After a season of average to poor referees, the one we had the misfortune of having at Elland Road on Saturday surpassed the lot.
Darren Deadman made one poor decision after another to baffle the home supporters.
Deadman must be the worst we have seen this season and this is saying something when we have seen the likes of Michael Oliver against Sheffield United at home and before this game, David Webb in the home game against Portsmouth, who until this game ranked as the worst of the season.
We have even had the elite list referees making an appearance recently with both Mark Clattenberg and Phil Dowd having very poor games.
Fans from opposition clubs may see it as sour grapes because Leeds only came away with a point, from a game that they really should have won and despite his best efforts to spoil any chance of a Leeds victory we had more than enough chances to take the three points.
The game was only ten minutes old before the first rendition of ‘We only get s**t refs` rang around Elland Road.
His first injustice was actually in Leeds favour. He only booked Billy Paynter for an elbow to an Ipswich defenders head inside five minutes and quickly produced a yellow card. Now if he saw this as deliberate, then surely it should have been a red.
The rest of the half it was all against Leeds and he went from one bad decision to another.
Firstly, a quite clear back pass from an Ipswich defender went unpunished when goalkeeper Marton Fulop handled the ball.
Andy O`Brien was then booked for a foul of Tamas Priskin for a trip when O`Brien was three yards behind the player who had fallen over his own legs.
At the other end an O`Brien shot was saved by the outstretched arms of an Ipswich defender and with the referee just five yards away, again it went unpunished.
Deadman then played advantage to Ipswich despite his assistant on the East stand side flagging for offside against an Ipswich attacker. Mr Deadman, unless you have a different list of laws of the game, it can only be advantage if in the possession of a Leeds player.
Fortunately, his second half performance, despite still being mediocre at best, did improve, but I suppose it couldn`t get any worse!
Simon Grayson was so incensed at one stage during the first half that Deadman had words with the Leeds boss.
It will be very interesting to see where Deadman will be officiating next weekend because if his assessor in the stands was doing his job properly he would be demoted down the divisions next weekend.
I just hope that next weekend for the Yorkshire derby against Sheffield United we have someone in the middle who can go unnoticed for 90 minutes.
‘All we want is a decent referee`
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