The Referees or The Twelfth Man

I was thinking this one: Elite football in England has 40 referees – all white. Why don’t black officials get top jobs? | Race | The Guardian

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Definitely agree there is a positive bias towards English players, Kane falls over gets a foul, Mo gets his shirt pulled and the foul is against Mo.

Mo and when Sadio was here were the most fouled against players that never got fouls, just compare them to Kane and Grealish it is so blatant.

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I don’t know if anyone else has already read this, but my main conclusion from this was that I’m worlds away from even beginning to comprehend the world of refereeing.

Examples include that referees in the PGMOL are told to treat themselves as a “third team” in the match, or that it’s a desirable outcome to award cheap penalties for “game management” or avoid giving yellow cards “for the good of the match”.

This in particular just makes me think that it’s completely at odds with the idea of Fair Play. What’s the point of playing fair when all you need to do is to threaten the referee’s control of the match in order to get them to avoid issuing a card?

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Woweee. So two wrongs do make a right according to Clatters. I suppose given that he has admitted to not calling penalties because the attacking team didn’t surround him and convince him, this shouldn’t be a surprise.

Every time refs open their mouths they confirm people’s worst thoughts about they do their job.

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Take the games that Stefan Bajcetic has played this season, and how many times he has been carded super early in the game (and the amount of fouls etc he commits).

Then do the same for Rodri.

Therein lies the problem. The refs officiate each team differently. We all know about Salah. And yet no one in the main steam media even mentions it.

A ref doesn’t need to be corrupt. A slight difference in officiating will tip the balance in one direction over the long term. Harry Kane is not that type of payer so can get away with anything.

Alan Shearer and co will continue to back him, and the instance Mo goes down easy (after being manhandled all game getting nothing), the Gary Nevilles will pounce on it.

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Fuck sakes, he was even the ref for that Everton City game where Rodri handballed it. :sob:

https://twitter.com/CF_Compss/status/1653392344199188481

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From 2:40 - 3:30 - Robbie is talking about Tierney
If Tierney does support The Cheaters, it makes sense he would shaft Arsenal as well as us.

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Paul Tierney | Latest Football Betting Odds | Soccer Base

Thanks for posting the articles @redalways and @RedWhippet

Been following the PL for almost 20 years and one have to be blind to not see that English players get away with a lot and being protected by the refs.

It’s 2023. Where are the non-white referees in the PL?

All the other big leagues already had female referees in the top flight (ironically the German one is married to Howard Webb). No sign of that in England. Bunch of dinosaurs PGMOL.

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Omg ! Howard Webb married Bibi Steinhaus, the first female referee to officiate in the Men’s Bundesliga in 2017, that is a revelation!! :scream:

Slur Alex was Best Man

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And still the worst decision of that season was the non-penalty on Jota in the Spurs game.

Every team can point to fringe things that go against them, but those two incidents were absurd and tilted the race by 3 points…both dreamed up by Tierney

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It’s not an “impossible job” though. It would be a much easier job if they applied the rules fairly and consistently. From Sunday’s game one smallish incident that stood out for me but I’ve not seen referred to anywhere is the Milner yellow card. After not giving even a foul for the challenge on Diaz, he had the yellow out for Milly in the blink of an eye. No consistency at all. That’s why players, managers and fans get riled up. :rage::nerd_face:

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That was what I was going on about. I have no idea where to even begin with that article because if that vision of refereeing laid out in the article is what is “in the spirit of football” then I have a really large disconnect with the sport itself.

I think you can only view the job as “impossible” if you swallow their lines completely, without questioning. They make so many asinine excuses for not doing their job properly, and like many other people have pointed out, the attitude they take to it just simply aggravates the situation.

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Where it is “impossible” is that the bodies that decide what refs should do and who judges performances have a perspective completely at odds with the public. There are lots of legitimate criticisms that can be made of the individuals, but ultimately they are reffing games largely in line with how they have been trained to.

The public and media also doesnt help though. There are constant demands for “consistency”, which are thrown out the second ref applies the letter of law instead of applying “common sense”. What people actually mean by consistency is they want every ref to consistently agree with the capricious opinions of the person complaining about the refs. That attitude where the refs are treated like they are always wrong definitely encourages the PGMOL to think they’re on a hiding to nothing and so create and maintain distance from other of the game’s stakeholders in developing their guidance and training material.

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I read the last player sent off against us for a second yellow was Sadio when he was still at Southampton.

I wonder how that compares with other clubs.

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Terribly. It’s an outlier.

Is this true?
Are there stats published anywhere?

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