Welcome to the first Premier London derbies (PLDs) blog of 2020. January is named after the Roman god Janus who had two faces and could look both ways at the same time, but was not two-faced! So before we look ahead to the first PLDs match of 2020, let’s look back to one of the last ones of 2019. That match is Spurs v Chelsea on 22 December 2019.
The match was marred by a supposed incident of racial abuse, which provoked some immediate rather extreme media responses, and contained another Video Assistant Referee (VAR) controversy – or two! Tottenham Hotspur Football Club have recently released a statement in which they say: “ The Club and The Metropolitan Police have now exhausted all avenues of investigation….(The) police can find no evidence to support the allegation of racial abuse….and neither ourselves nor the police are in a position to take any action”. The last PLDs blog of 2019 was titled “Getting the facts right first”, and in it we commented on this most serious matter, and the use of VAR in the match. We posed the question whether VAR was there to give the match day officials more visual evidence (facts) on which to review their decision (an opinion), or for a remote official using VAR to give an opinion which may or may not be the same as the Referee on the pitch.
In the F.A. Cup Third Round tie between Crystal Palace (a PLDs team) and Derby County on Saturday 4 January 2020 the on-field Referee Michael Oliver consulted the pitch-side monitor, after having had a long discussion with the VAR official, and changed his yellow card caution decision to a red card sending off of Luka Milivojevic the Palace Captain. It was refreshing to read a newspaper account of the incident saying “….Oliver (the on-field Referee who acted in the way described)…. had a better sense of the mood and pace of the game.” We had used the words “tempo, atmosphere and emotion” in this context.
It is Crystal Palace who will be back in action on Saturday 11 January 2020 in the first PLDs match of 2020 against Arsenal. Honours are even over the last 3 seasons with a 3-0 win for Palace in 2016-17; revenge for Arsenal (2-3) in 2017-18; and a 2-2 draw in 2018-19. Currently Palace are 9th, one place and one point above Arsenal in the F.A. Premier League (F.A.P.L.) where both teams have indifferent form, with one win for each in their last 5 games, and one defeat for the Eagles but two for the Gunners. It could be anyone’s game, and what will the “new boy” Mikel Arteta learn from the “old master” Roy Hodgson?
Finally in the Women’s Super League Tottenham Hotspur Women will play West Ham Women on Sunday 12 January. More on both of these London derbies next time.
Until then, enjoy your football, Andrew at PLDs (www.premierlondonderbies.com)