Poor Decisions!

It really was a game of poor decisions when United visited Windsor Park to play the IFA/Linfield last Saturday. The first 'poor' decision was in our team selection, why does our manager continue to select Alan D, when its obvious to us, the Sky Blue faithful, that he's struggling for form and then to cap it all he selected Gavin to replace the suspended Archie. We were down two men from the start and it got worse as the game progressed. Gavin didn't track back for the first Linfield goal, but then Tony Kane didn't make any attempt to stop the cross and Andy Waterworth was left with the easy task of giving the hosts the lead. I may have not been a brilliant footballer (bloody useless in fact), but I always was taught to try and stop crosses coming in.

When Gavin Taggart committed the first foul that he was subsequently booked for, the Linfield player he fouled, immediately got up and grabbed his shirt and should have got at least a booking and when referee Carvill didn't do this, Gavin couldn't help questioned Carvill's motives and was booked for dissent, but rightly or wrongly, Gavin should have kept silent, a poor decision on Gavin's part. Alan D's poor pass presented Linfield with possession from which they increased their league and there was hint of offside as Dwayne was out of position and Waterworth was level with the last United defender, Marky, but the linesman forgot about that offside rule, or he just didn't care. Then we have the penalty incident, I thought it was definite penalty but the Linesman at the city end of the ground was adamant, that it was no penalty.

He allowed that Waterworth took a 'dive' and Waterworth confirmed this later as he said he was 'going down' as Dwayne dived, in other words he conned the referee. Worse was yet to come for the Sky Blues, when our captain, Alan Jenkins, after the penalty was tucked away by Waterworth, berated the referee as to why he didn't listen to his linesman, who had a perfectly unrestricted view of the incident, but unforgivably he is 'alleged' to have called the ref a cheat and was promptly sent off for this truism. Jenkins is a veteran of Scottish league football and he must have come up against this sort of injustice many times before, but why did he call the ref a cheat, only he knows. That left us with a mountain to climb as we were down to 10 men, but we should have done it and we missed three makable chances and were denied at least one stone-wall penalty.

Spike and his management team have to make the correct selection on Saturday, they'd best get it right from the word go. I'm not going to try to second guess Fergie, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Alan D starting again, in the absence of Jenks, but I would imagine it has to be the last chance for him, if he reaches out and grabs it, he may safe his United career, if on the other hand he gives another lack-lustre performance, I fully expect him to disappear for a long time, maybe permanently. Archie looks primed to come back in midfield and as Taylor picked up his 5th booking on Saturday, Archie will maybe get a run-out at central defence in the Shield match against DC next Tuesday, if the bold Johnny is suspended. Referee Colin Burns, who is by no means the worst, takes charge of Saturday's game against the Glens and we can only hope he and Spike, gets the big decisions correct!