Outrunning the Bear

There's this old joke about two campers:

walking through the woods when a huge brown bear suddenly appears in the clearing about 50 feet in front of them. The bear sees the campers and begins to head toward them. The first guy drops his backpack, digs out a pair of sneakers, and frantically begins to put them on. The second guy says, "What are you doing? Sneakers won’t help you outrun that bear." "I don't need to outrun the bear," the first guy says. "I just need to outrun you."

I was reminded of this when Michael B asked why I was annoyed that Huddersfield had snatched a 3-2 come-from-behind win over Rotherham on Tuesday, when both Newcastle and Brighton got draws, leaving the Magpies top of the table.  In the race for promotion, the top two spots automatically move up while 3rd through 6th go through a playoff to determine the last spot.  So Newcastle do not need to "outrun" Brighton, they just need to "outrun" Huddersfield.  And by the end of this week's matches, they had closed the gap on Newcastle.

So two matches for all the Championship division sides.  Saturday I got to watch the Magpies sort of sleepwalk their way to a 1-0 win over Wolverhampton.  My one line Football Manager post match remark to the team would have been "It was a good result but not a very good performance."  However, I would have also been very complimentary of the back line (Yedlin, Lascelles, Clark and Dummett) as they kept things pretty tight.  Diame had a good work rate but wasn't as effective as in the prior match.  And Mitrovic was his usual roller coaster self.  Already yellow carded (one of five the Magpies who would eventually collect before the final whistle) by the 15th minute for persistent fouling, he still came flying in on the Wolves keeper and looked to catch him on the heel.  Could have easily been a second yellow.  Ironically (Wolves manager characterized it differently), Mitro would score the match's only goal in the 44th minute and was substituted at the start of the second half as Rafa feared the Serbian would get himself sent off.  Of the chase pack, Brighton, Huddersfield, and Sheffield Wednesday won, Reading drew and Leeds lost.

Newcastle United's Jamaal Lascelles (third from left) scores his side's second goal
of the game during the Sky Bet Championship match at Carrow Road, Norwich. (Photo: PA)

They laced the boots back up for a full slate of games on Tuesday.  On the road at Norwich, Newcastle jumped to an early 1-0 lead which fairly quickly turned into a 1-2 loss, with Lascelles not playing well and Darlow making a rare costly mistake.  Second half reports read like Newcastle dominated with lots of shots and a few off the woodwork.  Their persistence paid off with Lascelles leveling things off of a Shelvey free kick in the 81st minute.  Unfortunately, all the pursuers, save Brighton, won and the top six got more compact.  On the whole though, four points from two road matches in four days is not a bad result and the come-from-behind draw at Norwich showed some character.


There's No Place Like Turf Moor

Is there a tougher place to play these days than Turf Moor, home of Burnley?  Technically there are sides with better home performance than the Clarets but their 9-2-3 record is among the best; only Man City, Arsenal and Swansea (one of these is not like the others) have beaten them at home.  Chelsea were the latest side to discover the joys of playing at Turf Moor.  Though the Blues dominated possession and had an early 1-0 courtesy of Pedro, Burnley's defense was solid, only allowing three shots on target and just one corner.  And they got a stunning free kick from Robbie Brady (this week's YouTubeableMoment) in the 24th minute that would get them a well-earned draw.

The rest of the top six, save Tottenham, got wins, so Chelsea's margin at the top is down to a "mere" eight points.  Man City endured a potentially season-ending injury to Jesus (imagine having to pick a substitute for Jesus!) and got a 2-0 win at Bournemouth.  Arsenal took a 2-0 win over Hull (which will be discussed further below) and Man United handled Watford 2-0.  Liverpool reversed their slide with a 2-0 win at Anfield over Tottenham.  While trying not to take anything away from the Reds, was that not the worst Spurs performance of the season?  I reminded myself that they had sort of righted the ship when they had an awful first half and were down 0-2 to Chelsea but this time they just kept getting worse.

At the other end of the table, Claudio Ranieri has survived more than a week since getting the dreaded vote of confidence.  However, Leicester were awful again against Swansea; the scoreline says 2-0 but it seemed much worse than that.  And how about Swansea - fourth win in six matches and they are now four points above the drop zone.  I will own up that I thought the problem was the players not being good enough but Paul Clement does seemed to have turned things around.  Middlesbrough grabbed a point off of Everton, which meant they also added a little breathing because Sunderland, Crystal Palace and Hull all lost.


Handling - One More Time

Clattenburg apologised to the Hull players
 (Photo: Getty Images Europe)

This time it was going so well until suddenly it turned into a clusterf***.  There was no doubt that the ball struck Sanchez in the arm and went into the net to give Arsenal a 1-0 lead in the 33rd minute at the Emirates.  Not finding great videos but this one at least gives you a decent sense of what happened.  Mark Clattenburg took a minute to confer with the assistant - who had a clear view of the play but recall that in that situation his first three priorities are watching for offside, watching for offside and watching for offside - and let the goal stand.  I thought it was the correct call.  Ball to arm and he didn't use the arm to propel the ball after contact - it was a pure ricochet.  Unlucky for Hull but no more unlucky than if the ball had bounced off his face into the goal.  The announcers thought it was the correct call.  The PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited - the governing body for referees) sent a message to the booth saying Clattenburg got the call right. In the studio at halftime Robbie and Robbie both thought it was the correct call.   Alrighty, move along people, nothing to see here.

Then it got weird.  After the match it was revealed that Clattenburg had apologized to some Hull players as they came out for the second half because he felt he had made the wrong call.  On what basis did he change his mind?  He's not supposed to be looking at video to confirm or refute his calls.  But wait, it gets worse.  This is a transcript of Rebecca Lowe's reporting.

Let’s go to the Emirates earlier, Alexis Sanchez’s first goal struck his hand before going into half. Robbie and Robbie at the time felt it was a fair goal because it was not a deliberate hand ball and the laws of the game back that up but referee Mark Clattenburg apologized at half time to the Hull City players saying ‘we should have disallowed it’ because apparently you’re not allowed to score a goal from your hand even if it’s not deliberate because it doesn’t sit well in the game. And that’s the quote that we were given from the head of the PGMOL (Mike Riley) who we have since called.

"Doesn't sit well in the game?"  Watching live I could only sputter a big WTF at the TV screen  I have never heard that phrase mentioned in connection with interpreting the rules around handling.  It certainly didn't come up when Koscielny got a late game winner earlier this season against Burnley.  Absolutely stunning.  A few days later Howard Webb, technical director for PGMOL, was restoring some order to the situation, outlining in clear terms why it was the right call.  Phew, for a little while there it was like the Trump White House was handling the matter.  Really helpful article here, which includes some key passages from the rule book.

And while we're on the subject, a word about Arsenal fans and referees.  Collecting information on this matter I came across several Arsenal fan websites that have, in the past, charged referees with systematic bias against the Gunners, especially Mark Clattenburg.  So he had three controversial calls in Saturday's game - the Sanchez goal, the DOGSO call on Hull's Clucas and the DOGSO non-call on Arsenal's Kieran Gibbs; all went in Arsenal's favor.  Recall on that Koscielny play, the referee correctly did not disallow the goal for handling but the crew missed that he was offside.   Please take off the aluminum foil hats and move past the conspiracy theories.  Your lives will be so much better.

And another thing...the annual debate about whether it's time for Arsene Wenger to step down/be fired as Arsenal manager is in full swing.  Wednesday's 1-5 loss to Bayern in the first leg of the round of 16 will add fuel to the fire.  Rafa Benitez is being mentioned as a replacement.  Hey, what you guys do on your own time is fine but leave Rafa out of it.


More Newcastle Live

For the second weekend in a row, I get to see Newcastle live, this time hosting Aston Villa on Monday.  This ancient BFS derby that dates back to 2012 has lost some of its luster with both being relegated last year but is still an important match, at least for Newcastle.  Villa have lost four straight and are 19 points out of the last playoff spot for promotion.  So naturally I expect this to be a tight contest, with Newcastle struggling to put them away and yielding a late goal to the visitors that results in a draw or maybe even a loss.  Brighton are away to Barnsley which could be a tricky match for the Seagulls while Leeds visit Ipswich and Nottingham Forest host Sheffield Wednesday Saturday.  Huddersfield are in FA Cup action so their match with Reading is moved to Tuesday; the good news there is one of those two will drop some points.

For EPL teams already out of the FA Cup, this is an off-week.  Fox Sports will televise most of the eight 5th Round matches Saturday, Sunday and Monday.  What are the odds that with eight EPL teams still in the competition, none got drawn against each other?  So all the other divisions could be out after this round.  Or with eight upsets, none of the EPL teams would make it to the quarterfinals.  Yeah, that's going to happen.  Arsenal, 4th in the EPL, play Sutton, 17th in the 5th division.  This is like Kansas playing the Central Connecticut State in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament.  Still, I will at least check it out on Monday for the novelty of seeing Arsenal play at Gander Green Lane and its artificial surface. The other matches are listed here.

Nice weather forecast so get out and play, then watch on dvr.