Jermaine Jenas tweeted in response to a Liverpool fan calling the pundit out on Twitter for his comments brushing off Jurgen Klopp’s complaints over the refereeing in the Reds’ win over Burnley at the weekend.
The former Tottenham star had rushed to the defence of Sean Dyche’s physical outfit, labelling his counterpart’s comments as “disappointing” when speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live (via Lancs Live).
Arrrhh 🥲 https://t.co/SeXQpn94IX
— Jermaine Jenas (@jjenas8) August 22, 2021
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Officials informed Premier League clubs prior to the resumption of domestic football that a more lenient approach to officiating would be taken in light of complaints regarding the over-involvement of referees.
While it’s been pleasant to observe flowing football, as was the case during the European Championship, with referees evidently refraining from intervening, Jenas’ shrugging off of overly physical challenges is utterly baffling.
Football is ultimately a contact sport, so there is a basis for the arguments of those defending Burnley (albeit a thin one), however, that shouldn’t hand the more rough and ready sides a free pass to impose their will upon the game via illegal challenges.
The wrestling manoeuvres of the likes issued against Joel Matip and Diogo Jota above certainly shouldn’t be ignored in the name of flowing football.
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The response from Jenas is typical of him i.e. childish and of little value. However, at least it demanded no grammatical construction which helped him.
I do not know which game the BT Sports pundits watched but at least 3 times LFC players were man handled OFF the ball. If that is “normal” then why did O’Neill and Gudmansson complain when they were shouldered off the ball and look for penalties and free kicks. I think there is a sense of appearing to be unbiased but when LFC are concerned, but in fact it is biased against LFC. If LFC had made some of those “normal” challenges, I am sure there would have been a card or two. The fact that there were no cards at all is astounding. Last season every game produced at least 3 cards a game. Maybe there is a sense of going from one extreme to the other.
As an ex class one referee I am all in favour of keeping the game flowing but Burnley are well known for their physical approach to games and are exploiting this directive given to referees, by all mean keep the game flowing but at the next natural stoppage talk to the culprit or if appropriate book them otherwise teams like Burnley will end up causing serious damage to some opponents.
I don’t understand how some defenders are still getting away with holding an opponent, or grabbing an opponent’s shirt, I thought that the purpose of VAR was to stop these things from happening, but it doesn’t seem to have made any difference to these offences.