What is the BBC going to do about Alan Shearer? He sits there in the Match of the Day studio, smugness personified, grinning from ear to ear like a demented garden gnome, while not only criticising referees and demanding retribution when they make mistakes but also finding fault when they get things right.
Earlier this season, Rob Styles, a referee of vast experience, gave a penalty when the player had clearly played the ball and the opponent fell over his outstretched leg. I have admitted many times, that all referees make mistakes. Shearer, however, demanded not only that Styles be demoted from the Premiership but that at the end of the game he should have apologised on camera for making the mistake.
I wonder if he feels that same thing should apply to players. Should Ashley Cole be demoted from the England team for his sloppy pass to the Kazakhstan scorer and forced to apologise to the nation on television? Should Liverpool’s Daniel Agger’s negligence last Saturday, which allowed Zaki of Wigan to take the ball off his feet and score, mean he should suffer banishment from Anfield complete with a public apology, ignoring his otherwise excellent contribution to the game?
And what about football pundits, should they be bound by the same rules? Last season, Shearer criticised the referee at a Middlesbrough game saying that their goal should have been ruled offside. He even had the offside law shown on the screen. However as not only I reported in this column but also Keith Hackett, head of Premiership referees, pointed out in a national newspaper, he had completely misinterpreted the law. In other words he got it wrong. He made a mistake. And this of course, with a few hours to think about it, not the sort of instant decision referees have to make. Should he not have been ordered the following week to make an apology for his error and been relegated to Radio 5 Live for a set number of Saturday evenings?
But of course it is not only his scoffing at referees’ mistakes, he also belittles referees for applying the law correctly. At Euro 2008, he seemed to suggest that Howard Webb was a little too strong in giving a penalty against the Polish player for pulling down an Austrian player. Players, he said, are pulling shirts all over the field without punishment. That’s like saying we won’t punish anyone committing a knife offence as people are getting stabbed all over the place.
He was at it again this week when commenting on the Liverpool v Wigan game. The referee had given a free kick to Liverpool just outside the penalty area and ensured all defenders were at least ten yards away. However, before the kick was taken, Antonio Valencia of Wigan rushed out of the wall and the referee, bearing in mind Law 12 which says a player should be cautioned if he fails to retreat the required distance, showed him a yellow card. Shearer used the BBC technology to show that when the kick was taken Valencia had advanced to 7.5 yards from the ball and thus less than the 10 yards required.
Shearer’s comments, however, were that players are never 10 yards from the ball so the referee was wrong in conforming to the law by cautioning the player. A few minutes later Valencia received second yellow card for a reckless tackle on a Liverpool player and was sent off. Therefore in Shearer’s mind, the referee was responsible for changing the course of the game. Apparently the player had nothing to do with it.
So what can the BBC do with Shearer? What about a transfer? I hear there is likely to be a vacancy for a manager at Newcastle United. My bet is that would soon wipe the grin off his face.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2008