Latest in our series on 100 years since Herbert Chapman joined Arsenal:
On Untold Arsenal….
- Man C being investigated of financial deception by the European Commission
- How the media keep the football conspiracy theories running
By Tony Attwood
For a newspaper from a country in which refereeing is run by a secret cabal that has no website, no open discussions with the media, and basically acts as a closed unit that explains nothing, the headline “Madrid and Marseille lead anti-referee epidemic but no officials means no game” is just plain daft.
In England at least, the approach of ultra-secrecy and no apologies for mistakes is bound to lead to discontent among clubs and the relentless attempts by the media to excuse referees and their official organisations just makes things worse.
But instead of looking at what is happening in relation to referees in other countries, and see the downward spiral in trust of the officials as a warning, all we get about English referees in the media is, well, a clever, but disingenuous game. The media won’t talk about them, because they, are, well, ok. No story here.
Real Madrid’s statement that “Spanish officiating system is completely biased” and “structurally designed to protect itself” has been quoted by the Guardian, but noticeably there is no attempt to consider if English refereeing is any better. It is just assumed that it is – although I can’t imagine what defence is constructed to suggest that the PGMO is not “structurally designed to protect itself.” It is a closed environment, it is secretive, it allows no interviews, it has no website. And what is protecting it is the media.
But the phrase “Spanish officiating system is completely biased” and “structurally designed to protect itself” i very clever because without saying it, it implies that the English system is neither of those things.
What is particularly interesting in Europe, however, is that the referee’s system of protecting itself is not working. People are speaking out, and the president of Marseille being given a 15-game ban for accusing French referees of corruption is not helping to stop the debate.
But then there is an interesting twist in the Guardian where it says, “according to 2024 data published by the Football Association at grassroots level, allegations relating to the assault and attempted assault of match officials increased by 32% from 2022-23.”
Quite reasonably, the article asks, “So what should we do about it?” And it answers, “the responsibility lies with all of us.” And there I would agree. Because “all of us” includes the media and the referees association, and the absolute failure of the media to consider the way PGMO behaves and the facts and figures of refereeing in the Premier League is a major part of the problem we have.
And here is the real killer from the Guardian’s article, for it calls for “Sensible criticism of real issues – the implementation of VAR, diversity within the PGMOL, the handball law – are important.” But notice, no comment on the fact (utterly unacknowledged by the media) that with Premier League referees over half of Anthony Taylor’s games are away wins, while three-quarters of John Brooks games are home wins.
Near the end, the article argues that “There will be very occasional cases of referees fixing games, as there are with players, but that does not prove endless baseless accusations just because the VAR once went to a Watford game.”
What they don’t even consider for one microsecond is that there can be bias by referees and variation in how they behave. John Brooks gives out 81% more yellow cards per game than Anthony Taylor. How can that be explained? It may well not be deliberate referee bias, but if it isn’t, it is some kind of variation that should not be there – and which should have been dealt with by the secret society running refereeing in the Premier League.
Millwall v Crystal Palace , Michael Oliverwho had a great view of the Millwall goalkeepers challenge on the Crystal Palace’s centre forward . The centre forward nesrtly had hid head taken off and was taken to hospital ,the injury requiring 25 stitches , he did nothing , it’s only when VAR advised him that the challenge was a sending off that he gave the red card to the Millwall GK . This is the referee who sent off Myles Shelly Lewis for a trip .
We have players sent off for technical offences but hey footballers can assault one another
@ Steve
The level of ineptitude shown by Oliver was even more staggering in that not only did he not give a foul, he didn’t even stop the game for what was clearly a head injury. Week after week this bloke proves to be incompetent/biased/corrupt (you choose), yet still Webb and the media will keep telling us he’s one of the best referees in the world.
“But then there is an interesting twist in the Guardian where it says, “according to 2024 data published by the Football Association at grassroots level, allegations relating to the assault and attempted assault of match officials increased by 32% from 2022-23.”
I posted some statistics on Untold the last time the media used those numbers as some sort of warped defence of referee and VAR incompetence. Of course violence towards officials is wrong and should not be tolerated, that should go without saying. But my my argument was, and still is, that it is not a ‘football’ or even refereeing issue, it is an issue of society. Society in general shows very little respect for anyone in a uniform, or indeed in any position of authority.
Violence has increased towards ALL of our emergency services, including Ambulance Workers, Paramedics, Nurses, Firefighters and The Police. When I researched the statistics of violence towards all of those services, the increase in violence was the same as towards referees. Those percentages were across the board.
As I say, it is a problem for society. Society, for whatever reason, has lost confidence and trust in officialdom, across the board.
But here’s the thing. How do we at least attempt to address these issues of confidence and trust? By holding them to account. When things go wrong there are enquiries. In the worst cases public enquiries. Often held by independent bodies. No, it is not a perfect system, but it is a system that at least concedes there are issues to address.
That is the only way to restore public confidence and trust, and in it’s wake to quell public unrest. The first step is to at least be open and honest, and more importantly, to be SEEN to be open and honest.
The PGMOL and their media apologists refuse even to do that. If they will not even concede there is a problem, what chance have we got?
It comes to something when The PGMOL is more protected, and more secretive than MI6.
As I said earlier on this site
“Maybe I am being a bit pedantic here – but 13 errors from VAR.
PIGMOB VAR crew have a lot of time, multiple replays and PIGMOB still make enough errors to account for, theoretically, 39 points.”
Doesn’t this story prove that, far from doing their job properly, PIGMOB are a complete and utter failure and even with help from replays and multiple officials they can still manage to make an inordinate amount of mistakes. Could you imagine a company making this amount of errors and surviving – I think not.
But as you say Nitram – correct decisions are not what the media and officials of the game want. They have a narrative to produce and certain teams to boost up.”
I know this time VAR got it correct but after Saturdays fiasco (that is the only way to describe this) with a “top referee” it really is a question of if this is the best then we have real problems with the standard of officiating.
For the media to defend referees is staggeringly incompetent – will it take a death after an assault on a player in a game for them to question officiating?
I was speaking to somebody at a child’s game over the weekend and they made noises about “human error” – Forgive me but if people believe this when officials are using multiple replays, different angles etc to determine things they still get it WRONG – then we have real problems!
More and more I find myself turning games off after 10 to 20 minutes because it is quite clear to see that there is a narrative that has to be followed. As a neutral all I want to see is fair play – and as a Neutral I can see that Arsenal have been denied quite a few points due to inconsistent officiating.
I was watching my granddaughter playing on Saturday and I was once again impressed with the referee who made fairness his number one concern. It is quite obvious that it can be done properly.
Les Williams
Exactly
As you have noticed, but I will state again.
The reason our referees are so poor is because they are refereeing to an agenda, a narrative, whatever anyone wants to call.it.
Before the game even starts the referee has a preordained bias in his head. He knows erring against Arsenal, for example will never get him criticised.
Erring in favour of Liverpool will never get him criticised.
That is a very crude and rudimentary evaluation of what is going on, because in reality it is much more nuanced than just giving every single call in favour of one team and against another, because to have a major impact on a game they don’t have to be THAT obvious.
Just giving a couple of big 50/50’s one way is often as not enough to swing a game.
Do that over a run of matches, as Oliver does against Arsenal for example, and it is enough to swing a season.
Some guys on here coined the phrase ’tilt’, which is a fair description.
But honestly, I prefer to call it what it really is. Cheating.
It may just be because I am a very old and cynical Arsenal supporter, but it seems to me that the amount of vitriol Myles Lewis Skelly received from the media for tripping up an opponent is far in excess than the understanding and sympathy that the Millwall goalkeeper is getting for nearly removing an opponents head.
Talk Sport even told the nation this morning that Roberts old school teacher had contacted them to say what a nice lad he had been at school. I dare say he was a model student but that is no excuse, just like Shawcroft had no excuse. for breaking Ramseys leg.