Premier League referee prone to the occasional error

After Newcastle became the latest team to be denied important points as a result of a mistake by referee Rob Styles, The Spoiler decided to look at who else have fallen victim to his calamitous decision making in recent years.

In goal is Shay Given, who made what deserved to be a match-winning save from Stephen Ireland last night but wasn’t because Manchester City were afforded another opportunity to break down Newcastle’s ten men and scored.

Our left-back is Jlloyd Samuel, whose great tackle on Cristiano Ronaldo last month was punished when Styles pointed to the spot. Accompanying Habib Beye, who is a makeshift centre-back due to Styles’ habit of making costly errors against right-backs, is Stoke’s Ibrahima Sonko, who was adjudged to have fouled Obafemi Martins in Reading’s 3-2 loss at St James’ Park in December 2006, a decision his boss Steve Coppell labelled “a guess-timate”. Steve Finnan completes the defence after Rob Styles famously pointed to the spot last season when Florent Malouda ran into the Irishman with Liverpool beating Chelsea 1-0.

On the wings are

The biggest white elephants the league has ever seen

Some purchases are ill advised: Stephen Ireland’s car, Posh Spice’s singing lessons, and the wedding ring Sir Paul bought Heather come to mind. But none of these fiscal errors were as monumentally costly as the eleven disasters listed below. Well, maybe McCartney’s one-legged Gaff, but even she would have been more useful than many of the Premiership’s ‘Huge Waste of Money’ XI:

GK: Massimo Taibi
£4.4m (Reggina-Man Utd)
Signed as the heir to Peter Schmeichel, but after conceding 11 in four games, including letting Matt Le Tissier’s tame free-kick squirm through his leg, he was never seen again.

DL: Asier Del Horno
£8m (Athletic Bilbao-Chelsea)
Lasted just a year at Chelsea before being squeezed out to Valencia, where he flopped again. Afetr ensuring the door hit his ass on the way out, manager Quique Sanchez said: “He should try to understand why, in two years, two coaches have pushed him out of clubs.”

DC: Per Kroldrup
£5m (Udinese-Everton)
Everton were raving about their capture in pre-season but he only ever made one league appearance before swiftly being shipped off to Fiorentina in a cut price deal. Rumours circulated that the Toffees intended to sign his central-defensive partner at Udinese, but somehow contrived to buy the wrong guy.

DC: Jean-Alain Boumsong
£8m (Rangers-Newcastle)
Sneaks in ahead of his former partner-in-crime Titus Bramble just because he cost a bit more. His errors will live on forever thanks to Youtube.

DR: Khalid Boulahrouz
£8.5m (Hamburg-Chelsea)
Another big-money Mourinho capture that was gone