Stuart Attwell - The Controversy King

       Eminem may claim that he is the king of controversy but in this country that crown surely belongs to the youngest Premiership referee Stuart Attwell.  Stuart Attwell has incurred the ire of many teams fans and managers who deem his decisions detrimental to their teams' cause.  Just over two years ago he gave goal to Reading against Watford, the goal is known as the 'ghost goal' when it had actually gone four yards wide of the post and out for a corner and on Saturday he was allowed a controversial Liverpool goal.  His wikipedia page has 12 separate controversies although most of them wouldn't be on a normal refs page but poor Stuart has drawn the wrath of a lot of people when he hasn't done much wrong.

      Lets start with the one which happened this weekend.   I am sure most of you know the circumstances behind it but I will give a breif description.  Sunderland got a free kick in their own half tried to take it quickly but the ref stopped them saying the ball was rolling.  So the ball got kicked back to Micheal Turner who then waited a second before passing the ball back to his keeper Simon Mingnolet to take the free kick.  Thinking that Turner had taken the free kick Fernando Torres intercepted the pass to the keeper passed it to Dirk Kuyt who scored passed a remonstrating Mignolet.

      Now lets talk about what Stuart Attwell did.  To start of with he pulled them back after the quick free kick was taken illegally.   Then he made sure the ball went back to the right spot.  After that he ran up the pitch blowing his whistle allowing them to take the free kick.  But while he had his backed turned to the ball, due to the fact he was waiting for the ball to go passed him, Micheal Turner passed the ball back.  Attwell turns around to see that Torres has the ball he looks straight towards his assistant on the sideline who signals nothing.  Play continues Kuyt scores then Attwell walks over to his assistant, they have a quick talk and award the goal.

      Attwell did nothing wrong here to the letter of the law it is a perfectly good goal, if you want to have a go at anyone it should be Torres for some poor spirit but I know that most players would have done it just in case the referee didn't blow.  Attwell's two major controversies have mainly come down to the decisions of his assistant referees they don't take the blame because he only takes their advice, in the end he is the one that has to make these decisions.

      The main problem for Stuart Attwell is that he seems to make mistakes in other areas, no more than the average ref nowadays, but because he is the youngest and has these controversies hanging over him people will always speak out against him more.  It is the same with referees as it is with players, the only way to get rid of inexperience is to take part in as many top level matches as possible.