Thursday, October 23, 2008

Judgement Beye: not guilty

As we'd hoped (I'd say "as we expected", except the FA have too often proven their incompetence and idiocy for us to have too much faith in them), Habib Beye's red card from Monday's match against Man City was rescinded today.

It's all hypothetical, of course, but it's interesting to speculate what would have happened if referee Rob Styles had made the correct decision at the time. Man City wouldn't have been awarded the penalty from which they took the lead, but conversely we wouldn't have been galvanised by the sense of injustice into producing the determined and spirited display. Mark Hughes may have sounded perverse in claiming us being down to ten men worked in our favour, but it's true that Man City seemed to think they could win the game purely on the strength of their superior numbers. That, though, would be to seriously underplay the mismatch of talent in the two sides. The fact remains that Beye was sent off (wrongly), that we turned in a really good shift and that we can consider ourselves unlucky to have missed out on the extra two points.

Today's decision means that Beye will be available for the trip to the Dark Place on Saturday, and in even more encouraging news Jonas Gutierrez, along with Shay Given the star of our decent early season showings, may well be fit too. Just a shame, then, that there's no chance of Little Saint Mick taking to the turf in the Stadium of Shite, having been ruled out for both Saturday and Tuesday's home game with the Baggies.

In other news, ASBO trotted out some stuff about how he's really sorry, really he is, and, in a splendid display of verbal confusion, that he deserved "every bit of criticism that was labelled at me". He's also aware he's in "the last-chance saloon" - familiar surroundings then, Joey? Consider yourself extremely fortunate to have been handed the opportunity to pay another visit. Given he's been off the sauce since celebrating Boxing Day with an enthusiastic assault, I can only assume the saloon hasn't got a bar?
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