Officials ‘so poor’
MOYES STANDS BY RICE AS MATCH REF SLAMMED
DAVID MOYES has slammed the standard of officiating in the Europa League following West Ham’s exit on Thursday.
The Hammers boss and left-back Aaron Cresswell were sent off in the second leg of their semi-final with Eintracht Frankfurt by referee Jesus Gil Manzano.
And captain Declan Rice faces a UEFA charge for the expletive-laden outburst he aimed at the Spanish whistler in the tunnel post-match.
Rice said: “Ref. Ref. It’s so poor. All night, it’s so bad. How can you be that bad? Honestly, you’ve probably been f***ing paid, f***ing corruption.”
Moyes was furious with the referee’s performance as well and has vowed to stand by his skipper.
However, it wasn’t just last week’s refereeing display that has upset the Scot, but much of what had gone before it in the competition as well.
Moyes said: “I don’t think the standard of officiating has been very good. In fact, it has been pretty average. The Premier
League is a better standard, but I’ve always said that – if you look at my quotes for a long time regarding referees, certainly from my short spell in Spain, I thought the Premier League referees were far better but I was saying that five or six years ago.
“In the Europa League, there’s part of the game now in terms of the officiating of it that soft free-kicks are acceptable and the game can be stopped.
“And if I’m a paying customer… “They’re certainly not putting all the time on for stoppages, and there’s certainly an awful lot of players who are going down so easily.
“It used to be that you stopped a game for head knocks, on Thursday it was stopped for a different kind.”
One thing Moyes is confident of changing this summer is some of the players at his disposal.
He added: “A couple of years ago, we had a real good couple of windows where it worked for us.
“We need to try to make that happen again, we need to try to get it where we get a couple of players who can add to the team and give us more players who can play.
“It is easier said than done, it is easy just to say, ‘We will bring in a few players.’
“You have to get the right ones, the right characters and get everything to fill in and it doesn’t always work that way.
“The team we have had now for two-and-a-half years has been a great team and we will need to start building on top of that, trying to do more.
“If you don’t then you stand still and we can’t stand still.
“We are still a side where there is no guarantee West Ham continue to finish in the top five or six, not with the money you see teams spending.”