Now, I think we need to interpret this message very carefully.
Because one false move, and all of a sudden Chris Wilder is going to be accused of telling his players to cheat, and I am pretty sure that isn’t the route that we, him or the club want to go down.
Speaking recently to Examiner Live, Wilder talked about refereeing decisions and how the players may need to be smarter if we are to get more calls to go our way. For instance in the game against Arsenal, you had John Lundstram get his ankles tapped by Dania Ceballos, only to stay on his feet when he could have gone down and possibly earned a penalty.
And Wilder wants his players to be ‘smarter’ when it comes to incidents like that in the box:
“I will put it to you. What do you think that other players at other clubs would have done? Maybe I have got to get used to doing that. It really goes against everything from my point of view, I will be totally honest about it. But certainly, it’s hurting us… I certainly don’t want to spend my time telling players to go over.”
Do you agree with these comments?
Yes
No
I do think that there is an element of truth in this, perhaps we are too ‘honest’ as a football club and as a team. Perhaps it is up to us to start, and I don’t want to use the wrong words here, ‘using’ the referees more when it comes to getting these kinds of decisions, such as that Lundstram incident.
Is it up to us to adapt to what the rules and the situations are, and maybe then we can get some more decisions to help us get out of the rut we are currently in, with no points and only the one goal scored in the league?
Or should we be calling on the referees and VAR (we all know our problems with technology in recent months) to make the decisions for us?
What about you? What do you make of Wilder’s comments?