This is no joke and this morning read only one english ref has been picked to be put in the hat for the WC 2006 being Graham Poll, as FIFA are disgusted at the horrific mistakes that the english refs have been making of late.
Jamie Carragher was right when he said the refs have decided who wins the league.
Steve Bennett of Orpington in Kent takes charge of his first Liverpool vs. Manchester United clash this weekend.
This will be fourth time our paths have crossed already this season, he was at Fulham for our 4-2 win and at Middlesbrough and Everton for our 2-0 and 1-0 defeats respectively.
It will only be his second time in charge of a Manchester United game. He was at The Hawthorns a week after our defeat at Middlesbrough for United’s 3-0 victory.
It will be his eighth visit to Anfield and we have only won two of those previous seven games with the last one being a 1-0 win over Sunderland back in November 2001.
The FIFA official, who will turn 44 on Monday, took up the whistle in 1984 and has been refereeing in The Premiership since 1999. But before that he became a Football League linesman in 1992, and then a Premiership linesman a season later. In 1995 he was on the FIFA list of linesman and became a Football League referee. He was promoted to the FIFA list of referees in 2001, and he was given the dubious distinction of being the referee in charge of a game between the two lowest ranking countries when Bhutan met Montserrat in June 2003.
This season he was in the middle for Bayern München's 1-0 Champions League victory at Maccabi Tel-Aviv, and was also in charge of Holland’s 3-1 home win against Sami Hyypiä’s Finland in October with United’s van Nistelrooy scoring two of those goals.
In his 23 games so far this season he has cautioned 58 players and shown the red card twice, with Liverpool’s Josemi being one of those recipients.
