Rate The Ref Vs Manchester Utd - Mark Halsey

Birmingham hosted both Manchester United and Sky TV for an early kick off.

Refs have a habit of trying to appease teams like Man United and to
behave themselves for live games, so it was unlikely that the visitors
would add to their total tally of just 4 yellow cards this season. How
Halsley can justify not booking at least 2 if not 3 Man U players is
something only he will know, but throwing or kicking the ball away
after a free kick, or just hacking a player down because he's better
than you if a bookable offence.

The only player to get booked was Savage for a rogh tackle on Keane.
Keane managed to spring to his feet to run up the ref and tell him how
to do his job. Savage seemedto be gettinga ticking off, but Keane
told the man in balck how to do his job and Halsey obliged by showing
yellow to the Welshman.

Alex Ferguson had indicated that time added on for the second half
would be 3 minutes. Bruce tried to spoil things by making a couple of
substitutions but Halsey stopped the clock on each occassion.

Overall a decent performance. The ref managed to keep control of the
game and if that can be done without falshing cards then that's got to
be good for the game. The man who is best known for changing his mind in favour of Arsenal decided he would keep it quite. Not a bad mindset to have for a game, but a booking is a booking, regardless of who you play for.

Ref rating - 7/10

Booked - Savage (Unsporting conduct)