Terrible referees and frustrating performances

Written by Lee Pasquariello

The FA cup. This is the very competition I’ve seen some of Bradford City’s finest moments, like the famous 4-2 win at Chelsea (who went on to be champions that season by the way!) and beating Sunderland who at the time were a Premier League side, as well as being part of special Valley Parade atmospheres, for which the game against Reading comes to mind. Amazing memories being part of that as a young lad.

It hasn’t always been great though as in recent times, the FA cup has not been good to City, for example we’ve had the Exeter replay shambles, terrible performances against League Two and League One sides like Harrogate, Morecambe and Wycombe, and making hard work of and scraping past non league teams like Aldershot. So the majority of City fans were hoping when we were drawn against Cheltenham we’d have a bit of luck in this competition this season and face some good teams later on down the line, just like we did in the League Cup.

The squad was heavily rotated yesterday, 8 changes in fact! it was nice to see Andy Cook make his first start since the game where he injured his knee, and Matty Pennington coming back in, who in my opinion has been solid this season.

Not even 2 minutes in though we find ourselves a goal down, and by how it sounded on the radio and looking at it myself later on the video highlights on YouTube it was utterly confusing, and honestly one of the strangest goals I’ve seen in quite a long time. A free kick was given on Cheltenham’s left side, then as it was taken and the ball was in the air the referee seemed to blow his whistle, making every single one of the City players AND half of the Cheltenham players stop and look towards the referee as if to assume he’d pulled it back for a foul or for a retake, so because everyone stopped it meant that Cheltenham’s number 21 Hutchinson was left completely unmarked for him to head it in.

It seems as though the standard of refereeing at all levels in this country is not good enough, or especially with City anyway, it’s now 2 Saturday’s in a row where the officiating has had a big say in the game. Sam Allison last week causing a very stop start game away at Stevenage, Rob Massey-Ellis for the FA cup match yesterday. What’s even more bizarre is that they still get decent games to referee the next week, as Allison was refereeing in the championship mid week!

Despite this though there can be some criticism of City’s performance because how can a team have 28 shots in one game and still not score? Going by the highlights and the match commentary I listened to, T Wright should have done a lot better especially in the first half with some of the chances he had, on another day he could’ve probably had a hat trick!!! Cook could have scored as well in the second half but shot straight at the keeper, now that would have been a great way to mark his first start of the season.

Fair play to Cheltenham’s keeper and overall defensive performance though to keep all of those shots out, they’re now 5 games unbeaten in all competitions under new manager Steve Cotterill, who returned there after 28 years last month.

In my opinion though, I did feel as though a loss was coming at some point in the near future, as quite a few of our best/most important players are currently out injured or have been and still finding fitness.  We’ve done well though to pick up the points we have despite that injury list the last couple of months, because there’s been games in that time where we easily could have lost. For example Rotherham away and Lincoln at home, and you could even say the Barnsley game could have gone either way.

This next week is a free week for them all so it could be a good chance for the players to rest up and get fit again, and it will definitely be interesting to see how we respond to this defeat next week against Burton Albion, and whether or not we can find some of that early season form once again. We’ll have to do it without Graham Alexander though, because he was sent off for “dissent”, meaning he misses the next 2 games. Cheers ref!

So to sum it up, it’s another year where City have been knocked out of the early rounds of the FA cup, and the wait to reach the third round of the tournament for the first time since the 2017/18 season goes on!

Up the chickens!