I have commented on this before, but in my days just below the MLS we used to get this one ref all the fucking time who was on the MLS roster. And he was shit. But he wasnāt just shit he was impossibly arrogant and just above having to deal with players. This didnāt appear to be an issue with frustration and having to appear on our lowly level, because he looked the same in MLS games. I got the chance to talk to him once at an event and we got into it about the importance of mutual respect and it was a concept he just refused to acknowledge. He was authority figure and so owed the players no respect. Referee Judge fucking Dread.
I do think he was an extreme example, but I think a big part of the problem is this mentality is part of what makes refs self select for the roleā¦and the stronger the sentiment the more likely they are to move up through the ranks
Although not something I overtly stated, this kind of attitude by certain refs is absolutely another part of the problem - I was always taught that you should treat others as they treat you, and if a certain ref is just a cockend, then players and managers will treat them as such in return.
Thatās why a culture of respect has to be mutual and why, in the next part of my post, I said that the officials and governing body need to be more transparent and accountable - and hopefully this would be a way of weeding out those who are just unsuited to operating in such a culture.
Yeah, the latter bit is why the PGMOLās response to this Coote thing will be interesting. There is obviously a big PR issue for them right now, but the PR issue only exists because of something structural that is not working underlying it. If they treat this as just a PR problem to solve then we know they are blind to these issues weāre talking about.
The FA has launched itās own investigation into the video that appears to show David Coote using former Liverpool boss Jurgen Kloppās nationality to preface one of his comments.
FA rules state nationality is one of the references that can lead to an aggravated breach of their rules
The report doing the rounds that PGMOL have known of the existence of this video for years does seriously undermine all pretence of impartiality from them.
Pretty damming if true
That would be catastrophically bad if true. As in immediately make the PGMOLās role in the game untenable.
I joked last week that by feburary weāre going to be a couple of wins from winning the league when faced with another global pandemic leading to calls to shut the league down and make it null and void. It is not going to be a global pandemic though. It is going to be catastrophic lack of faith in the officials .
This story just gets better and better.
I saw on X that 1 month after the filming of the video they abruptly pulled Coote from VAR duties for one of our matches. Pretty sure Gary Neville made a comment about it. He also didnāt get a center match for 4 years in the PL following the video timing (he did ref other competitions and did get a City/Liverpool EFL match). Could be coincidence, however, burying your shit under shifting sands seldom works well.
Okay, Iām convinced Iām living in a simulation and all of you are figments of my imagination. It canāt be anything else.
Itās a point I made when the stuff about Edwards refereeing in the UAE broke. Whether they are corrupt or not is almost immaterial. The bigger concern is that they donāt seem to think they have any duty to be seen to be impartial. They seem to think their opinion of themselves to be sound is all that is necessary.
If you are in any role that requires a degree of impartiality and public trust, then you have to not only accept standards, but welcome the scrutiny and oversight that comes with it.
I think the refs we have now are a particularly weird set of pricks, but Iām sure that the job of top level refereeing has always attracted a certain kind of mindset. That lad who loved rules, a little bit of authority, the chance to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday strutting around being the centre of attention and feeling superior.
But with the additional scrutiny, and the stakes being so high, there needs to be greater accountability and professionalism. Weāve got refs who seem to come exclusively from fucking Manchester. Weāve got refs who think itās OK to collect a bit of side money from Man Cityās owners. Weāve got refs who canāt keep themselves fit. Weāve got refs who donāt appear to be completely au fait with the rules of the game.
And sitting at the centre of it is a man who spend the 90s - the immediate aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster and during the subsequent cover up - working for the South Yorkshire Police force. I donāt really care whether Howard Webb was influenced by his colleagues in that police force, who were fighting to maintain an increasingly desperate cover up of the facts in the face of a justice campaign by the people of Liverpool and the football club.
Nobody who has worked for South Yorkshire Police has any business working for PGMOL, or football administration roles in general. It looks fucking terrible. Regardless of whether that job shaped Webbās opinions about one of the Clubs in the league or not, a serious organisation just doesnāt go there. Itās off the table.
But PGMOL seem to base their actions on a general assumption that they are all sound lads, bias is something that other people suffer from, and how dare you demand we actually account for ourselves.
I think itās worth saying that the originator of that allegation is a notoriously questionable source.
Having said that, the timeline around Coote being pulled from our games is quite compelling.
I totally agree with this , then add in the diving, feigning injury, appealing for every decision even when it has blatantly come off them or is an obvious foul, shirt pulling, time wasting.
The role of a referee in the professional game isnāt a pleasant one.
I think there is a lot in there I agree with but view it a little differently. They appreciate the need to APPEAR impartial, but have such a skewed impression from operating in their insular ref bubble where they are accountable to no one but themselves, that they donāt understand what appearing impartial looks like to outsiders. That means they also donāt see how apparent it is to us that they are not. That leaves them in a place where they are concerned about controlling the PR fall out, but less concerned with actually doing better because they donāt think there is much better they could do.
Its like Boris and Covid. To him, everything was a PR issue to manage without realizing that the best way to get good PR for your response would be to actually deliver an effective response.
I agree hes not particularly reputable but it seems a very unusual stance to take for anyone who seems to think very are reputable.
Itāsā¦ Rebekah Vardy('s phone)