In the wake of the three-match ban handed out to Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero despite the elbow charge clearly witnessed by referee Andre Marriner, a former referee in the English Premier League [EPL] has shockingly revealed that referees are sometimes told to lie about what or what they did not see.
Mark Halsey, who retired in 2013 said on Twitter, “City are appealing the Aguero charge believing Marriner saw the incident – a view backed by another referee, Dermot Gallagher.”
He then threw the shocker – “I have been in that situation, when I have seen an incident and been told to say I haven’t seen it.”
On the incident, Halsey wrote in offsiderulepodcast.com, “Andre Marriner is right there, should the fourth official have had a say too?
“It was unlike Aguero, I’ve never seen him elbow someone but that doesn’t give him the right to do what he did to Winston Reid.
“I imagine we’ll see a charge of violent conduct against Aguero and he’ll miss the Manchester derby.
“If he gets away with it I think there will be a few managers very unhappy. If that had been Diego Costa he’d have been jailed and condemned by now.”
Well for the uninitiated, retrospective action on any incident can only be taken if and only if the match day referee affirms that he/she had not seen the incident.
If Marriner actually saw the incident between Aguero and Winston Reid and adjudged at that point in time that the City striker was not breaching the law of the game, then no retrospective action could have been taken.
The question, did PGMOL ‘advise’ Marriner to plead blindness? City will believe there is a conspiracy afoot to deny them their most lethal striker just before an all-important Manchester derby…
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