Originally Posted by
the other bob wilson
This is where I think we might have a valid argument about the first goal - I've watched it a few times now and it's hard to see which City player got a touch on the free kick for the corner to be given, the decision to penalise Peltier is also a pretty soft one.
Just watched all of the second half on the club site and would say this about the controversial decisions.
1. Handball by Mee from Arter's shot - Mee's hand is by his side when the ball hits it so that usually means no penalty, but he is a few yards away from Arter so I think it's in the some you get, some you don't category.
2. Handball by Mee from Bennett's cross - definitely not a penalty for me. However, the referee clearly gives it and still thinks it's a penalty when confronted by the Burnley players, so what caused him to change his mind? Neil Warnock said after the game that the fourth official told him the linesman thought it was a penalty, so, again, if that is correct, why the changed decision? What you cannot see from the video is how the linesman reacted at the time of the incident, if he did think it was a penalty then, presumably, he flagged for one - if that was the case, there is no reason I can think of for the referee to change his decision. Although I think the correct decision was given in the end, City should feel aggrieved that the referee changed his mind like he did - the fact that there has been no explanation from Mr Dean or the authorities as to the reasoning behind the change of mind does not help the situation at all.
3. Foul by Taylor on Gunnarsson. A bit of a strange one this because the players concerned are not in typical positions for a penalty shout, but it looks like a foul to me. That said, it was only after seeing it slowed down and from different angles that I came to this conclusion because I couldn't see that Taylor had done anything wrong when I watched it for the first time at normal speed.
For me, City were on the wrong end of a few diabolical decisions against Chelsea, but I don't think any of the major ones yesterday fell into that category. However, in a match as important as yesterday's was, it must be a reason for concern that all of the big decisions went the way of one team - I'm not suggesting Mike Dean was corrupt or openly biased, more inept because having now watched most of the ninety minutes, his overall handling of the game was not up to the standards you would expect in a Premier League match.
People have talked about our winner against Brighton and Lee Mason's changed penalty decision against Huddersfield as examples of where luck has been on our side, but it seems to me that we've had far more times when we've had cause to criticise officials for wrong decisions with good cause than we have to praise them for coming to our rescue. As I've said before on here, I side with cock up over conspiracy when it comes to official's decisions, but they've certainly gone against us more than for us in our two seasons at this level.