Hot Seat Watch for World Football Players, Coaches After Weekend of Feb. 21-23
It's that time of week again: The moment where we take a look at recent results, performances or happenings in matches and allocate time to those who need to take a moment to consider how they can improve.
We're not calling for sackings or players to be dropped, but even so we take a rundown of managers for whom things are not going as well as they might be at present, players who have suffered altercations, bad mistakes or runs of woeful form, and anything else in the game that has taken negative headlines of late.
Here is our latest selection, with more than a few notable names from around Europe.
Premier League Referees
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We start in the Premier League, where more than one referee took a fair amount of criticism this weekend.
Martin Atkinson came under huge fire after his handling of the game between Chelsea and Burnley, where he sent off Nemanja Matic for reacting badly to an awful tackle. Former referee chief Keith Hackett labelled his performance "incompetent," per BBC Sport, and "one of the worst" he had seen.
Meanwhile, Kevin Friend infuriated Southampton by turning down four penalty appeals, at least one of which looked nailed on, in their 2-0 defeat at home to Liverpool.
Three players in total were sent off over the weekend in England's top flight.
Manuel Pellegrini
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What a difference a week can make in football.
Weekend domestic league matches saw Manchester City crush Newcastle United 5-0, while Barcelona lost 1-0 at home to Malaga to end an 11-match win streak—leaving many City fans and pundits in the game thinking the English team could beat the Spanish side.
Not so.
Manuel Pellegrini went with the wrong shape and personnel for the task, and his team were utterly overrun for the first half. Even reducing the scoreline to 2-1 in the end doesn't really hide the fact that City were well beaten and look all but out of the Champions League without making a major impact once again.
He needs a result at the weekend, at in-form Liverpool, to ensure their Premier League title bid isn't derailed at the same time.
Dani Alves
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Barcelona right-back Dani Alves, meanwhile, has had better weeks too.
At the weekend it was his hideously mistimed pass back to goalkeeper Claudio Bravo that allowed Malaga an easy route to goal in the 1-0 win for the Andalucian side, while at the other end of the field Alves' delivery was poor and he was substituted later in the game.
Then, against Manchester City in midweek, Alves was criticised in some quarters for making more of a foul by Gael Clichy than was necessary, resulting in a second yellow and subsequent red card. Alves was again substituted and reacted angrily by kicking out at a water bottle on his way off the pitch, soaking a steward and police officer, according to the Daily Mail.
Petulance at its finest.
Huub Stevens
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Over to Germany, where Huub Stevens is so far failing to turn around VfB Stuttgart's season at all.
Brought in before Christmas to try and stop the rot, Stevens has guided Stuttgart to the bottom of the table. The club have lost four of their last five games, leaving them four points from the relegation playoff place and five from total safety.
A 3-2 home defeat to Borussia Dortmund at the weekend was the latest blow, with a crunch game against fellow strugglers Hertha Berlin now just two weeks away. Stuttgart need form—and fast.
Marcelo Bielsa
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Two more managers coming up now, ones at the right end of the table—but unable to get key recent results to go their way.
Firstly in Ligue 1, Marcelo Bielsa received great plaudits earlier in the season for guiding his Marseille team up the table and into top spot, so it is only right that now, as they hit a bad patch, he is also being questioned over how to improve the team and get them back to winning ways to fight for the title.
A 2-2 draw at Saint-Etienne was a third consecutive draw for Marseille, who have one win in five, and they are now four points off leaders Lyon. They now face two bottom-half teams in succession, Caen and Toulouse, before a crunch game against the top team.
Rudi Garcia
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In Serie A, AS Roma boss Rudi Garcia is the man finding life frustrating at present.
His side have been second-best in Italy for a couple of seasons now, but he cannot quite get them to take the jump and usurp Juventus, with any hopes of a title challenge for this season already all but over.
A 1-1 draw at Hellas Verona at the weekend was a fifth stalemate in six games for Roma, who now trail Juve by a massive nine points with 14 games of the season left to play. In-form Napoli have closed the gap to just three points behind them.
Next up...home to Juventus.
Joey Barton
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Seven yellow cards in seven matches was the Premier League record that QPR midfielder Joey Barton had to his name heading into the weekend fixture against Hull City, a crunch match at the bottom with both teams battling against relegation.
Cool heads and leadership the order of the day then?
Not quite, as Barton got himself sent off in half an hour or so, swinging a fist in the direction of a rather sensitive area of Tom Huddlestone.
QPR went on to lose the game 2-1 and now sit outside the relegation zone only on goal difference.
Overly Aggressive Throwdowns
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Barton wasn't the only one getting overly physical of late. The picture here shows Liverpool's players celebrating their second goal in the 2-0 win over Southampton—but you'll notice one or two of the players a little distracted by something off to the side.
That would be this, an overexcited fan getting intercepted and thrown to ground by an equally overzealous steward at St. Mary's.
Elsewhere, and much further down the league ladder, Worcester City's Shab Khan reacted to a wild and horrible foul on him—punished only with a yellow card—by picking up Stockport's Charlie Russell and body-slamming him into the ground. Naturally, Khan was sent off.
Nemanja Matic, referred to earlier in the referees' slide, was also sent off for a bad reaction to a brutal foul—getting up, running over and shoving Ashley Barnes to ground.
