The Voice - Match preview Bradford City vs Crewe Alexandra Saturday 26th August 2023 3:00pm

It’s not news if he has a good game though.

He’s a ref at league 2 level.He’s an easy out if we play poorly or don’t get every decision going for us.

You won’t change the poseur thing.
That’s just him.
He won’t be much different as a ref than we see week in week out at our level.

 

He is just another below average ref, but i have never liked the man since he went crying to the FA over a few words in the car park and got Dean Windass a 5 game ban. Any real man would have given back as good as he got or just brushed it off, not gone running to mummy.
Also our record when he ref's is not good 2018 or 10 games since our last win , a red card for us in that game as
well.

 

You would think an RAF Sargeant would be able to give as good back to Deano wouldn't you, rather than running to the authorities like that, I agree

 

Last time drysdale was ref was Swindon away I wanted to run on the pitch and punch him horrible referee

 

Take it you live right next to VP to expect to be back by 5.30 these days.....

 

You didn't see him down at Swindon then, hands on hips facing the city fans and openly laughing after denying a penalty?

I get that he was being abused and probably thought "feck em" but referees should 'appear' to be impartial and this was absolutely the opposite!

 

It's a good job they had us in the upper tier or I suspect he may have been more wary of acting the clown right in front of the fans.

There's plenty that we're down there full of drink and if we'd have been in the bottom tier I don't think he might have been as untouchable as he thought.

Not a great look for the club obviously but when you've got someone making decision on a game that's as arrogant as him I certainly wouldn't rule anything out.

 

I'm amazed that more refs have the restraint that they do.

At our level I think the problems thar referees face is not so much there incompetence but the expectation of fans that every single borderline call should go our way. I find the stuff on here about referees is usually completely ludicrous. I actually think the standard of refereeing is decent. One thing I can guarantee is that anyone on here reffing a league 2 game case a neutral would be getting a police escort off the pitch after 5 minutes. It's not that it's a difficult job, it's worse than that. It's easy in the stands because firstly we have a better view and secondly it's easy because every contentious call is a city ball.

I've reffed school football a lot. Even at a slower pace you are literally guessing half the time. Pitch level you constantly have your view obscured and often 2 or 3 things happening at the same time. For every decision we think is horrendous there is an opposition message board somewhere saying the decision was spot on.

The nonsense about refs on here and in general is the single most tedious aspect of football. I can't think of a time when people have said that the standard of refereeing is anything other than shit. They always have and they as always well. Even at the top level I cant think of a single ref in this country who has ever been universally rated. The simple reason being that fans simply can't deal with a neutral agent making decisions on a game that their team is involved in.

I could bang on about this all day but I won't bore anyone anymore. Yes, there is the occasional ref who has a bad day at the office but by and large people completely lose all sense of rationality with referees and revert to the mind of a 6 year old at sports day when it comes to officials.

 

It's not the poor decisions that infuriate me though, it's his persona and arrogance.

Yes, referees get things wrong, they all do, absolutely no problem with that and if you check my posts I generally don't ever put much on referees.

This guy though is different gravy. The actual temerity to stand in front of an away stand and look right at them and smile after not giving a decision just smacks of bias.

It probably wasn't, it probably wasn't a penalty (I haven't seen it back) but why, as a referee, would you put yourself in that position instead of just getting on with the game?

 

I see your point I just used it as a platform to go off on one about refs in general. I'd imagine he doesn't want to look weak in the face of loads of abuse. His persona is probably his way of showing he's not shook when he gets loads of stick although I agree it's poor judgement.

 

And yet we get certain posters blaming refs on losing points throughout the season and claiming these decisions played a part in us ultimately losing out on an automatic place.
Of course we lost points through the season through poor decisions (we had at least 3 apologies from refs)
But this is spouted ad nauseum without going through every other teams results and realising that they all lost points as well through some decisions that they think were wrong.
Other teams receive apologies as well.
Do these refs that are supposedly always poor when reffing us suddenly stop making mistakes when they referee the other 23 teams in this division?
Of course they don’t and to suggest that we lost out on auto promotion because of refs is both diversionary and quite tiresome.

Will the ref on Saturday have his usual persona of “everybody look at me?”
Of course he will.
He may drop a clanger.(for either side)
He may not.
Refs are human
They make mistakes.


But to already start blaming him 72 hours before the game is even played seems a bit extreme.

 

no just probably leave before the end after another dreadful performance. something i never used to do.
always looked forward to match days, now its becoming a chore more than an entertaining afternoon out.
who would have thought it with mark hughes as manager

 

To be honest, I never expected us to play attractive football under Hughes because his sides have never been known for that. I did expect competitive play and tough fight in the team, which hasn't always been there and has rarely if ever been there this season so far.

His PL teams were usually tough to beat even though they weren't exactly great players. He's always used that water carrying DM who's mainly there to just instantly move the ball to a full back but you need quality around for teams like that to work. We might have the quality at times but not the consistency.

His tactics last year at times felt just a little too over the top or complex ideas for what the opposition was. So weirdly this summer he's gone for an even more complex back 5, still with a sitting DM, expecting to have even more possession. Just to me feels like he's trying to be this 4th tier Pep when he has the tools to make it simple and effective.

 

I'm more excited for Usyk v Dubois which I will be at on Saturday night. However, going to be watching this match on iFollow.

All I want is a solid performance with a back four!

 

They don't have an easy job and you are correct every fan wants the decision to go their way. They can however make it easier for themselves by conducting themselves in a fitting manner which Drysdale doesn't. His body language oozes arrogance which wouldn't be so bad if he was a top ref but he isn't he gets big calls wrong. I don't know about fans from other teams but I suspect there are more than a few that have the same opinion of him.

I couldn't really name any of the other refs in this league but I certainly know his name and there is a reason for that. I would suspect that it is rare for the FA to have to send out letters of apology for a referees poor performance.

 

Was it Drysdale who “nutted” an Ipswich’s (??) player who got in his face over a decision, or, was it another ref?

 

Refereeing a football match is one of the hardest things i could imagine having to do in a sporting set up. And i don't for one minute think that refs give deliberately bad decisions, they give what they see or think is the right decision at the time. That said, they are paid to officiate with a good level of competency, no one forces them to do it, they do because they choose to. And some of the decision making i see from them week in week out leaves a lot to be desired. I do a agree though there is a worrying lack of intelligence amongst football fans, something again i see every week which is arguably more prevalent than bad referees. Some of the utter garbage i hear spouted has me to the point of actually laughing sarcastically, for example they'll scream blue murder for a penalty for City yet reverse the very same incident and they'd shouting for the ref to book the opposition player for diving.

 

The majority of the time I don’t comment on Refs as they can’t always see what has happened. What I rattle on about is consistency both from referees over the season and in individual matches and that is well below par.

For instance, taking throw ins, one ref one week has a lenient attitude to where they take it, the following week the ref has a slide rule out. Sometimes it happens within games as well!

However, Drysdale is in a league of his own. He is unprofessional and clearly gets many decisions wrong. Bating City supporters for me required more than a telling off. The powers that be should have fined and suspended him, not because they are city supporters but because that kind of behaviour can instigate violence and what the EFL do then in its campaign against violence in all its formats?

The car park incident involving Windass was an official who clearly was using his power inappropriately in my view. That to me shows a level of immaturity. He has not improved. I think we managed to get through the last game without any incidents, fingers crossed for Saturday.

 

Are you sure ... ?