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The toughest set of decisions over the weekend appeared to lie with referee Mark Halsey at The Stadium of Light, and all involved penalty claims.
The first came after quarter of an hour, when Fulham's Ashkan Dejagah went down under a challenge from Craig Gardner. Mr Halsey paused for some time and pointed to the spot.
There were two quirks to this particular decision. I thought, on first glance, that it was a dive by Dejagah. The fall looked unconvincing and there appeared to be little, if any, contact. When Mr Halsey paused for so long I thought he was calmly walking over, fetching his notebook as he went, preparing to caution Dejagah.
Instead, he gave a penalty. And the strangeness of it is that although, on the one hand, I remain convinced it was a dive and certainly not a penalty, I can't actually castigate Mr Halsey, as all evidence is basically inconclusive.
It looked like a dive, but replays don't tell us for certain one way or another if there was contact. Mr Halsey gave the penalty, so in many ways the burden of proof is on me to prove him wrong, and I can't.
There are often times where I find my stance here ought to be taken up by supporters. I don't agree with the referee on this occasion, but that does not make him blind, incompetent or a cheat; just a man with a different, and understandable, view.
Finally, on this particular decision, I don't like people knocking the referee for taking a long time over the call. I have mentioned it previously in the thoughts above, but that was as an observation, not a criticism. Whether he was right or wrong, we should be happy that Mr Halsey took his time and didn't make a snap decision. There is nothing wrong with stopping to think for a second or two.
Mr Halsey later made another controversial penalty call, but one that I totally agreed with, while plenty of others did not. I would argue that Philippe Senderos grabbed hold of Danny Graham inside the area and tried to stop him running. Graham might not have got to the ball, and he didn't go down, but I still think it was a foul and Mr Halsey was correct - and very brave - to give the pen.
What puzzles me is that people spend their life complaining that way too much pushing, pulling and holding goes on from corners and free-kicks, and the moment that the referee gives a penalty for this type of thing everyone throws up their hands in surprise. It was perhaps not from a set-piece, but the infraction was similar. Seems like double standards to me.
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There was an amazing passage of play at Goodison Park, where Johnny Heitinga went down very easily in an innocuous tussle with Noel Hunt of Reading. There appeared to be nothing of note in the challenge, yet the Dutchman stayed down in apparent pain.
The game continued, with Everton perhaps wanting retribution for the challenge on Heitinga, or at least the game to be stopped for him. Reading played on, and a cross by Adam Le Fondre clearly struck Sylvain Distin on his outstretched arm.
So who is the most entitled to be unhappy? I think Reading. I saw nothing in the initial challenge to warrant any action, and I felt the Royals were entirely within their rights to play on. Once this has been allowed to occur, then I think they should have had a penalty. Distin's arm was in an unnatural position away from his body in an attempt to stop the cross - which is exactly what happened.
This was at 2-0, and had Reading had the opportunity at this stage to get within a goal of Everton, it could have been a very different game indeed.
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At Stoke, Tony Pulis wanted a penalty for a handball by Guy Demel of West Ham, but it was totally different from the incident with Distin at Goodison.
Distin was raising an arm away from himself to block a cross, whereas Demel was moving his arm back down by his side through his momentum, with the ball striking him from about two yards away.
It wasn't deliberate, and Pulis' assertion that the referee didn't give the penalty due to Stoke's vociferous crowd is curiously twisted reasoning. He didn't give it because it wasn't a penalty.
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Finally, I want stop typing and fetch a hat, put the hat on my head and then tip the hat to Mark Clattenburg, who was excellent in the north London derby on Sunday.
I'd be very interested to talk to players about Mr Clattenburg to find out how they enjoy being reffed by him, because I suspect they would like his approach to the game. He covers a lot of ground, is very positive about making decisions and seems to be communicative with the players at all times.
I was particularly impressed with a couple of applications of the advantage rule which I thought were full of common sense. He assessed whether there was an infringement and what the attacking side were doing with the ball, and played on or stopped the game accordingly.
He was aided very well by his assistants, who called a couple of very close offside decisions completely correctly. This is a fixture in which there are often issues, but I thought the officials did a terrific job of making sure most of the talk was about the football.
Rob McNichol (he's on Twitter, you know)
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