Tottenham Hotspur vs. Stoke City: Pain, Grief and Mistaken Identity

Tottenham Hotspur should win the Premiership this year, not could or might. The club's current form has enough credentials to make the first of the three options the imperative, at least as far as Spurs fans are concerned.

But just when doubts were finally dissipating like morning mist before the sun's incipient confidence, Chris Foy struck, and what looked like a concrete attainable horizon at once metamorphosed to an enigmatic mirage. And now Manchester City may never be caught. Or so it seems.

By nightfall Sunday, Chris Foy was the devil with horns in Tottenham neighborhood. And why? Because of three costly mistakes in the Stoke-Spurs game—three controversial calls, the official media parlance.

First, there was the red card to Younes Kaboul for an innocuous infringement—again the official phrasing.

Here's my opinion on that: If you give a player a card for dissent, then it behooves you to be reticent with any unruly feeling that urges you to penalize said players for borderline offenses that you might or might not punish under normal circumstances, if for no other reason than to avoid any untoward appearance of victimization.

Subsequent punishment for a reckless challenge will be excused naturally as leaving the referee no choice. Innocuous—as noted above— is the common consensus regarding Kaboul's challenge on Jonathan Walters. The verdict? Common sense failed Foy.

Now if you ask for my opinion on the second mistake, the hand on the goal line, I'd say although it hasn't as yet been qualified by "God," the rise as of late of these is too much proliferation for my liking. Okay, so Joleon Lescott's against Chelsea was punished? That owed more to lack of artistry in the execution than to diligence from the referee—my honest opinion.

So what's my "honest opinion" on the Stoke one? Disappointment. I didn't see the match so I don't really know. But here's what I think. I seem to have observed that fewer penalty kicks have been awarded for handling in the box this season than last. (Lescott's was too blatant to ignore.) I could be wrong.

If I'm right, then I think it's the right decision by the FA. Unless a player is seen to have deliberately handled, I think referees should be miserly with such decisions.

They ruin games, plus I think 90 percent of the time, defenders don't intentionally handle. Mind, this is not an absolution of Ryan Shawcross. From the reviews I have read in the papers, he seemed to have really handled! So the verdict? A shaky one: Foy missed a massive call.

And the third call.

From this screen shot, Spurs players appear clearly onside. So what's the verdict?

A blown call by Foy.

But here's my commentary. The referee's assistant bungled call at the expense of Manchester United in their Round 13 game against Newcastle United alerted me to the dilemma of referees and their assistants.

I pitied the linesman because I believe he sincerely thought he had seen contact on Hatem Ben Arfa. He was wrong, but that does not make his call less sincere.  Remember, reader, that officials don't have the benefit of replays as viewers do. How many times have you mistaken a side netting for a goal in a live game?

The officials have to make instant decisions about difficult situations. Understandably, they're not always right calls, which is why FIFA's hesitation in employing modern technology is baffling. It has been said by everyone but FIFA that technology will make life easier for everyone, but Zurich makes people deaf apparently.

So Spurs fans are in pain and they're grieving. Will this cost them a certain title?

Here's the mistaken identity part.

The grieving fans have taken to Twitter to let Foy have it, only that they're tweeting to a Hoy instead of to a Foy. The Hoy is Chris Hoy, professional cyclist. They want Chris Foy, FA Referee.

Hapless Chris Hoy has sent out an SOS to Spurs fans: stop abusing me, I'm not a referee. And indeed he isn't. I have checked. He doesn't have horns.