Just Excuses

The best thing about having a blog (or in my case blogs!) is I get to moan about things that annoy me.

And this week we saw a prime example.

We aren’t the only club that does it be any means and we aren’t the worst, however, this blog is about Stoke City, so the focus must be us.

But this idea that when you lose a game of football the first thing you do is get yourself in front of the nearest camera and bleat about referees really vexes me and that’s exactly what TP did this week.

Now I read that yet again he’s moaning to Mike Riley about the decisions that didn’t go our way on Wednesday night.

Having finally seen the highlights last night I will concede that three went against us. The Walters goal (I wrote on Thursday that I didn’t know why it was chalked off from the view I had at the game). The Carragher tackle on Matty Etherington might have been a red card (personally I wouldn’t have sent him off) and the foul on Crouch was a penalty.

Fair enough. But referee Lee Probert didn’t cost us the game. Any more than he cost us the game at Vila two seasons ago when he disallowed Mama Sidibe’s goal or Everton last term when for some reason he decided Tuncay had pushed Leighton Baines.

We lost those games because we missed a host of other chances at Villa and didn’t defend properly for Yakubu’s winner at Goodison. And that is my point.

Football clubs, just like the boxer who blames an injury when he doesn’t turn up in a big title fight, have to take responsibility for what they do in matches.

Manager’s are fond of asking for “consistency” from Ref’s. So lets turn it round. Lets see TP ring Mike Riley after Kenwyne Jones dives at WBA, or Matty dives against West Ham in the Cup Quarter final (you will recall he managed – like we all did – to get upset about their goal which was an obvious handball.) I had brilliant views of both, and said straight away “dive.” I could see it, TP knows it and stil his silence was deafening.

Or where was his admonishment of the ref after Huth’s elbow in the Cup Final? Or this season when Wilko should have gone at Swansea – as soon as that tackle was made I said to the people I was with: “he’s off.”

It’s an obvious cliché, but its true. It evens itself out. Take Sunderland last season. The Cattermole handball was a more or less exact replica of what Danny Pugh did at the other end two season’s before. How we chuckled then. How we fumed last November.

We are fans. We don’t have to see sense or be reasonable. So when we beat Sunderland last season at home with a goal that was miles offside and one that was handball how funny I found it to stand there abusing Steve Bruce.

That’s my job.

The job of the Stoke manager, though, is to be honest in defeat, surely? And I say this not to TP in particular but bosses in general, please, please stop making excuses.