NEXT MONDAY BRINGS yet another meeting between Ireland and Denmark, and it won’t even be spiced up with the use of VAR…which is exactly how Mick McCarthy wants it.
Speaking to the media today, ahead of the first training session of a camp that features a friendly with New Zealand before Monday’s must-win Euro 2020 qualifier with the Danes, McCarthy was asked about the technology that is wreaking havoc across the Premier League.
One of McCarthy’s players was directly affected over the weekend, as David McGoldrick’s goal against Spurs was ruled out following a lengthy review.
John Lundstram was adjudged to be fractionally offside earlier in the move.
It was tight but the replays show Lundstram was offside in the build-up#TOTSHU pic.twitter.com/xJyEVHMS4s
— Premier League (@premierleague) November 9, 2019
“My view is that it’s ruining it at the minute, it’s ruining it as a spectacle”, said McCarthy.
“My son was at the Tottenham game [against Sheffield United] on Saturday and he said, ‘Dad, it was four minutes [long] and they all started booing…’ It was the most ridiculous decision I’ve seen.
“We used to complain about referees and now we complain about somebody that we can’t see. I suppose that’s anonymous for them, that’s okay.
“But TC [assistant Terry Connor] and I would always watch the games back on a Monday morning [in previous jobs]. Despite the fact we might have been having a bleat and a whinge about the referees, Monday morning, 95 percent, I would say, of the decisions they got right.
“There might be a throw-in and then there would be an odd one where it’s a real blatant one and we’d be moaning, and then there would be a blatant one in our favour the next week and then there wouldn’t be one for two or three months and at the end of the season, it probably equalled itself out.
“And despite all this technology, I’m still not sure that they get the decisions right, so I preferred it before, I must be honest.”
McGoldrick is back among the Irish squad for these games having missed last month’s double-header with Georgia and Switzerland, and McCarthy is delighted to have him back.
“It’s brilliant to have him back. He’s been our star striker, he’s been the stand-out player up front.
“I would always prefer to have my best players playing, and he has been our stand-out centre-forward, so any team or any ilk, any stature would miss a player like him, especially how he was playing, and he was loving it.
“The goal he scored against Switzerland, of course, I think everybody loved him for that.”
