Man City 0 Pompey 0
Could well have been 3 points for Pompey had Irish ref Dermot Gallagher not made 2 massive errors.
Missing a blatant City handball in the penalty area was bad enough, but that poor decision was nothing compared with his earlier failure to send off Ben Thatcher after he’d knocked Mendes out cold with a running fore-arm smash that Rollerball Rocco would have been proud of (though surely have been disqualified for).
Gallagher was due for retirement last season, and apparently has only been kept on due to the lack of quality refs coming through the ranks. If this is the best they can come up with then the mind boggles at how shit the rest must be. And what about the 4th official? And the third and the second come to that. What a waste of space they are, if they couldn’t influence the terrible decision to let Thatcher remain on the pitch.
Harry is quite rightly calling for a punishment for Thatcher, but ridiculously it seems this is not straightforward or guaranteed to be successful.
Browsing the net, I stumbled upon a 2001 Dermot Gallagher demotion article. In that instance it was Man Utd that were the team wronged by Gallaghers refusal to send someone off, and we all know there’s 1 rule for Man Utd and one rule for the rest. Will the FA prove this once again, or will they show some consistency and consign him to the referees room 101?
