In one of the most hilarious, weird and downright embarrassing interviews of some time, the Manchester United coach Ole Gunnar Solksjær blamed Chelsea’s official website for influencing referees not to award all penalties to United after the cautious, goalless draw between the two teams at Stamford Bridge last night.
You really have to appreciate this in full. No, it’s not a segment of a comic sketch show, I guarantee. This is real life.
“It’s all these external influences, it’s bold when they put it on their website, which is influencing the referees. You can read it.”
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer expresses his frustrations about the penalty that was not applied pic.twitter.com/7YK22ja6Oo
– Daily Football (@footballdaily) February 28, 2021
To be clear, Ole’s theory is that referee Stuart Attwell read a paragraph on Chelsea’s official website (which is obviously a must-read for all league referees) about Harry Maguire escaping with fouls against César Azpilicueta and Michy Batshuayi in recent encounters , which is precisely why he chose not to grant a limit penalty against Chelsea. It is the 22nd paragraph of this story. Solksjær also checks the name of Frank Lampard, because obviously we are all involved in this.
(You should have checked the name of club historian Rick “Master of Referees” Glanvill!)
The incident occurred in the 15th minute, when Callum Hudson-Odoi and Mason Greenwood fought for a strange ball in the Chelsea area, and the Chelsea player appeared to control the ball. The referee did not take the penalty at the start, but VAR called him to the field side monitor. Replays there were largely inconclusive, with some angles showing Greenwood handling first, some angles showing Hudson-Odoi handling first, and some angles showing Greenwood’s arm actually pushing Hudson-Odoi’s hand on the ball.
Which was definitely not a clear mistake or a definitive penalty.
Ole’s conspiracy theory – remember, only Leicester City received more penalties than United this season! – was further fueled by a little rumor, where the referee apparently told Maguire (he again!) that he could not assign the penalty because it would be “very controversial”! Well, he certainly avoided that!
Since then, Manchester United has started to back off on the grounds that things have been “badly heard”. The fans must have been very loud.
I’m not a big fan of FA fines, but it certainly seems justified in this case. If this isn’t damaging the game’s reputation, then I don’t know what it is.
On the positive side, we laughed a lot at all of this, we found a good use for The 5th Stand app, finally (or should we say The 12th Man App), and we still received this excellent tweet from the social media team.
* chef’s kiss *