Aye, watching it in real time yesterday it did not strike me as intentional but then when you see it sped up in a two second gig or over-analyzed on Sky from 123 differing angles it can change your perception. Much like the Cabaye challenge on Jay over chrimbo, thought it was a hard and fair challenge in real time but once the slo-mo replays came on it looks horrific.
Just a point about this. Remember the Lescott penalty last night? Now, I'm not saying it should have been a penalty (though I could see why it was given) but it was a very nice object lesson in trial by Sky-editing.
The first replay they showed after it happened was front on, not far off the refs viewing angle. In that one, in real time, you couldn't tell it had bounced off Lescott's foot. All you could see clearly was that his arms were stuck out and that the ball struck his arm. You could later see Dowd confirming with arm-motions that this was precisely why he'd given the penalty - at the end of the day Lescott had moved towards the ball with his arms spread.
But the Sky angle was that the penalty was wrong. So they showed 3 or 4 replays in slow motion at half time - all of which were from angles that clearly showed the bounce, but not one time did they show their own original replay which also happened to be closest to the referee's own view.
