ClaretTony wrote: ↑Sun Aug 24, 2025 10:35 pm
Have to say I think your 9 out of 25 for control has to be a joke.
As for the disallowed goal, and I believe it could have gone either way, how quickly do you want him to blow? The best referees always give themselves time, the worst referees blow too quickly.
Hello CT
You always take issue with my marks, even though I’ve already justified them.
I’m always consistent with my marks. I’m regularly marking down referees for a lack of control because it is endemic in the game.
Players were constantly standing in front of free kicks, taking free kicks and throw ins wherever they wanted. Constantly in the referees ear.
If we followed the letter of the law there would be multiple second yellows each and every game. That this never happens means referees have to pick and choose which rules to enforce properly.
First it erodes the authority of the referees. Then they start picking and choosing which laws to implement and which to ignore. Eventually it even erodes their ability to get decisions correct because they’re busy worrying about the consequences of a correct but unpopular decision.
When this all happens, you end up with a spineless culture whereby the game is effectively bossed by the players. Eventually, justifying bad decisions is more of a priority than getting decisions correct.
This is where we are now.
We have a tool (VAR) that could easily -in the right hands and with some moral courage and fortitude- get the vast majority of decisions right. But it doesn’t happen. Why?
Take three recent decisions: the penalty we didn’t get at spurs, the handball against Tarky at Leeds and then the disallowed goal for Foster vs Sunderland. Ok, there is a degree of subjectivity in all of these decisions but I think the majority of fans and pundits agree they’ve all been called incorrectly but given a whiff of authority by having them all rubber stamped by VAR.
It’s a cess pit of moral ineptitude masked by a quick squirt of febreeze.
No single referee is solely to blame for this moral decrepitude and yet being a part of it, they all share some of the blame.
They’re all part of the culture. They’re all part of the problem.
Is it really beyond the wit of every single person at the PGMOL to realise that VAR reviews need to be done blind, so that poor decisions arent the weighted default?
Any confident institution truly concerned with getting decisions correct would come to this obvious conclusion in a couple of minutes.
So yes, I do judge them poorly but I judge them consistently, so my marks aren’t going to skew or distort anything.
You ask how quickly I want to referee to blow. I say he should blow immediately if he thinks there is a foul. He is the authority on the pitch. If he gets a decision wrong in good faith that is far better than abrogating the decision entirely and picking the least problematic decision, which is what I suspect truly happened on Saturday.
I had my eyes firmly on the referee as foster was celebrating on Saturday: that was not the body language of a man who had seen a foul but allowed play to go on in good faith, so that VAR could double check his firm belief. No, that was a man getting harangued by Sunderland defenders who didn’t know what to do.
A man who truly believed it was a foul would have had two occasions to blow up. First would be the instant he thought the ‘foul’ occurred. The second would have been the second the ball hit the net - a loud curt peep that indicated, “sorry lad, I have to let play go on just in case, but it’s beyond my doubt you committed a foul and it isn’t a goal.”
Take a look at it again yourself. That’s not a man in authority. It’s a man cowed by the whole experience who doesn’t know what to do, so picks the path of least resistance.
VAR isn’t there to review the decision. It’s there to get him out of his purgatory in the quickest, easiest way possible.
Why else does he let the celebrations go on so long? Why doesn’t he clearly indicate it isn’t going to stand?
Obviously, I can no more claim to know what was going on in the ref’s head than anybody else. I’m just pointing out his body language isn’t that of man with authority, his body language as the ‘foul’ happens isn’t somebody who is letting play go on for the sake of integrity and his giant pause after the goal was scored doesn’t point to somebody who with any form of decisiveness or authority. It all ponts to a man making it up as he goes along.
It is shameful moral cowardice and it permeates top flight refereeing in this country. Strangely, this problem of authority is worse the higher up the leagues we go. Because it’s driven by the culture of the elite players.
In this lower leagues the referees are noticeably worse but at least there is more integrity to the decisions.
I challenge anybody to watch the Foster goal again and tell me that it shows a man with authority. You’ll see a man wracked with nerves attempting to negotiate a match through “consensual refereeing”. They’re letting the players run the show. All of them, to a man.
This user liked this post: Goalkeeper
