What is it with Phil Dowd?

[UK Redsox]

Dowd almost had a genuine assist today when he intercepted a Villa pass and diverted the ball to a Chelsea player. However, this turned out to be one of the few times that Chelsea didn't score

[OCD]

If the fat bastard lost some weight he might have been able to get out of the way of the ball. Shocking state for a 'professional' referee to be in modern day football. I got the feeling he really enjoyed today and those penalty decisions were very harsh.

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

Dowd to blame entirely. If we had a half decent ref at Chelsea yesterday, we could have nicked 3 points.

[Nev]

I hate the way he shrugs his shoulders as if to say "sorry, I have to give it". He seems to be itching to blow up for something against us, almost delighted to put the whistle to his lips, the fuckin idiot.

[Fin Feds Dad]

cant blame the fat twat for the result but he gave them 2 very iffy penalties!

I don't think I have ever seen us get a soft penalty like those yesterday.

It's a nightmare every time he refs us .

[Malandro]

I didn't have a problem with the pens yesterday. He did however make a number of dodgy free kick decisons.

[paul_e]

including the 2 pens I can think of 6 decisions to give fouls against us that we would never have been given.  2-3 of the incidents he judged as fouls happened a number of other times in the game and weren't given, both for or against us.  His definition of a foul seems to change when the resulting free kick is a goal scoring chance for whichever team is his favourite for the day.

To take Villa out of it completely I watched a game on Norwegian TV a few weeks ago with him in charge and he did exactly the same in that one, can't remember who was playing I just took note if it because we'd had this thread a week or 2 before.

[JUAN PABLO]

we haven't had too many penalties ourselves this season so far.  Need to get in the bloody box more often.

[Lambert and Payne]

The penaltys were soft but you could argue they was or wasn't penaltys all night. The thing that gets on my nerves is the smile on his face as he gave the 2nd penalty.

Re: his fitness, he failed his fitness test at the start of the season but passed it 2nd time around, agree he needs to work on it but his standard of fitness is still good

[PaulWinch again]

Yep they were soft, but they weren't shockers. Both were down to very naive defending.

[Ads]

I wish Dowd would fuck off, the fat, useless, Dingle thundercunt.

[Dave Clark Five]

One thing that I agree with O'Neill:

Dowd infuriated O’Neill by failing to send off Manchester United’s Nemanja Vidic for an early foul on Gabby Agbonlahor in last Sunday’s 2-1 defeat at Wembley.

The Villa boss felt the fifth minute flashpoint – which led to James Milner opening the scoring from the penalty spot – was a crucial turning point in the match.

O’Neill is still fuming at Dowd and would welcome the Football Association removing the Staffordshire official from Villa’s future games this season.

“In fairness to ourselves and our opposition I don’t want him levelling something up again,” he said.

“There’s a fair chance that he wouldn’t be refereeing any of our games again this season.

“Would I welcome that? It’s not what I wanted to discuss, but if you want to go with that, then: ‘Yes.’

“I don’t think he’s going to be in charge of us again, do you?”

O’Neill also hit out at retired referee-turned-pundit Graham Poll who defended Dowd’s decision not to red-card, or even book, United’s Serbian central defender.

“If the referee had chosen to send him off, nobody would have complained,” said O’Neill.

“He has set himself up more than anything. It was really strange.

“When his reason has been given and backed up by another referee, who gives out three yellow cards, you think that they should just own up to making a mistake because the reasoning behind it is even more ludicrous.

“For someone to say that Gabby moved seven or eight yards away doesn’t match up to the facts.

“The reason he gave was that he didn’t feel it was a goalscoring opportunity. I don’t know how he arrived at that decision.

“In the laws of physics, if someone pulls your jersey there’s a chance you are going to be off-balance.

“That balance was quickly re-gained by Gabby but he didn’t move seven yards to his left.

“The referee is there to administer the laws, not make them up.”

Asked if he felt the referee’s decision was influenced by Sir Alex Ferguson’s earlier comments about Dowd sending off so many United players, O’Neill added: “I think you would have to give those reasons some consideration.”

[Des Little]

He's a fat cnut who hates us.  That's about it.

[ktvillan]

I'd like to say that I believe Dowd was in no way to blame for our heavy defeat yesterday.  I'd like to add that this in no way exonerates him from generally being a lardy, smarmy, incompetent, Big 4 favouring buffoon.

[ozzjim]

He was at no way to blame for yesterday, but it is no coincidence that at City and Chelsea, the refs have given every single possible 50-50 to the money-bags teams. It sounds very bitter, but as soon as I saw Dowd was ref when they were 1-0 up I said to my wife it will be 6 with 2-3 pens and a fair few free kicks around the edge of the box. If the decisions went the same way the other end fine, but they are ignored the other end. A fundamental part of the reason I don't love the game the way I did as a kid is the continual struggle of clubs outside the favoured few to get any sort of parity in decisions.