Furious Terry blasts ref

07 May 2009 07:58
Chelsea captain John Terry has accused referee Tom Henning Ovrebo of costing the side a place in the Champions League final. Terry was left infuriated by the Norwegian official's performance at Stamford Bridge as Chelsea crashed out to Barcelona on the away goals rule after a dramatic 1-1 draw in West London. Chelsea were furious with Henning Ovrebo for ignoring four strong penalty appeals as they saw their European dreams ended in controversial circumstances. A group of Chelsea players, including Terry confronted Henning Ovrebo at the final whistle with Blues boss Guus Hiddink defending the players' angry reaction towards the official. Terrys topped short of saying Chelsea were victims of a conspiracy, but he felt the Blues were robbed of a second successive final showdown with Manchester United. "The word conspiracy is maybe the wrong one," said Terry. "It's difficult when players are so high on emotion after a game. However, people are saying we shouldn't have reacted the way we did. But the fact is, six decisions went against us in front of 40,000 people. And for the ref to not give one of them is unusual. "I don't use the word cheat, that's your word. It's a strong word to use. All we want is a fair playing surface. You know over two legs we can match Barcelona, we proved that. For 93 minutes they didn't have a chance. We maybe should have killed the game off, but if we get one of those penalties and go 2-0 up, we're cruising. "I've seen all of them and for the ref to not give at least two is incredible. It's not surprising for us to come off the field and show that emotion. If a player makes consecutive mistakes time after time, he's going to be dropped. Referees keep getting the big games on the big stages." Terry blasted Uefa for giving the game to Henning Ovrebo feeling it should have been awarded to a more experienced official. "It's down to Uefa to be strong," added Terry. "They should say, 'These are our four best referees, they are going to be refereeing the two home and two away legs.' Both sides had experienced players tonight and you need experienced referees. Did you see that game last night? There were bad decisions. "It's decisions like that which are wrong - Darren Fletcher misses the final, a bad decision. He can't play in the final and neither can we, because of a bad decision in this match. "We did exactly what we needed to do tonight. We had a game plan coming into both these games and did exactly what the manager asked of us and we're not going through because of a dire refereeing decision. Not one player made one mistake in the two legs. The referee has made four or five or six big errors and now we're out of the competition." Terry also jumped to the defence of team-mate Didier Drogba who came on to the pitch at the end to remonstrate with Henning Ovrebo and had to be held back by several stewards from getting closer to the referee. "I'm fully behind Didier, the way he reacted," Terry said. "You can see the passion he played with in the game and afterwards. "But the fact is the referee is the one who should face the consequences, not Didier and not us by not going through."

Source: SKY_Sports