Apologies if this matter has been covered elsewhere?

I watched the whole game with Boro live and also watched extensive highlights on Sky last night.

My conclusion is that Swarbrick is definitely a referee that currently bottles making big decisions in either penalty area.

He must have seen Ayala manhandling Scott Dann in the 1st half at corners and if Mike Dean was the ref we would have had 2 pens.... and he would have been sent off with 2 yellow cards.

A massive blow then that we allowed the same player time and room to head their equaliser.... I was gutted we didn't block him off/grab his shirt as it was clear Swarbrick was never going to award a penalty for that offence.

2nd half it was our turn to benefit from Swarbrick's reluctance to point to the spot... Scott Dann's hand looked like it was in contact with the ball, and Zaha's late challenge in injury time looked inside the box to me.

From my perspective justice was done though... he missed 2 penalties for both teams.

Why Boro's coaching assistants were giving the 4th official so much grief I don't know... obviously they had selective memory loss when it came to their players "cheating".

It also begs the question why the FA/Referees association aren't insisting all referees act in unison. Clearly Mike Dean aims to stamp out holding at corners and is not afraid to award penalties and dish out cards.

Other referees like Swarbrick are still allowing the status quo to continue and are bottling the chance to follow Read's example.

Clearly this anomaly cannot be allowed to continue?

Edited by Hoof Hearted (11 Sep 2016 11.27am)

LOL.... yes I meant Mike Dean.... I've edited my post now... thanks tazzer.

The jury's out on Zaha's tackle - in my opinion and a few pundits it looked in and could/should have been a pen... but it's all about opinion and clearly we disagree on that issue.

If you are right, we were harshly treated by Swarbrick and could have had 2 penalties to their 1.

The main point I was making was the inconsistency of referees decisions and the FA/Referees Association failure to instill parity between them.

Either they all adopt Mike Dean's approach and penalise holding or let it go... you can't have referees applying different standards.

You are of course referring to what I call the "Arsene Wenger" approach.

Easier to say you didn't see it, rather than admit you got it wrong.... the classic "old chestnut" response to dealing with making a decision under pressure.

It seems that Mike Dean is able to see what Sky TV cameras can see but Swarbrick isn't!

The holding was 100% seen by Swarbrick. Before the corners were taken he had nearly 10 seconds of looking at the box and seeing the blatant grabbing. If he didn't see it then he isn't up to the standard required to ref in the PL, if he did he needs to be consistent and follow the guidelines put in place before the season started.

Actually think last season was one of the poorest in terms of ref performances I can remember. This season already looks slightly better and I take my hat if to Mike Dean for his consistency.

Quick side note. If you want to talk about big game and referees bottling it, look no further than a certain Willo favourite missing a clear pen and a red in the Manchester derby.

Zaha's tackle was clearly outside the box on MotD, from 3 different angles (even Shearer agreed that it was outside!).

The Boro bench were disputing (on 2 occasions) that Dann handled the ball in the area. Both times he had both his right foot and right arm out, and it was very difficult to see which actually touched the ball, although a different angle on one clearly showed that it was the boot and not the hand that got there first.

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