Filed under: Portsmouth, Championship, Football
Steve Cotterill usually comes across as a relatively intelligent sort of bloke, but unless he starts to engage his brain before opening his mouth, he's in danger of quickly making himself a laughing stock.Managers are really the last people we should be looking to for a rational, reasoned response to refereeing decisions in the immediate aftermath of a game.
Portsmouth's Cotterill added grist to that particular mill with a reaction which, sparked by defender Ricardo Rocha's sending off in the 3-0 defeat at Cardiff, wasn't so much subjective, as dripping with illogical bias, and on the verge of claiming a full-blown conspiracy theory against his club.
What next? He'll be uncovering curses and ancient spells cast over poor Pompey, or perhaps claiming each defeat is down to the Bermuda Triangle? He said: "I don't want to be seen to be griping." We can all sense a but here, can't we? "Some of these decisions may be our fault, actually." Hang on a minute.
He added: "But we have really, really been on the back end of some bad decisions." Now we're heading in the right direction. Prepare for take-off.
'We're not getting anything at the moment off any referees. I'm just disappointed with it all. You do wonder if there's any undercurrent about what people think about Portsmouth because it just keeps happening." Yes, Steve, referee secretly convene each week to discuss ways of ensuring you're regularly on the wrong end of harsh decisions, specifically to help your opponents.
He added: "Some of them have been shocking. Shocking! What else can it be? Can they be consistently bad? I don't know. We talk about inconsistency but we've been getting consistency - consistently bad decisions.
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