Have Chelsea Got the ‘Luck’ of Champions?

Watching Liverpool in the 80’s often left me feeling frustrated as they seemingly always got the benefit of the doubt regarding any refereeing decision. Getting spurious penalties (particularly in front of the Kop), avoiding yellow cards and getting marginal offside decisions in their favour.

In the 90’s the focus of my frustration moved from Liverpool to Man Utd as the marginal decisions seemed to fall their way, in particular the frequent extra minutes of injury time if not holding the lead. In the late 90’s and early 00’s Arsenal seemed to again be picking up the benefit of the doubt with a number of key decisions rolling in their favour.

The common feature between the three was that they were periods where the teams were regularly champions or serious contenders for the title.

All teams have luck (deflected goals, defenders mistakes which gift goals etc) and who ever ends up champions usually have more of this often self made luck than their rivals. But the refereeing type of lucky breaks were more frustrating because if felt like the benefiting team were being given a helping hand which they didn’t really need.

I’m not for a minute suggesting that refs cheat but maybe, unconsciously, they get seduced by the glamour of a championship team.

If this theory holds true then we should start to see Chelsea consistently getting the kind of decisions in their favour that the above mentioned three have previously received and benefited from. In fact could it have started already?

There is no denying that Michael Essien should have been red carded for his reckless tackle that could have caused Ben Haim serious injury but, for whatever reason, the ref decided that a yellow card would suffice.

There is no way of telling if going down to 10 men would have materially affected the result (i.e. Chelsea getting all 3 points) but Chelsea would not have been able to switch to a 3-4-3 in the second half and not have got the 9 minute 4 goal blitz they did.

That’s not to take away from the excellent hard work and ability of any of the mentioned teams nor the tactics of their respective managers but it can’t hurt to have an extra bit of help can it?

Only time will tell if this is an isolated incident of benevolence on behalf of the ref or if there is more to come to further aid Chelsea’s quest for back to back titles.


BlindJak