Saints Fan Asks Why Bother With Rules?

Looking at the Steven Gerrard hullabaloo it does appear so. Alex Ferguson has nearly had a fit trying to understand the logic of this failure to bring to book, one Steven Gerrard.

Arsen Wenger nearly had a fit when talking about a Ryan Shawcross tackle. A tackle that in a lot of peoples minds was not as bad as the end result showed. Both players had their studs showing for the tackle with both going in hard.

Gerrard performed a cowardly attack from behind on a Portsmouth player. Does his escape from punishment mean that any Portsmouth player is now an open target for the rest of the league to attack? Gerrards' attack was no lesser an attack than that by Rio Ferdinand.

All season we see players booked and sent off for a momentary act of petulance. But acts of violence are forever being allowed to go scot free. Instead of booking a player for kicking a ball away why not add a minute to the extra time that is added. Or simply move the free kick 5 yards in any direction required by team given the free kick originally. If that puts ball into the penalty area so be it. Penalty kick awarded.

We have the 'Respect' programme running but referees are obviously not a part of this because their standards have dropped so alarmingly this season. In some cases they have been that poor it has looked as though one of the teams bought the referee for the day. Sadly this feeling is growing as the standard of refereeing drops.

I believe now that technology has to be used for all games and where this is not cost effective extra officials with walkie talkies must be used. The 'Respect' programme has absolutely no chance of success when fans can see such terrible wrongs happening every week and with little or no punishment.

This is all IMHO of course.

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