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

[WorcesterTHFC]

The ‘Tim Sherwood’ of the reffing world

This game didn’t lose us the title as it was never ours to lose, we just happened to be the only team to put up any kind of fight.

Personally I thank him as he allowed us to kick those scummy Chelsea players all over the park

I could sit here for hours watching that poisonous little slag being clattered. Thanks to aliyid for posting this.

 

[slartibartfast]

How sad. That bloke is just pathetic.

 

[Hazardousman]

At least we showed spirit that night.

What I would give for a bit of that right now in our current PL games

 

[Everlasting Seconds]

What I would give for a bit of that right now in our current PL games

Exactly. Just somebody who cares even a fragment of that.

 

[lukespurs7]

Mark Clattenburg admits that he “allowed” Tottenham to “self-destruct” as opposed to actually, y’know, refereeing their game against Chelsea in 2016.

Tottenham missed out on the Premier League title in the 2015/16 season after a 2-2 draw with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.

A record nine Spurs players were booked in a bitter clash, and both they and Chelsea were handed record fines by the FA in the aftermath.

Clattenburg, the referee for the match, believes the game “certainly benefited” from his “style of refereeing”. Which was not to send off Eric Dier even if he attempted to murder someone.

“I allowed them to self-destruct so all the media, all the people in the world went: ‘Tottenham lost the title’,” he told NBC’s Men in Blazers podcast.

“If I sent three players off from Tottenham, what are the headlines? ‘Clattenburg cost Tottenham the title.’ It was pure theatre that Tottenham self-destructed against Chelsea and Leicester won the title.”

When asked if he helped to “script” the game, he added: “I helped the game. I certainly benefited the game by my style of refereeing.

“Some referees would have played by the book; Tottenham would have been down to seven or eight players and probably lost and they would’ve been looking for an excuse.

“But I didn’t give them an excuse, because my gameplan was: Let them lose the title.”

We've known for sometime how egotistical this bloke is but I find this claim staggeringly unprofessional and against the best interests of the game.

Your job is to referee, not think about other matters and aspects that are at stake you asshat.

It really goes to show what we were up against that year. Anyone and everyone wanted Leicester to win that title.

If he sent our players off we’d have lost the game/title even faster. Clattenberg didn’t cost us the title, we were barely ever in it, Leicester were always very far in front and got lots of 1-0 wins towards the end of the season, we left ourselves with too much to do.

 

[double0]

Whatever. NEXT!

 

[StartingPrice]

If he sent our players off we’d have lost the game/title even faster. Clattenberg didn’t cost us the title, we were barely ever in it, Leicester were always very far in front and got lots of 1-0 wins towards the end of the season, we left ourselves with too much to do.

Well, yeah...but if he'd done his job properly in the first half he would have sent at least one Chelsea player off, probably two, they wouldn't have continued with their antics which were what wound our players up after all, they wouldn't have had the confidence, fire or even players on the pitch to stage a fight back, they wouldn't have unsettled us becuase they wouldn't have got away with the antics that got under our skin, and we probably would have won the game by more than two. Maybe, then, Leicester might have shat the bed and we might have won the title. Look at it from the beginning, not the end.

 

[idontgetit]

The arrogant little cock has clearly never even given a moment's thought to the fact that the reason our players behaved the way they did in that game was solely because of his intentional dereliction of duty in allowing Costa to get away with a headbutt, allowing Terry to get away with an elbow, Ivanovic to get away with three bookable fouls in the space of about ten minutes and never once showing any interest in penalising Chelsea for what was a blatantly obvious tactic to try and wind our players up by kicking seven colours of shite out of them.

If he'd actually applied the laws of the game correctly in the opening half hour then he would never have had to worry about protecting his already shit-stained reputation.

My memory got blanked by the emotions of the game, is that accurate? If so it would be easy to find the clips and prove what an incompetent fuckwit he really is .

 

[tiger666]

Well, yeah...but if he'd done his job properly in the first half he would have sent at least one Chelsea player off, probably two, they wouldn't have continued with their antics which were what wound our players up after all, they wouldn't have had the confidence, fire or even players on the pitch to stage a fight back, they wouldn't have unsettled us becuase they wouldn't have got away with the antics that got under our skin, and we probably would have won the game by more than two. Maybe, then, Leicester might have shat the bed and we might have won the title. Look at it from the beginning, not the end.

Some proper straw clutching.

 

[Nerine]

In some ways I think the Chelsea game did us some favours for last season.

Opposition saw we weren't "soft" anymore. In fact, we were fucking hardcore, and would quite probably fuck you up badly if we so desired.

 

[StartingPrice]

Some proper straw clutching.

Not really, brah.

I'm making a deliberately over-emphatic point, but largely constrained by the nature of the post I'm replying to. If you check my first post in this thread you will see that I said I believe we lost what fading chances we had of the title when we drew with West Brom*, so I'm not really saying Leicester would have shat the bed and we would have won the title. We don't know what would have happened if Clattenburg had dealt with Chelsea and their antics effectively from the start of the first half. So none of us know what the result would have been - that is the nature of time and causality.

But the point is still a valid one. Some folk are looking at it from the consequences, which were that our players imploded and could/should have been sent off. Funnily enough, that suits the whole narrative that has been presented from the night of the game. And Clattenburg is playing that by talking about our players that could/should have been sent off. But the fact is that if you look at it from the first whistle, it was the Chelsea players who were most in danger of being sent off, and lucky not to be. They were throwing themselves wildly into tackles all over the pitch. And when the subtext was that they said they would do anything to prevent us winning the title (when they still had to play us and Leicester) the referee should have came down like a ton of bricks the first time one of those tackles, one of those incidents of violent conduct, or any instance of vile winding up by Fabregas (or anyone else) occurred. But he didn't, he let it fester.

I don't know what would have happened if he had dealt with them effectively. But there is a good chance that our players wouldn't have got so wound up (which is, after all, exactly why the Chelsea players were doing exactly what they were). And that means, like without a player or two, not being allowed to do the antics that would our players up, and our players not being wound up, it is fair to infer a situation where they wouldn't have got an equaliser or even back into the game. So all of this talk, from the end looking backwards, of how many players we could have lost is totally irrelevant and totally misses the point. If Clattenburg had done his job properly from the first whistle the odds are against our players being in a position to be that wound up.

*As for West Brom, that is a whole different story. Pulis said outright he wanted Leicester to win the title - for Ranieri (I think). A couple of days before us he played the Goons and they were utterly abject. I watched the whole game. A couple of days after playing us they played West Ham, and were utterly abject. I watched the whole game. Against us, they suddenly played the second half like it was a cup final!?! We should have won the game, anyway...so I am not just blaming them for playing out of their skins. But it does beg the question, doesn't it? Did they conserve themselves against Arsenal? Did they leave themselves too knackered too compete against West Ham and would they have done that as routine in league matches? We were royally shafted - and the FA are who I blame the most for letting them, and especially Chelsea, away with it. How do you imagine Ferguson would have reacted to this?

 

[arunspurs]

Exactly. Just somebody who cares even a fragment of that.

No idea why this is being said. Even in the last game we played this Saturday , team fought so well going a man down after 55 minutes. In fact we played so well, we were completely on attack with Watford not creating 1 chance & us being away from home. On another day we could have won that game.

Team is still playing for manager but just feel there are some tired bodies out there especially Eriksen after WCQ. We will come good with results soon.

 

[spursfan77]

There was an explayer on talksport yesterday evening who said that when you had him as the referee against one of the big teams then you were always in for a tough afternoon. (See the Gomes & Nani incident/farce at old Trafford for example). We all knew that he favoured the bigger teams (and that refs still do) and the players are aware of it too it seems.

Its why we have to make sure we make the new whl an intimidating place for the officials to come. At the old stadium I was row 6 of the west lower and I used to give the linesmen loads of shit (along with lots of other individual fans) for their decisions. I'm not saying it worked every time (probably only a handful) but they could definitely hear us and there were times you could see we influenced their decisions.

 

[Kiedis]

No idea why this is being said. Even in the last game we played this Saturday , team fought so well going a man down after 55 minutes. In fact we played so well, we were completely on attack with Watford not creating 1 chance & us being away from home. On other day we could have won that game.

Quite a lot of of the stuff in here at the moment shows how hard a time some people have with analysing a game based on performance and not the result.

 

[TheChosenOne]

There was an explayer on talksport yesterday evening who said that when you had him as the referee against one of the big teams then you were always in for a tough afternoon. (See the Gomes & Nani incident/farce at old Trafford for example). We all knew that he favoured the bigger teams (and that refs still do) and the players are aware of it too it seems.

Its why we have to make sure we make the new whl an intimidating place for the officials to come. At the old stadium I was row 6 of the west lower and I used to give the linesmen loads of shit (along with lots of other individual fans) for their decisions. I'm not saying it worked every time (probably only a handful) but they could definitely hear us and there were times you could see we influenced their decisions.

There is the 'psychobabble factor' which could be also taken into account, there have been a few managers down the years who target the referees and officials a week or so in advance of any given game.

Sowing the seeds before a ball is kicked.

Of course the media love it though.

Back to Leicester Prem win season, my take is the title was not in our hands to lose although when we lost at home by that late Huth goal it was to me a disaster and that one result didn't hurt us until the time of reckoning.

We played them in the cup at home shortly afterwards, drew at WHL then won the replay up at theirs. I said to another poster at the time in a thread on here that I would have preferred the league points but the other poster was happier with the cup win.

Ah well.

 

[slartibartfast]

In some ways I think the Chelsea game did us some favours for last season.

Opposition saw we weren't "soft" anymore. In fact, we were fucking hardcore, and would quite probably fuck you up badly if we so desired.

I think it showed opposition that if you rile us up we'll bite and lose our heads which we clearly did. We were 2.0 up then stopped playing football. Nothing clever, brave or macho about it. Fkin stupid is how I described it.
You kick lumps out of a team when you're losing or they're trying to do the same to you. Doing it when you were 2.0 up, throwing the game away AND any chance of a title challenge is beyond daft. I was fkin livid at the time.
Anyway, this has been done.
He's looking for attention now he's out the spotlight. Not got a book coming out by any chance has he?

 

[Gbspurs]

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

Why did we lose our heads though? Possibly something to do with the fact that Chelsea's players were allowed to run through us without penalty?

Lets face it, how much of a stretch is it to suggest that a referee whose game plan was to "let us lose the title" may have decided to allow this to happen by advantaging Chelsea with his decisions?

 

[Archibald Leitch]

Atleast he allowed us to watch Dier clatter three Chelsea players. The one on Fabregas(?) could easily have snapped both his legs

But it didn't

 

[Dennism]

If he sent our players off we’d have lost the game/title even faster. Clattenberg didn’t cost us the title, we were barely ever in it, Leicester were always very far in front and got lots of 1-0 wins towards the end of the season, we left ourselves with too much to do.

The title was lost by the Chelsea game. However, if we had won at West Ham it would have applied pressure on Leicester and we could have won it. A major problem was that once it was clear it was a two horse race teams were just rolling over for Leicester because they wanted them to win. Referees were also giving all the decisions in their favour.

 

[Trix]

I can't believe there is not more being made of the fact a premier league referee has admitted to purposely going against the laws of the game in order to affect its outcome.