Levein Fined By SFA

The Verdict is in and The Gaffer has been fined for his outburst at Mike McCurry.

The SFA have handed him a £5000 fine.

Levein is still yet to decide whether he will appeal the fine however, after the hearing he was in no mood for apologies.

"I said what I honestly felt at the time," he said. "It was a poor performance and I'm still angry about it.

"I wasn't going to go in and apologise for anything I said."

Can't say I'm surprised to be honest. Hopefully he will appeal and not backdown.

Levein before the dock.

So, today The Gaffer faces the SFA over the McCurry row after last season 3-1 defeat to Rangers at Ibrox.

The SFA are to question Levein over his post match outburst, in which he slated the ref over 2 incidents, one a blatant penalty, the other a blatant goal, in which McCurry decided to give against United (OK, lets face it he cheated *libel/slander alert*).

Levein stated after the match, live on BBC Radio Scotland and Setanta Sports that United may as well have not bothered turning up. He claimed there is no level playing field in the SPL when it comes to the Old Firm and that McCurry bottled it when it came to giving big decisions againt Rangers.

Any fair minded football fan without a royal blue tinted specs on can see he is right.

So, lets hope Craig stands up to the corrupt governing body that is the SFA.

And as a follow on to this, I find it rather amusing to find that the referees up here are threating a strike which could delay the start of the SPL season.

40% increase eh? And what exactly do any of these referees feel they have done to deserve such an increase? Maybe if they could make fair decisions during games rather than pandering under pressure it would be worth it.

Until the referees in Scotland buck up their ideas, we should be telling them to swivel for an increase.

Bring in foreign refs. At least we may get some impartial decision making.

It's Opinion Poll Time...

So it's a quiet pre season day, we played last night, we got beat.

Not much else happening. I could post about Greg Cameron talking about being delighted at getting back into the team last night, but I would just be covering what the "Tully" has already said. (Well done to Greg by the way, glad to see him back and hopefully he can pick up some good form and get back into the first team).

So the Opinion Poll, which will be up for the next week, is about refereeing (Oh not that again).

Now, I'm not about to sit and bitch about decisions that went against us, though there were many, last season. Some pretty horrific (a bit strong?) decisions went against many teams at various times during last season, and I could list them all, but this would turn into the Never Ending Blog.

But, with all the uproar about a certain Mr McCurry last year, leading to many pointers of poor decisions by him in various games, is this likely to have an effect on the standard of refereeing during the coming season.

Now, I for one understand that refereeing can, at times, be tough, for various reasons. But at other times, can it be said that referees are showing blatant bias towards certain clubs?

I'm not about to say by any stretch that referees are cheating (or the SFA might hit me with a slander/libel case) but some of the decisions have to be questioned.

I could go on and on and on....

But my question is, are the events of last season likely to see an improvement in the standard of refereeing this season? Will all clubs in the SPL be playing on a (more) level playing field?

Be sure to vote and of course, your comments are very welcome.