- Why has the transfer market not quite taken off this summer?
- The Season Ahead: will it end on the pitch or in the courtroom?
By Tony Attwood
Last May Nottingham Forest accused the VAR official Stuart Attwell of being a Luton fan after Forest were defeated at Everton. It didn’t make much of the news at the time since the media never comments much on refereeing matters, probably because they are under orders from the League, who are under orders from PGMO (the secretive organisation that runs refereeing for the Premier League) not to speak out. You can however read some of the background in the Mirror.
The Forest case was not the strongest ever set out suggesting referee bias or incompetence, probably because of the PGMO’s ligature around the neck of the media. And given that out of their last 14 games, Nottingham Forest won three with being against equally challenged Everton and another against relegated Burnley, it was easy for the PGMO to sneer.
But even so, it was fascinating to see at least one club break the absolute embargo on club officials speaking out against PGMO. However odd the club’s spending patterns, we should be grateful for at least one man having the nerve to do that.
And indeed Forest wouldn’t let it go, as they then put up a statement on X raising the issues of Stuart Attwell. Jamie Carragher called the VAR “embarrassing” which certainly is interesting. Not really a debate, but at least the subject surfaced, for once.
Anyway Forest noted that Attwell is a Luton fan, and thought that this affiliation coloured his judgement, claiming that they told the referees association (the aforementioned PGMO) in advance, that this was the wrong person to be on VAR in this game. They then darkly said that Forest would now “consider its options”. One imagines they did and found that they don’t have any, having kowtowed to PGMO in the past and agreeing as part of their terms and conditions of being in the Premier League, not to do so.
The key thing to have done at that point, would have been to object to the whole PGMO set up, and the crazy statistics of PGMO referees (which we aim to be looking at in some depth this coming season). To object just when your club suffers is not that clever. Mind you we were also told that Forest were launching legal action against Sky Sports over Gary Neville’s comments. Indeed The Daily Mail reported that Forest submitted a legal letter to Sky Sports regarding their coverage of the club’s reaction to being denied, in their view, three penalties.
Now part of the problem is that referees are not equal. Attwell is light on seeing fouls – he saw on average 14% fewer fouls in every game he refereed than Michael Salisbury for example. He saw 17% fewer tackles as fouls than did David Coote per match and gave out 25% yellow cards than Michael Salsibury per match
So there is something very odd going on with refereeing in the premier league.- and that is why we will be looking into this further in the coming months.
Thus this comment from Nottingham Forest is particularly interesting because it is so rare – and this is the barrier we hope to be breaking through in the coming months.
My view is that this will put further focus on the stupidity of PGMO being a secret organisation (you will recall that they don’t even have a website) and the Premier League accepting this demand. The only benefit of this (which is of course the complete opposite of Germany) is that it allows curious issues to go unchallenged. But that of course leaves those issues hanging in the air…
The disadvantage is that it means issues such as possible referee bias (which of course might well be unintentional – I am not saying any referee sets out to be biased) are not discussed.
And we should remember here that the research undertaken during the pandemic showed very clearly how much referees are influenced in favour of the home team by the home crowd. As that period without crowds in the ground showed, take away the crowd noise, and the referees’ decisions change.
Which is another reason why we will be coming back to this in more detail soon.
That is really one of the most stupidly neurotic thing I have read. Do you really believe the stuff you write. It’s laughable, except that you say it so often that it becomes boring.
Forest made their fuss months ago, if anything was to happen it would have by now surely.
You say you’re going to cover red in depth soon. But last season there were repeated articles and analysis by yourselves. It had no impact.
So what is going to be the catalyst? There is nothing new surely. It’s going to take irrefutable evidence of corruption and there is none
And today the FA et al have fined Forest manager and player and warned they will be clamping down on managers critical outbursts.
The Stasi are lashing out
Let’s bang the drum again Tony, despite the fact that the stupids think we are having a lark.
In my view Al m, and it is just my view, if one sees an injustice and writes about it and nothing happens, that does not mean one just gives up. I think we have an interesting new approach for the new season.
But surely what is much more interesting is that you, Andrew Banks, know what is coming up on Untold, because we “say it so often” and yet you keep on coming back. Now that surely is bizarre behaviour in th3 extreme.
Tony
I’m so glad you keep publishing the drivel spouted by those 2 morons. Always good for a laugh.
I know, I know, in this modern World you may think that’s a bit unfair, and I agree. Morons get a hard enough time without lumping those two in with them!!