The Officialdom Team For Hull v Arsenal
It wasn't even a difficult decision or a close-run thing. Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink was meandering into an offside position when Jimmy Bullard moved the ball forward towards Dean Marney, was still a yard-and-a-half off when the pass arrived at Marney, and hadn't moved when his team-mate lifted the ball over Arsenal's straight backline. How did Patrick Keane, whose job as a linesman is to see these sort of things, manage not to see what was literally standing still straight in front of him?
At least Adam Watts, the linesman on the other side of the pitch, must have spotted George Boateng grappling with Nicklas Bendtner because he alerted Andre Marriner to the incident. But he must have also seen something that wasn't apparent to anybody else as Boateng received a yellow card for his red-card offence while Bendtner was cautioned for the crime of having his eye poked.
And we know that Marriner saw Boateng's lunge on Bacary Sagna but something has to be amiss when a late, studs-up, knee-high, injury-inducing foul is only deemed worthy of caution. Just because Marriner was still able to dismiss him on account of his earlier caution shouldn't have made the slightest difference.
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