Gold Coast coach Miron Bleiberg was careful not to publicly criticise referee Ben Williams but couldn’t resist taking a shot at Sydney FC after their scrappy 0-0 A-League draw at Skilled Park on a wet Sunday afternoon.
Slugged $5000 for calling referee Peter Green a “homey” in the aftermath of Sydney’s 3-2 win in the 93rd minute of their round five clash, the colourful Bleiberg suggested referee Williams missed a crucial hand ball foul by Sydney’s Shannon Cole when first Chris Harold and then Ben Halloran scrambled to get the ball past FC `keeper Liam Reddy.
“We are the cellar dweller and we play against the mighty Sydney who beat the mighty Roar and think they are the mighty of the world,” fired Bleiberg of a game that produced nine yellow cards, seven to Sydney players.
“If Sydney are to beat the Roar as the benchmark, then they sweat heavily to get a draw against the cellar dwellers.
“We’re not that far behind our opposition.
“It’s good for the competition that Sydney are doing well and I wish them all the best for the rest of the competition, is that fair to say?
“I hope nobody will punish me for this one (comment).”
Bleiberg said despite the high number of yellow cards which led to an 81st minute melee, he felt referee Ben Williams had done a fine job on a slippery pitch and hadn’t changed the course of the game.
But immediately after saying that, he raised the hand ball incident in the 67th minute which he admitted he didn’t have a clear view of, but which had it been detected, could have changed the result.
“Someone whispered in my ear there was some hand ball around the penalty area of Sydney but we get used to living with 50-50 decisions never going Gold Coast’s way.
“I’m not even upset anymore.”
Karol Kisel missed a header from inside the six-yard box in the 65th minute, which was crucial, and Bleiberg conceded luck went United’s way on that occasion.
“I looked upstairs (heaven) and said thank you when his kick missed,” said Bleiberg.
“If you give him another 10 like this he will score nine.”
Both sides had golden opportunities to put the ball into the net with Gold Coast forward Maceo Rigters spraying an easy shot wide in the 44th minute before Kisel’s painful miss.
Sydney FC coach Vitezslav Lavicka said he was disappointed with his side’s slow ball movement in the first half which was “night and day” compared to last week against the Roar.
“We expected much more,” he said describing the draw as a “fair result”.
“Karol (Kisel) had two chances, the second one a clear shot.
“A draw is fair.”
Gold Coast were coming off a run of five straight losses and are anchored to the bottom of the A-League table.
© AAP 2012Recommend this story.
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The Crowd Says (4) | Page 1 of Comments
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December 12th 2011 @ 12:18pm
PeterK said | December 12th 2011 @ 12:18pm | Report comment
I don’t have Pay TV, and so I’m forced to rely on comments and on statistics.
Here it seems Sydney “won” the cautions, 7-2, and I remember noticing a very high proportion of fouls against them in the game v The Roar (at one stage on the live blog I think it was about 8-nil for the fouls count). Are these stats representative of how Sydney play?
December 12th 2011 @ 8:15pm
adam214 said | December 12th 2011 @ 8:15pm | Report comment
They both cancelled each other out and both had good chances. To say that you are better than a cellar dweller is stupid because you are in the cellar and yes on paper they are better than 10th however football is played on grass not paper. Instead of shooting your mouth how about working more on your team performance and not putting peter jungschlager (one of the finds of the season) at left-back but helping out the young lads in o’hallaran harold and brown in attack.
December 12th 2011 @ 8:49pm
Qantas supports Australian Football said | December 12th 2011 @ 8:49pm | Report comment
adam214—-I reckon our kids Halloran, Brown, and Harald are looking very good—maybe still a lot to learn in this season but next year they will shine. The experience they are getting in the senior team is starting to come through. I’ll bet by the end of the season they’ll be ready to go for season 8 and make a real show of it. PS give Miron a break..
December 12th 2011 @ 8:33pm
Qantas supports Australian Football said | December 12th 2011 @ 8:33pm | Report comment
PeterK—–try streaming the game off the internet. I was at the game both teams cancelled each other out. The ref did a good job, however, missed a penalty for GCU. Its a bit hard to accept especially when GCU have been punished with 4 penalties against us in two games. But it was a fair result at the end of the day, by no means a classic game a real grind with both teams having their chances to win it—a draw was a fair result.