As I don't have Sky it will be interesting to hear from those who do watch the extended highlights how bad the decisions really were. And also what the pundits say about them. So please let us Skyless wankers know.
In all honesty, PWS, they were some of the worst decisions I have seen. Clear forearm thrown by Ivanovic. Friend was standing directly behind the incident so may not have seen how obvious a forearm smash it was. Ivanovic's offside for the goal was marginal but I'd say a foot or so - definitely offside. The Terry handball was so obvious - he pretty well batted the ball out of the area! Friend's view was in no way obscured - he was looking straight at the incident. The only thing you might say is that Terry was perhaps being held down a bit under the challenge. However, even Michael Owen (who I felt was pretty negative towards us before the game) said afterwards that had the forearm been thrown by a Villa player rather than Ivanovic, it's highly likely he would have been red-carded. He also said he didn't think that the challenge on Terry was any worse than what normally goes on at most set pieces and for him it was a stone-wall penalty.
Whilst it may seem bitter, when it's absolutely clear-cut that the ref's decisions were utterly woeful it's hard to take. I'll get over it by tomorrow, but right now, I'm fuming at the injustice of it. And before anyone says we got all the decisions against the Arse, video analysis has pretty well shown that the ref got those major "contentious" decisions right. Probably the only one where we were fortunate was Vlaar not getting a second yellow for that block on Rosicky (I think it was). Apart from that, I don't think what went in our favour on Saturday and what went against us tonight are comparable.
I was utterly proud of how we played tonight, however, and I am optimistic for the coming season. I hope that we can back up one more time on Saturday and give Liverpoo a beating.
One final thought: Mourinho is a c**t. What he did very cleverly in his post-match interview was to ramble on about how we're just long-ball merchants and pump it up to Benteke and hit teams on the break, whilst his Chavski team want to win with quality and technical ability rather than just "graft", not allowing the interviewer to ask him the "hard" questions. At times, we do play like that, but it is disingenuous of him to assert that we are just a bunch of cloggers like Stoke used to be/maybe still are. Again, fair play to Owen who said that he absolutely disagreed with "The Retarded One's" assertion that we are just a long-ball team by citing the quality of the build up for our goal.