By grabar
November 29 2009

There was much criticism of referee Alan Muir following yesterday's game with Dundee United - but was it all justified??

For me it was interesting that both managers dealt out almost the same criticism after the game and agreed on the major incidents the ref got wrong.

Craig Levein even gave the manager a mark out of ten in his post match press conference, and gave the ref, Alan Muir, a generous score of 1!

Jim Gannon felt it was the worst refereeing performance he has seen since coming north to join Motherwell. He admitted he has been forced to write twice to Hugh Dallas to complain about the standard of our referees, without response.

The ref was involvd in three red card incidents in the game;

1. Prince Buaben - two quick yellow cards, neither of them was for a particulalry bad tackle but to be fair to the ref Buaben was a bit stupid with his reaction to the second tackle which may have seen him booked for dissent. But once again both managers agreed it was ridiculous to send him off.

2. Myrie-Williams - not shown a red card but nobody can understand how! He was booked and then took a fall in the box, no penalty but no punishment for the dive. In the second half he committed a horror tackle on Saunders which wasn't deemed as a foul. Again both manager's though he was lucky to stay on!

3. Craig Conway - Sent off for a late tackle on Keith Lasley, it was a foul but was it a red card - doubt it, and so did both both managers once again!

Jim Gannon added the referee couldn't tell the difference between a foul and a tackle, and that seemed to be what frustrated everyone in the ground!

I believe the standard of referee in our games is appalling and there needs to be drastic action or the game could fall into anarchy with players losing patience with inept whistlers.

As a footnote, Alan Muir didn't even start the game with a whistle that worked, having to change it after 12 minutes - if they can't get that basic right where do we go from here.....