It's been a pretty dire weekend for Premier League referees: Anthony Taylor, fresh from a few days off for his stag party, dropped a bollock at the Liberty Stadium in awarding Burnley a penalty for a handball. He correctly spotted the handball, but got the identity of the transgressor wrong: the ball was handled by Burnley's Sam Vokes. Elsewhere, at Old Trafford, Kevin Friend endured a nightmare, and bottled most of the big decisions.
Amid such incompetence, perhaps Mamadou Sakho has had the most balanced response. Sakho was playing for Crystal Palace against West Brom, in the battle of The Good Football Men.
Sakho has an endearing quality of being utterly batshit mental, and he took one of his trademark flights of insanity today. He strode out with the ball, lost it, and in attempting to win it back....he tackled the referee, Mike Jones.
Here's how it played out.
Mamadou Sakho Tackles Referee
Sakho strides clear, dominant...
...but disaster strikes! He overruns it, and loses the ball under pressure...
..the ball ends up in front of the referee...
...and takes no prisoners....
...and walks away unapologetic.
Sensational.
75: Sakho makes a tackle whilst going through the referee! Anything with a pulse, he'll tackle it! [0-1] #WBACRY
— Crystal Palace F.C. (@CPFC) March 4, 2017
