Adrian Boothroyd and Neil Warnock have reputations for speaking their minds but the managers were biting their tongues yesterday as they prepared their teams for the first Barclays Premiership relegation six-pointer of the season.
Sheffield United could move four points clear of Watford, who are in nineteenth place, by winning at Vicarage Road tonight, but with so much at stake both managers agree that Martin Atkinson, the referee, is likely to be the most important man on the pitch.
Boothroyd, the Watford manager, insisted that he had no axe to grind with referees after he escaped an FA charge for claiming that officials who make mistakes should be demoted as well as being put in stocks and pelted with rotten tomatoes.
The 35-year-old manager made his outburst after watching his side lose 2-1 away to Portsmouth ten days ago, but yesterday he played down his comments and claimed that they should have been taken with a pinch of salt.
“As a Premiership manager, I am entitled to my opinion,” he said. “But I was not questioning the integrity of the referee [Chris Foy]. Sometimes I say things and try to use humour to defuse a situation, and that can be a problem for me, but I know that referees have a difficult job.”
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Warnock, the Sheffield United manager, has every right to feel that his team have been on the wrong end of a succession of dubious refereeing decisions this season. Barely a week goes by without United and the volatile Warnock feeling aggrieved at the treatment they have received at the hands of officials.
Penalty awards given against them arguably denied United a win and a draw against Liverpool and Everton respectively. And what was seen in the United camp as an error of judgment by Mike Riley, the referee, cost the Bramall Lane club a point away to West Ham United on Saturday.
Warnock and his players firmly believed that they had scored a well-deserved injury-time equaliser through Rob Kozluk. Riley, though, adjudged that Derek Geary, the United defender, had committed a foul on Robert Green, the West Ham and England goalkeeper, in the build-up and disallowed the goal.
“I don’t want to say too much, because I do not want to get myself into trouble,” Warnock said last night. “But I honestly do not know why the referee disallowed that goal. It is very disappointing, but completely in keeping with the way things have been going for us this season.
“We have been on the wrong end of some very bad luck but, hopefully, if these things really do even themselves out over the course of a season, then we shall be in for a run of very good luck sometime soon. We all know Watford is an important game. We know we are going to have to go there, stand up and be counted.”
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