Attwell in charge of Blackpool trip - referee
Tuesday, 10th Dec 2013 22:50 by Clive Whittingham

Everybody's favourite referee Stuart Attwell awaits QPR fans making the long trip north to Blackpool this Saturday - although given the Tangerines recent discipline issues this might not be a bad thing.

Referee >>> Stuart Attwell (Warwickshire), accident-prone official known for awarding a non-existent goal in a match between Watford and Reading, shambolic handling of an East Midlands derby between Derby and Forest, and being dropped permanently from the Premier League list a year ago.

Assistants >>> Robert Jones (Merseyside) and David Richardson (West Yorkshire)

Fourth Official >>> Darren Bond (Lancashire)

History

Leeds United 0 QPR 1, Saturday August 31, 2013, Championship

In midfield the odd-couple partnership of Joey Barton and Karl Henry really excelled for the first time. They broke up play and directed QPR around the park very well all afternoon. Barton should have had his name on the score sheet to cap a decent performance as well. Played in by O’Neil after eight minutes he finished coolly past former R Paddy Kenny in the Leeds goal only for the linesman to flag him offside. Barton wasn’t off when the ball was played, when it arrived, or when he finished the chance off with consummate ease, but the assistant raised his flag regardless under duress from the home fans on the west side of the ground.

McCormack already has four goals to his name this season, but only managed nine in the whole of last season and never once looked like adding to his total in this game. Occasionally QPR became mired in problems of their own making. When Henry gave the ball away cheaply at the mid-point of the first half he needed Nedum Onuoha to wade in with a strong covering tackle. Not long after that Barton fouled Rodolph Austin right on the edge of the penalty area as the Jamaican was setting himself for a first time volley when Richard Dunne’s clearance dropped to him but referee Stuart Attwell saw nothing untoward and waved play on. When he subsequently let Murphy off for a horrible tackle on Charlie Austin it was fairly obvious that Mr Attwell, usually so card happy, was in a benevolent mood.

Referee Stuart Attwell added five minutes on at the end of the game and played nearly six but QPR rarely looked panicked, even allowing for Austin’s late barnburner. At one point Richard Dunne marched into a piece of broken play on the edge of his penalty area and delivered a right footed clearance into the side stand that Peter Kay would have been proud of. Basic stuff, but it seems that’s all teams required at this level these days.

Leeds: Kenny 6; Peltier 6, Wootton 6, Pearce 6, Warnock 5; Murphy 6, Green 6 (Diouf 80, -), Austin 7, McCormack 5; Varney 5 (Smith 57, 6), Hunt 5 (Poleon 57, 6)

Subs not used: Ashdown, Drury, Lees, Tonge

QPR: Green 6; Simpson 7, Dunne 7, Onuoha 7, Hill 7; O’Neil 5 (Hoilett 64, 7), Henry 6 (Faurlin 72, 6), Barton 7, Wright-Phillips 6; Johnson 6 (Jenas 88, -), Austin 6

Subs not used: Murphy, Suk-Young, Zamora, Shariff

Goals: Hill 75 (assisted Barton)

Bookings: Hill 86 (foul)

Referee Stuart Attwell (Warwickshire) 7 A tad lenient with some nasty tackles at various points of the game, and very pernickety about the exact placing of free kicks, but overall very decent, with a new found common sense, and a keenness to let the game flow that simply wasn’t there a couple of years ago.

http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/15308/christmas-blu 2 Sunderland 3, Tuesday December 18, 2011, Premier League

It’s said that just before the final crucial load of Indians turned up at Little Bighorn in 1876 General Custer was heard to remark that things could only get better. He was wrong then, and everybody that’s ever uttered that line has been wrong since. Things can always, always, always get worse. While Sunderland cooled their celebrations and returned to their own half it became apparent that referee Andre Marriner, absolutely excellent to this point, was no longer able to continue and would be replaced by the fourth official. The fourth official was Stuart Attwell.

Short of Little Mix announcing they will be recording the official club song for Christmas or Steve Kean being appointed as Neil Warnock’s successor with Paul Hart as his assistant it’s hard to know how much worse things could have got at this point. It never rains and all that. Stuart Attwell. There are no words.

Suddenly there was only one team that was ever going to win the game. Sunderland had gone, they were just as disorganised and dishevelled as QPR had been ten minutes previously. Sessegnon hacked down Faurlin with a challenge perhaps worthy of a red, certainly with this referee, but the tombola draw said only a yellow. This was followed by a scramble on the edge of the Sunderland area and Taarabt volley that Westwood saved well in the bottom corner. Taarabt then produced a vintage 360 turn on the corner of the penalty area and hammered a shot over the bar, then collected a loose ball on the edge of the area after Derry had almost released Mackie and curled a low shot that Westwood was equal to. Taarabt was revelling in it, his introduction had changed the game, it was the Taarabt of last season.

To be honest I could quite happily have returned to the pub at this point and said as much. We might well have gone through with that idea had our beloved regular, The Green Room, not closed at 8pm for good ahead of it being bulldozed for flats. Tescos and blocks of flats, that’s all we’re going to end up with in this country. Tescos, blocks of flats and Stuart fucking Attwell.

Anyway while Tracey was rummaging in her bag for the suicide pills the unthinkable happened — QPR scored. Three fine passes made it and they came after Taarabt had won the first header of his professional career on the halfway line — first Faurlin spread play wide to Traore, then the left back laid an intelligent ball to the corner of the area where Faurlin had sprinted into space to make the return and produce an excellent low cross through the corridor of uncertainty between goalkeeper and defender where Helguson was waiting to bundle the ball into the net from close range. From nothing the game was back on again.

Straight from the kick off Rangers went in hunt of an equaliser. A trademark ball with the outside of the boot from Taarabt drew a deflected header wide of the post from Helguson — Stuart Attwell’s random tombola machine with which he uses to make decisions initially said goal kick but with the QPR players clearly astonished and the Sunderland players laughing he gave it another spin and awarded a corner at the second attempt.

With a minute left they had to defend another corner from the same side after Kenny had flung himself left to keep out a long range striker from full back Phil Bardsley. This time Richardson went to the near post where Wes Brown flicked a powerful header over Kenny to the back post where Faurlin was stationed but the Argentinean could only head the ball onto the underside of the bar and then into the roof of the net under pressure from Bendtner. Brief hope that it may be disallowed was sparked when the linesman on the Ellerslie Road side of the ground flagged frantically, but he was merely ensuring that Stuart Attwell’s random decision draw awarded the goal rather than a QPR corner or a drop ball on halfway.

QPR: Kenny 7, Young 6, Gabbidon 4, Connolly 5 (Bothroyd 90, -), Traore 7 (Hall 80, -), Barton 5, Faurlin 6, Derry 6, Wright-Phillips 6 (Taarabt 46, 7), Mackie 6, Helguson 7

Subs Not Used: Cerny, Hill, Campbell, Smith

Booked: Faurlin (foul), Young (foul)

Goals: Helguson 63 (assisted Faurlin), Mackie 67 (assisted Helguson)

Sunderland: Westwood 6, O'Shea 6, Bramble 6, Brown 7, Bardsley 6, Larsson 7 (Gardner 75, 7), Cattermole 6, Vaughan 5 (Colback 71, 6), Richardson 7, Sessegnon 8, Bendtner 8

Subs Not Used: Carson, Kilgallon, Ji, McClean, Elmohamady

Booked: Sessegnon (foul), Cattermole (repetitive fouling)

Goals: Bendtner 19 (assisted Richardson), Sessegnon 53 (unassisted), Brown 89 (assisted Richardson)

Referee: Andre Marriner (W Midlands) 8 (Stuart Attwell 53, (Warwick) 3) If ever you needed evidence of just what a truly awful referee Stuart Attwell is, here you have it. For 53 minutes this game was calmly controlled and managed by Andre Marriner who hardly put a foot wrong. Play flowed, the crowd was absorbed totally in the game, I can hardly recall hearing the whistle. Within minutes of coming on Attwell had awarded a blatant corner as a goal kick and then changed his mind when people moaned at him — things got teadily more farcical from there. Suddenly everything was a free kick. Every little bit of contact was a foul. Suddenly decisions were wrong - clearly and repeatedly wrong. Suddenly the crowd was up and on the referee’s back. I joke about his random draw mechanism of making decisions, which you can tell from his positioning and body language are often complete guesses, but to be honest I would actually prefer a random tombola machine on the halfway line with one of the cast of The Only Way is Essex drawing decisions out every 45 seconds to this silly little prick. You couldn’t get any more decisions wrong doing it that way. The difference between a good referee and a bad one laid bare in the same match.

http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/5127/faurlin-stars- 3 West Brom 1, Saturday march 6, 2010, Championship

QPR were buoyed by that opening goal and threatened to break away again soon after only for Mulumbu to haul back Taarabt as he was about to release Ephraim down the left — referee Stuart Attwell, a man with QPR history, failed to show him a yellow card when he should have done, but in fairness he had a very good game apart from this and QPR did score a second goal within five minutes anyway.

There was still time for two yellow cards in injury time — one for Cech for pulling back Priskin, the other for Priskin for demanding Cech was booked. I’m not in the habit of praising the award of yellow cards but frankly I applaud Attwell’s stance in booking Priskin as this continental style of requesting cards for other players is not something I want to see in the English game.

The renewed thrust installed into Rangers’s play by Buzsaky resulted in a third, game killing, goal with 23 minutes left to play although once again the goal owed more to ridiculous goalkeeping than anything good QPR did. The problems for the visitors started when Adel Taarabt tricked Chris Brunt by the dugouts and was then cynically hauled back by the Northern Irishman who was rightly booked by referee Attwell. The free kick was taken by Akos Buzsaky who launched a high, hanging delivery to the back post. Everybody missed it, including Carson, who then could only watch as it bounced up and over his head, off the inside of the post, and then along the line from where it had enough spin to carry it into the net. Initially I was sure this goal would be disallowed as the linesman was standing there with his flag up, and Adel Taarabt had been standing five yards offside when the kick was taken, however once the ball hit the net he suddenly seemed to change his mind and flag for the goal and the R’s were three one up.

QPR: Ikeme 8, Connolly 7, Gorkss 7, Stewart 7, Hill 6, Taarabt 7 (Ramage 69, 6), Leigertwood 7, Faurlin 8, Ephraim 6 (Buzsaky 59, 7), Priskin 6 (Vine 77, 6), Simpson 7

Subs Not Used: Cerny, Balanta, Borrowdale, German

Booked: Priskin (dissent), Faurlin (foul)

Goals: Simpson 13 (assisted Taarabt), Connolly 18 (assisted Faurlin), Buzsaky 67 (free kick)

West Brom: Carson 3, Reid 6, Tamas 6, Olsson 7, Cech 6 (Miller 64, 5), Morrison 6 (Dorrans 68, 6), Mulumbu 7, Watson 6, Brunt 7, Thomas 7, Cox 6

Subs Not Used: Kiely, Mattock, Koren, Moore, Meite

Booked: Cech (foul), Brunt (foul)

Goals: Brunt 36 (assisted Thomas)

Referee: Stuart Attwell (Warwickshire) 7 A referee with QPR history, but hard to think of too much he got wrong in this game. Marks off because I think West Brom probably should have had a penalty in the second half when Gorkss wrestled Cox to the ground, and Mulumbu should have been booked for a cynical foul in the first half. Other than that though it was hard to argue with the four cards awarded, in fact I would go so far as to praise him for booking Priskin for his mock card flashing gesture that we just don’t want to see.

http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/4500/fans-turn-on-t 1 Ipswich Town 3, Saturday February 21, 2009, Championship

Straight after half time Rangers had a reasonable shout for a penalty waved away by Stuart Attwell. A cross from the right by Miller looked all set for the back of the net with Leigertwood racing onto it ahead of Norris until the Ipswich man put an arm in Leigertwood’s back and pushed him past the ball. This was a more than decent claim but Attwell bases ninety per cent of his decisions on guesswork and when he is in a position to see something he looks completely frozen by fear and tends to give nothing.

While all this was going on Alex Bruce blocked a Mikele Leigertwood shot with his arm for a clear penalty but Attwell, staring straight at it, froze again and neither gave the decision nor waved it away. Then Balanta collected the ball deep in the penalty area amid a goal mouth scramble but just could not turn and get a shot away. Leigertwood also had two long range shots — the first deflected straight into the arms of Richard Wright, the other zipped a foot too high with many parts of the ground expecting the top corner of the net to ripple.

Ipswich sent on Garvan for Counago as they looked to shut up the shop and Ben Thatcher picked up the first booking of the match after wasting time over a throw in and then heaving the ball onto the School End roof to run the clock down after the whistle had gone. A stupid booking, and he knew exactly what he was doing.

With four minutes to go Wayne Routledge had his shirt pulled on the edge of the box by Norris but Cook hit a shot straight into the top of the wall — a real waste. He then curled the resulting corner straight into the side netting which summed the night up for Cook and his team mates. To compound the frustration Dexter Blackstock’s powerful header on eighty nine minutes flew straight at Wright and then Ipswich were awarded a free kick on the edge of their own box when Routledge appeared to have been hauled back by McAuley who then took the ball with the tackle. Why Ipswich got a free kick from all of that only Attwell would be able to tell you.

QPR: Camp 5, Connolly 4, Gorkss 5, Hall 4, Delaney 4 (Blackstock 67, 5) Routledge 6, Mahon 2, Leigertwood 6, Miller 5 (Balanta 73, 5) Cook 5, Di Carmine 6 (Helguson 55, 4)

Subs Not Used: Stewart, Alberti

Goals: Di Carmine 3 (assisted Routledge)

Ipswich: R Wright 7, D Wright 7, McAuley 8, Bruce 7, Thatcher 5, Miller 7, Norris 8, Civelli 6 (Walters 61, 7), Quinn 7, Stead 8 (Lisbie 69, 6), Counago 8 (Garvan 82, 6)

Subs Not Used: Supple, Balkestein

Booked: Thatcher (time wasting)

Goals: Stead 14 (assisted Norris), Counago 61 (unassisted), Walters 70 (assisted Quinn)

Referee: Stuart Attwell (Warwickshire) 6 Not bad, certainly a lot better than last time, but not good at the same time. I still cannot believe how many decisions he makes based on complete guesswork. Countless times corners, goal kicks and throw ins took an age to decide as Attwell was poorly positioned and then had to look at his linesmen and ultimately take a wild guess. QPR were unlucky not to have two penalties and Gavin Mahon was lucky to escape without a booking. Looks terrified when faced with a decision and the amount of complete guess work involved in his decision making explains the horrendous mistakes he has been making this season.

http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/4226/ainsworths-ran 1 Birmingham 0, Tuesday October 28, 2008, Championship

QPR never beat Birmingham, and didn’t look very likely to do so here when calamity match official Stuart Attwell harshly showed a straight red card to Mikele Leigertwood before half time, but with Hall and Stewart standing firm at the back and Damiano Tommasi adding class, guile and grit to the midfield the R’s rarely looked like relinquishing a lead given to them in fine style by Samuel Di Carmine just after half time.

Ainsworth’s team talk promised to be a simple one, much more of the same please, but a minute before he got a chance to deliver it his world came crashing down around his ears. A break in play allowed Lee Carsley to have the latest in a long line of conversations designed solely to influence the match officials. Not since my Mum was last dragged to a QPR game has anybody been so miserable and sour faced at a game at Loftus Road as Carsley was on Tuesday night. He was a whistle and a set of cards away from refereeing the game himself and after yet another chat with Attwell, this time about Mikele Leigertwood, the former Everton man finally got the reaction he’d been looking for.

Carsley latched onto a loose ball in midfield and was immediately fouled high and late by Leigertwood. Before I could even finish saying “that’s our first booking” Attwell was on the scene, semi erect, with a red card in hand. He just couldn’t wait to do it, he gave himself no time to think about the decision, the card was out before Carsley had even hit the deck. Carsley’s latest moan fresh in his ears and an ego demanding a feed inside his chest the young referee had done it again — another rank and wrong decision, another game seemingly ruined.

QPR were fuming, rightly so, and just as he’d done with his ghost goal decision at Watford a month before Attwell decided the best thing for him to do would be to inflame the situation further rather than attempt to calm things down. In stoppage time Birmingham looked to make the most of their extra man with a break down field, James McFadden was clearly pushed over by Tommasi as he attempted to join in but the referee waved play on advantage. McFadden though took the law into his own hands with a clear kick out at the Italian in full view of the referee.

Attwell saw it, pointed at both players, and promised to come back and show cards. On first viewing it looked like the numbers may be evened up. Not so. The next break in play was actually the half time whistle at which point Tommasi was booked, fair enough, and McFadden was let off without so much as a talking to. A scandalous piece of refereeing again. QPR players and coaches surrounded the official as he left the field — sadly the FA think he’s brilliant, he thinks he’s brilliant, and he doesn’t need to trouble himself wasting time talking to the likes of us. QPR will appeal Leigertwood’s red card and lose.

Ainsworth made further changes midway through the second half. First Akos Buzsaky came on for Dexter Blackstock, then after an onset of cramp had brought the latest lecture for player and referee from Lee Carsley Sam Di Carmine went off and Hogan Ephraim came on for a rare appearance this season. It doesn’t surprise me to see Ainsworth re-involving Ephraim, his work rate and attitude is right up Wild Thing’s street.

In blizzard like conditions Attwell added four minutes to normal time, and it turned out to be one of the most action packed periods of added time we’ve seen at Loftus Road for many a long month. Needless to say most of it revolved around our increasingly eccentric match officials. First a neat move down the right between Ledesma and Ephraim saw the Argentinean skip into the area and crash to earth under what looked like a push from Murphy. Attwell looked at the incident, looked at his linesman, looked at the incident again and then almost as an afterthought as Birmingham prepared to launch the ball back down the field he booked Ledesma for diving and awarded a free kick.

Ledesma does dive, we all know that, and it was impossible to see if he did or didn’t here from my point of view but the time it took Attwell to come to a decision and the way he looked at the linesman and everybody else for help leads me to believe that this decision, like so many of his on the night, was complete and utter guesswork.

He wasn’t finished yet either — the third yellow card of the evening for a QPR player went to Radek Cerny for time wasting. It capped an at times astounding refereeing display.

QPR: Cerny 8, Leigertwood 6, Stewart 8, Hall 8, Connolly 8, Ledesma 7, Rowlands 8, Tommasi 8, Cook 5 (Mahon 46, 7), Blackstock 6 (Buzsaky 68, 7), Di Carmine 7 (Ephraim 74, 7)

Subs Not Used: Cole, Parejo

Sent Off: Leigertwood (45)

Booked: Tomassi (foul), Cerny (time wasting), Ledesma (diving)

Goals: Di Carmine 54 (assisted Tommasi)

Birmingham: Maik Taylor 7, Parnaby - (Wilson 12, 5), Martin Taylor 5, Ridgewell 5, Queudrue 6, McFadden 6, Carsley 5, Nafti 6 (64, 4), Agustien 6, Phillips 6, Jerome 5 (Bent 64, 6)

Subs Not Used: Doyle, Quashie

Booked: Wilson, Queudrue

Referee: Stuart Attwell (Warwickshire) 2 I’ll write in more detail about this guy later in the week but for now let me just say that the FA have got to stop trying to fast track this kid too far too fast. He was so out of his depth here it was embarrassing to watch, losing the plot more and more as the game went on giving one crass and incompetent decision after another. The sending off was harsh, he allowed Lee Carsley to order him about all night with no come back, and he got countless decisions wrong — ranging from difficult calls to the simplest of throw ins. I lost count of the amount of times he clearly had no clue what to give and guessed, I can forgive that once or twice in a match but he was doing it several times a minute at one stage. The amount of times the ball went out for a throw in and he had to guess whose throw in that was after exchanging blank looks with his linesmen had to be seen to be believed. Abysmal.

Stats

Attwell has been in fairly prolific form so far this season with six red cards in 16 appointments already — all of them in his last 12 appointments in fact so he’s currently averaging one every other game. He’s also shown 56 yellows giving him a card average of 3.5 yellows a game. He has shown seven yellows and a red in a match twice — Wigan v Blackburn and Colchester v Peterborough.

Last season, his first full campaign off the Premier League list, he showed 129 yellows (2.931 a game) and just three reds across 44 games. His biggest haul in a single game was seven yellows in Southend’s 1-0 League Two win against Wycombe. He refereed Blackpool once, in a 4-2 defeat at Middlesbrough over Christmas.

It was the year before when a constantly-controversial spell in the top flight, ridiculously early in his career, came to an end. He returned from a Europa League game between PSV and Hapoel Tel Aviv where he booked ten players and showed three red cards in three games in a week, including one to Bolton’s Gary Cahill in a defeat at Spurs, allegedly for denying an obvious goal scoring opportunity even though the foul was on the halfway line. He hasn’t refereed in the top flight since. Overall he showed 102 yellows and six reds in 32 games that term.

Attwell was always likely to struggle in the top flight following the ‘ghost goal’ incident shortly after his promotion. In September 2008 he and assistant referee Nigel Bannister contrived to award a goal to Reading at Watford when the home team’s John Eustace played the ball over the byline - four yards wide of the goal post - before Reading's Noel hooked it back into play. A month later he incorrectly disallowed two late Derby goals, while booking eight and sending one off, in an East Midlands derby with Forest at Pride Park. There was then a controversial Liverpool goal at home to Sunderland when Fernando Torres scored with what was supposed to be a Sunderland free kick and had the goal awarded.

Other Listings

Premier League >>> Martin Atkinson gets Man City v Arsenal while Jon Moss is in charge of Spurs v Liverpool.

Championship >>> Lee Probert is still marooned in the Championship and this week it’s Barnsley v Yeovil so he must have really upset somebody. Phil Dowd also drops down a level to keep an eye on Doncaster v Leeds. Kevin Friend is also in the Championship for the local derby between Wigan and Bolton.

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