Ridders said:
Mascherano shouldn't have received the first yellow card, it was his first foul and he had his studs down when contacting Scholes i think it was.
lol, it was an obvious yellow. He slid straight through the front of Scholes and could've broken his ankles. The fact that he had his studs down saved it from being a straight red. Then he started to run away while the ref was trying to book him, and proceeded to tell the ref to f*ck off a few times. Then he spent the next 15 minutes constantly running to the ref and annoying him about every decision, until Bennett finally had enough. You could see Bennett motion to the tunnel before he red-carded him, letting him know that if he kept going he'd be off.
I'll be the first to admit Rooney normally does the same thing, but after all the hype of the last week it took an idiot not to know they'd be clamping down on it. Notice that Rooney said almost nothing to the refs today, even after they didn't give him the penalty early in the game when he should've got one. Speaking about that incident, that is why players go down easily. Rooney was clearly fouled, but manage to stumble along and toe-poke the ball towards goal - an easy save for Reina. Because he'd done everything he could to stay up the ref didn't give a penalty, even though he was clearly fouled and disadvantaged. And they wonder why players go down like they've been shot anytime they've been fouled. :roll:
Bumble said:
Aside from his goal, did Ronaldo do anything of note or just go missing again?
He had a fairly quiet one, but still scored a goal and had two other good chances (one he thought he was offside so it was only a half-arsed finish).
That's the difference between Ronaldo now and what he was like last season. Even when he's not playing very well he'll invariably score or set up a goal scoring chance for someone else. He did the same against Liverpool early in the season - had a quiet game until he created a bit of magic to put Rooney in for the only clear goal-scoring opportunity from open play in the match.
I heard earlier that Ronaldo is now on course to score against every Premier League team in the league this season bar one (can't remember who). He also hasn't scored against Chelsea and Boro yet, but only played them once so far so he'll get another chance on the run-in. I believe his 34 goals this season puts him behind only Ruud (43 or 44) and Law (46) as the most amount of goals in a season for us. And he's still got plenty of games to go. He's a winger. *shakes head in disbelief*
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