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Mike Dean's shambolic refereeing display in Leeds v West Ham proved us right
Referee Mike Dean was on form during Monday night’s Premier League clash between West Ham and Leeds United.
By ‘on form’ we mean Dean’s usual form of making the game all about himself and creating needless controversy when he’s on TV.
The referee made several shocking calls in Monday’s game that all went against us and that’s before you even look at the terrible VAR calls.
We saw this coming.
Dean was the centre of controversy a few weeks ago as he sent off the Hammers’ Tomas Soucek for no good reason and we spoke out over the decision to let him referee West Ham again.
In this comment piece, we stated, ‘Any close calls that go against us will be questioned by fans and all we want to see is a fair and balanced refereeing display.’
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This is exactly what happened as Dean proved he was not up to the task of giving a fair refereeing display during a West Ham game.
The main points of contention for us were the yellow card dished out to Kalvin Phillips and a foul called against Liam Cooper.
Both of their challenges were incorrectly called as fouls before Dean then had the audacity to book Phillips for his ‘foul’.
In Phillips’ challenge, he won the ball but Pablo Fornals went to the ground screaming like he’d be the victim of some heinous attack which was blasted by Adrian Durham.
Dean fell for this trick and promptly booked Phillips for doing absolutely nothing wrong.
Later on in the game, Cooper flew into a challenge and cleanly won the ball only to hear Dean blow his whistle and point towards Illan Meslier’s goal.
It wasn’t even close to a foul and while these decisions didn’t cost us the game, the manner in which Dean performed should be a concern for all Premier League fans.
We all saw this refereeing display coming, it’s a pity the Premier League didn’t.
In other Leeds United news, Victor Orta shared a huge update about Raphinha’s future.