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Memo to coaches: Stop your whining
JOHN new author
Roar Rookie
20th February, 2015
14
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Kevin Muscat putting on a show from the sidelines is guaranteed in the Big Blue. (AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts)
JOHN new author
Roar Rookie
20th February, 2015
14

As a Melbourne Victory fan, it was disappointing to see the team give up a lead against Sydney, but listening to Kevin Muscat blaming the referee in his post-game interview was just embarrassing.

Here is a news flash for Kevin Muscat, Graham Arnold and the other A-League coaches: you are not Sir Alex Ferguson.

We’ve all seen Sir Alex using one or two controversial refereeing decisions as a smoke screen to cover up the fact that his team had either blown a lead or not won a game that they had been expected to. When he did it, it was a diversion tactic. When coaches over here do it, they sound like the world’s biggest babies.

Yes, we all know that Strebre Delovski got it wrong when he awarded the penalty to Sydney, but that is not what cost Melbourne their lead. That Melbourne had just 46 per cent possession and managed the sum total of four shots on goal for the whole game is why Sydney were able to get back into it.

Muscat wants to blame the referee for getting a couple of judgement calls wrong? Consider that the Victory’s completed passes in the opposition half was 65.1 per cent. In other words, for every two completed passes in Sydney’s half of the field, a Victory player managed to give the ball away on the third attempt. What does that say for his players’ judgement?

To go around complaining week in, week out about the officiating is, quite frankly, loser talk. Effectively a coach is saying ‘We would have won that game if not for the referee’. Instead of adopting a victim mentality of ‘woe is me, there is nothing I can do’, it is equally valid and far more effective to say ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have turned the ball over so easily’ because then you have a starting point to work from during practice next week.

Melbourne would have won the game if they could have hung onto the ball better and made better decisions while in possession. Maybe then they would have been able to cross the ball a bit more often instead of the 3:2 ratio that Sydney had (crosses: Sydney 33, Melbourne 23). Had they been able to pass more effectively, they could have built and maintained pressure on Sydney instead of allowing Sydney to out-shoot them by 70 per cent (total shots on goal: Sydney 17, Melbourne 10).

That way, Sydney are not in a position where they can win a penalty in the first place and you are not relying on the judgement of one person.

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As a sidenote, why has nobody mentioned the linesman (sorry, assistant referee) in the aftermath? We know the referee made an error, but why did the assistant allow such an egregious decision to stand?

It happened maybe 15 yards in front of the assistant’s positioning and involved the precise defender they are supposed to watch. Why did the assistant not try to talk the referee out of that call? The referee could have re-started the game with a drop-ball and that would have been the end of it.

But back to the point, these diversion tactics by coaches does nobody any favours. It makes coaches sound like petulant children and it distracts from the analysis of what most of the time is a great game. Coaches beware, we see through what you are doing and we don’t buy it. Coaches lie, but statistics never do.

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