RateTheRef

Ryan Lee is having an excellent season - would have been easy to keep him out the limelight after the mistake at the end of Livingston v Rangers.  I've seen him 3 or 4 times and he's been as good as anyone.

I thought the second yellow was very harsh but I could just about accept it as I could justify he knew he was there which would mean a move from careless to reckless.  But football's a contact sport and to me there isn't enough brutality or force to come into serious foul play or violent conduct.  I accept it would have hurt but I don't think we should be giving reds for that.  The second yellow right at the end of Atalanta v Dortmund had a lot more force and caught a player on the napper.  Generally that decision seems to have been accepted (granted I've not read anything on this forum about it!)  But anyone telling me this was more dangerous is kidding themselves.   

As a Motherwell fan, at the time I felt more of a grievance on the first red card than the second as I thought the ball was rolling through to the 'keeper and the defender clearly slipped (I know that's not a mitigation in the LOTG but given a bit of dubiety on the DOGSO I felt he could have been given benefit of the doubt).  However I've seen a wider angle of that today and Cameron is 3 times closer to the ball at point of contact than Connelly so I therefore grudgingly accept the referee was right.

The Aberdeen one is a straight kick in balls, it actually again happens because the ball takes a strange bounce on the pitch but there is no leeway if you go in with that intensity.

For me the third one is DOGSO - Olusanya is rapid and the two guys coming from wide are so wide I don't see how he doesn't get a decent shot away.  It's been very clear for me getting a shot that's got a reasonable chance of going in has been the bar for weeks and this likely meets it.  That being said, I don't think the yellow was clearly wrong either so while I think it's more red than yellow, I don't think there is enough there for a VAR intervention so in that way I think we've been unlucky.

I thought we had a decent penalty claim later on in the game which could have made things interesting but in the end we lost two guys as a result of one of our players over or under hitting the ball and the decisions while subjective, weren't clearly wrong - we can only blame ourselves we were in that position and then got beat.

That is one of the best Championship games I've ever seen.  Ipswich were outstanding and Coventry were maybe a yard off it but you could see in flashes what a good team they were - I thought the towsiness came from the speed that the teams both played at rather than players naturally being at it.  The referee, who I've not really seen before, I thought was excellent.  He seemed in total control throughout and even when he missed something he never seemed flustered.  I think he was rewarded for a relatively high bar for a foul as the dissent wasn't bad.  Coventry will have better days but thought everyone on that pitch worked really hard to provide a spectacle. 

Steve Clarke said the referee said there was football contact that caused the handball but it wasn't enough for a foul.

For what it's worth, I'm not even convinced it was low enough on the arm to be a punishable handball. 

I think I'd have felt absolutely shafted if that was given as a red, fair play to Siebert for being strong as in the atmosphere in that ground and with his pal in his ear it'd have been easy to go red.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojZSkWLwYzE&ab_channel=ScottishFA

Scottish FA May video attached!  Some good interesting offside ones at the start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8B-iFpyBtM

Today's review.

Sorry, I assumed the guidance in UEFA had been adopted in the EPL as it has in the SPFL and not used to watching games where that's not the expectation now.