A recent development in Switzerland reported in LeMatin should be of major interest to all Premier League clubs, and indeed the fans of those clubs, but it has of course been excluded from the media in England. Our guess is that the PGMO probably asked the media not to cover the event, but there again, so solid is the PGMO-media link that we can’t prove that.
Yet the situation is dramatic and demands a certain amount of attention, as in the Swiss league, by way of experiment, some referees now come to a microphone to explain to the crowd their decisions after a VAR review. The aim of course is to reduce player disputes of the referee’s decision making and also to make the game more transparent.
Thus in one case recently Numa Lavanchy was shown a red card in the game between Grasshopper and Sion. The referee Lionel Tschudi indicated that there should be a penalty as a result of a handball by the Sion full-back. But he then went to the VAR monitor, saw that the foul had happened outside the box, which of course meant no penalty. But he also concluded that this was the denial of an obvious goal-scoring opportunity so sent the defending player off.
You can imagine that crowd’s reaction if that had been it. “If he’s sent the player off it must be a penalty” would be the cry – and one might say, quite reasonably. And so the referee then explained the situation to the crowd, who were thus able to hear what the referee had actually seen and how he had made his decision.
This approach has been welcomed in Switzerland and it seems there is now a demand in the media for the matter to go further and have all the discussions between the VAR officials room and the referee to be made public. The media’s request is for these discussions to be live, and as they happen, but in the spirit of testing things out they are willing to accept explanations after the event, at least for now.
The idea of course is to shed light on decision-making processes and to start overcoming the notion that all referees and other officials are incompetent or dishonest. Or both. And of course to emphasise the fact that some of the time refereeing is a matter of interpretation.
As the newspaper put it, “Making its complexity visible, encourages respect. Even if it means revealing a little of ourselves.”
Now this of course is the exact opposite of the English position under the iron fist of the PGMO who make it clear that nothing can be said either then or later, and nothing can ever be revealed. Hence there is no debate of the obvious problem revealed by the fact shown in the statistics produced by WhoScored that, for example, Robert Jones finds that 30% more of his games end up as home wins than is the case for Peter Banks.
Or that John Brooks shows 87% more yellow cards than Anthony Taylor match by match. Or that Anthony Taylor is three times as likely to award a penalty in a game as Michael Oliver.
The issue here is not just that these differences are utterly ludicrous, but that they are utterly ludicrous and never reported in any of the media – except here.
But because the heart of football reporting in England is the manipulation of the news rather than the reporting the evolution of new ideas, as we see in some in other countries, the oddity of referee behaviour in the Premier League is not covered.
And following on from this we get the manipulation of Arsenal’s situation. I doubt that any other club that has the chance of ending second three seasons running would be denigrated as much as Arsenal has been of late.
Was such a fuss made about Chelsea when they came second in two seasons running in 207 and 2008? Do other clubs get such continuous negative commentaries as the Guardian gives with remarks such as “Not for the first time this season, though, the thought occurs of how different this all might have been had Arsenal not frittered away so many cheap points; no side that wishes to be champions can make a habit of losing at home to West Ham”.
But it is, I suppose, just the way it goes.
Arsenal were the first south of England team to win the first division in 1930/1 season and went on to win it a few more times in the 30’s . At this time the were owned by a banking family called the Hill-Woods so became known as the Bank of England side . So having broke the northern dominance to win the first division I can only think jealously set in and the press have never forgotten .
Tony, do you think the Swiss got the idea from watching international Rugby Union refereeing? See the legend that is Nigel Owens.
Could well be, but since PGMO accept no ideas other than the ones they invent, I suspect we might have to wait a while.
Steve I remember my father and grandfather who were both Arsenal fans mentioning Arsenla as the Bank of England side. But it is interesting also that Wiki notes that “By the time of World War II the majority of Arsenal shares were held by Samuel Hill-Wood and Sir Bracewell Smith, the MP for Holborn and a future Lord Mayor of London. In those days the shares were not considered to be valuable and had never paid a dividend, and were seen largely as a charitable exercise to provide recreational entertainment for the working people of North London.” How times change