems to be the same referees in the big matches. I know there’s not much of a choice out there, but you have to try and bring new guys in and try and make refereeing more consistent across the board.
At the moment it seems to be one set of rules for one referee and a completely different set of rules for another. I know from my own experience that you’d get away with a tackle one week and the next week you’d get booked or sent off for the same type of challenge. Referees have to be made accountable for their decisions as it would help increase the standard of refereeing in the league as a whole.
No way back for Drogheda or Galway
Finally, with only two and five points respectively, it looks as if there’s no coming back for either Drogheda United or Galway United at the bottom of the table. The last time I saw Drogheda they were very poor and although I’ve only seen Galway once this season – when Shamrock Rovers beat them 1-0 in Terryland Park, from what I’ve heard they haven’t been much better. Even in that game, the Rovers defence had nothing to do all game and they could have won by three or four if they went up through the gears.
UCD are nine points ahead of Galway now, so if either Galway or Drogheda want to lift themselves away from the bottom of the table, they’ll have to go on a four or five game winning streak and I can’t see that happening to be honest. At the start of the season, I said that I thought Drogheda, Galway, UCD and Bray would finish in the bottom four and that’s the way it has panned out so far.
In fairness to Bray though, they’ve done very well so far, they’ve been very hard to beat and they will need to maintain the sort of form they’ve shown in the early part of the season if they are to consolidate a spot in mid-table or higher.
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