Clattenberg: "My game was to let Tottenham lose the title"

Trix said:

No what he has said is by the laws of the game he should have sent three players off and he chose to ignore the rules.

How many other occasions has he decided to just pick and choose what laws to follow and what to ignore?

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Everlasting Seconds said:

1) He is obviously a prick
2) Most of you are losing it over a rain drop from the past, when it seems we have quite the ocean to tackle now.

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Trix said:

You re right it's in the past. However we are talking about an official that has admitted to intentionally not following the laws of the game. Forgetting our game entirely he has potentially seen teams relegated due to his officiating either directly or indirectly.

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Trix said:

You re right it's in the past. However we are talking about an official that has admitted to intentionally not following the laws of the game. Forgetting our game entirely he has potentially seen teams relegated due to his officiating either directly or indirectly. How many of those decisions affecting those clubs were him doing the same. We could be talking about him costing clubs millions.

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Tucker said:

He was always an arrogant prick with a god complex, it’s clear he believes the ref should have a big affect on the game, and that he wants to be the centre of attention.

So glad he doesn’t ref here anymore.

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Nebby said:

I've always wondered whether referees really do call it as they see it. Pretty clear they don't.

What right does Clattenburg have to put the safety of Chelsea players at risk? Some of our players had clearly lost their head that night. Somebody's career could have been ended just because he feared a few negative headlines. What a pathetic coward.

Makes me feel all the more concerned about the treatment - and lack of protection - given to Kane on Saturday.

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Bulletspur said:

We threw away a 2 goal lead. Blaming Clattenburg despite this egotistical stance is pointless. He didn't lose his head, we did

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• I think it depends on which direction you look at it from.

• If you look at the consequences of his actions then, yes, we could have had several players sent off.

• Some of what he says makes it sound like he was merely reacting to our players going over the top by deciding not to send them off, and in that sense, no matter how else you feel about it, we did lose the lead and we did implode.
• But he also says he had a game plan. That implies forethought. It also suggests a decision he had made prior to the kick-off. It is at this point that you have to look at it in terms of causes and not consequences.
• So, was there anything that might suggest, prior to kick off, that our players may implode?
• Prior to any discussion of Chelsea, we had managers saying they wanted Leicester to win the title and then performing pathetically - Swansea, for instance, sent out a team without a striker and basically handed Leicester their first goal. West Brom were feeble against Arsenal a few days before playing us, feeble against West Ham a few days after playing us, but played like it was their cup final against us in between (we still should have beat them and that is where the title race really ended IMHO). The whole footballing World, and even non-footballing folk, seemed to want Leicester to win. And all of the fixtures, arranged by TV, aided them. There was plenty of reason for our players to be touchy.
• Then, weeks prior to our game, and still having to play Leicester, their manager and players began talking about how much they wanted Leicester to win the league. Some of their players even went so far as to say they would do anything to stop us winning it. Anything? Really? Like throwing their game against Leicester? Deliberately injuring our players, to the point of destroying careers? Their was plenty of scope for our players to be very very wound up, to the point of being in danger of imploding even before kick off. Was Clattenburg aware of this? I'm pretty sure he was.
• Right from the off, way before any of our players committed any serious fouls, the Cheslea players were throwing themselves wildly into challenges. They may not have committed any really bad fouls but, IMHO, that was as much by accident as design. Fabregas was verbally abusing our players and coaching staff. Clattenburg was very lenient with them, to say the least. It was this period that @nightgoat is referring to when he says Chelsea could have been issued three straight red cards. Even if he doesn't actually mean it this way, his words about having a game plan leaves open the possibility that he was deliberately lenient on the Cheslea players. And with the ill-feeling, insensitivity and outright goading towards the Spurs players and the club, even prior to kick off, this leniency towards the Cheslea players, their dangerous play, winding up and goading, would have had the somewhat obvious consequence of winding the Spurs players up even more.
• It also has to be said, as others have mentioned, when our players eventually did reach boiling point (with the help of Clattenburg's lenient treatment of the Chelsea players), he let things continue to slide and didn't send our players off, he was risking injury to the Chelsea (not that I cared at the time), and also to our, players.
• As @robbiedee says, the referee is there to administer the rules of the game to the best of his (or her) ability, nothing more and nothing less. It doesn't really matter if he literally means he walked down the tunnel before the game with the mindset that he didn't care how much unfair pressure our players had been under, he was going to let anything pass from the Chelsea players so we would implode. His claim that he had a game plan makes it sound like that - and I think that is what folk are reacting to. And it doesn't matter if his use of the term game plan was ill-advised - and what he really meant was that when we did implode he decided to leave us with eleven players on the pitch so that everyone could see eleven players, and not ten or nine, had failed to win the match so he hadn't lost them the title. His mindset was wrong and he wasn't following the laws of the game because he had an agenda.
• Ultimately, the West Brom result was when the really damage was done. The FA should have been clamping down from the whole we want Leicester to win statements from managers and players and particularly so by the Chelea players. They had to play us and Leicester and their claims that they would do anything to stop us winning the title was incredibly inflammatory prior to such a big game. But Clattenburg lost control of the game early on by not penalising the Chelsea players. His comments are, basically, idiotic - whether we lost a two goal lead or not.

tiger666 said:

All he said is he left it to us to lose it instead of sending us off.

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bomberH said:

I know his form has been splitting opinion with some of you this year but all this thread does is remind me how close I was to having full on homosexual feelings for Dier that night. Whatever happens in the future, whether he moves or whether he loses his place in the team etc, I’ll always know that night, he fucking loved Spurs and he fucking hated Chelsea and he really fucking hated Fabregas.

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StartingPrice said:

But he used the term game plan - that is something you conceive before the game. Maybe he means when we lost our heads he thought he would just leave us. But that ignores the fact that he allowed Chelsea to get away with some unholy shit prior to us imploding. That and the whole tension going into the game was heavily instrumental on us imploding. And not sending any of their players off in the first half, or even coming down heavily on their wild challenges, probably effected the result of the game - and the result swinging against us was instrumental in our lot imploding.

He failed to control an incredibly important game and, whether he actually planned for us to lose our heads, and made pro-Chelsea decisions to engineer that, or just stopped administering the rules of the game so he didn't get a hard time off the media, his officiating was abject and probably influenced the result of the game.

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StartingPrice said:

But he used the term game plan - that is something you conceive before the game. Maybe he means when we lost our heads he thought he would just leave us. But that ignores the fact that he allowed Chelsea to get away with some unholy shit prior to us imploding. That and the whole tension going into the game was heavily instrumental on us imploding. And not sending any of their players off in the first half, or even coming down heavily on their wild challenges, probably effected the result of the game - and the result swinging against us was instrumental in our lot imploding.

He failed to control an incredibly important game and, whether he actually planned for us to lose our heads, and made pro-Chelsea decisions to engineer that, or just stopped administering the rules of the game so he didn't get a hard time off the media, his officiating was abject and probably influenced the result of the game.

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dagraham said:

Quite. Anybody who has seen my posts on here would know that I find the constant moaning about refs and paranoia of some Spurs fans tedious.

However, he’s just coming across as an egotistical twat. He’s always seemed like that and we have to hope that most refs are calling it like they see it ( even if the way they see it is wrong!).

The refs job is to control the game and apply the laws, and if they are a decent ref they’ll be able to stand by their decisions regardless of whether it’s a title decider or not.

All he’s done is just admit he willingly lost control of the game in order to protect himself from some hypothetical bad publicity.

What a prick.

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WorcesterTHFC said:

The fact that he ignored the laws of the game in order to avoid a hard time from the media shows how scummy the media are. Officials are meant to get a hard time when they lose control of a game, as Clusterfuck did so abjectly.

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