- Referreeing in England is utter constant attack. But why, and how can this be changed?
- Which club has the best record over the last 100 Premier League games?
By Tony Attwood
Football is England is run on the basis of inevitability – as in, “this is the obvious way it has to be.” Teams with lots of money can do well, teams without lots of money can do badly. Although there is an exception with Tottenham Ho. it seems as according to their supporters they have loads of money because they have been given their stadium for free, but despite having no financial issues are, oh hand on let me look… oh yes below Wolverhampton.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 | Wolverhampton Wanderers | 33 | 11 | 5 | 17 | 48 | 61 | -13 | 38 |
| 16 | Tottenham Hots | 33 | 11 | 4 | 18 | 61 | 51 | 10 | 37 |
| 17 | West Ham United | 33 | 9 | 9 | 15 | 37 | 55 | -18 | 36 |
| 18 | Ipswich Town | 33 | 4 | 9 | 20 | 33 | 71 | -38 | 21 |
| 19 | Leicester City | 33 | 4 | 6 | 23 | 27 | 73 | -46 | 18 |
| 20 | Southampton | 33 | 2 | 5 | 26 | 24 | 78 | -54 | 11 |
Likewise, PGMOL, the secret organisation the runs refereeing in the Premier League is as authoritarian as you can get. They have no public face, and for reasons I can never understand the media let them get away with their silence.
Meanwhile, we have Uefa and Fifa and the FA. Unquestionable and untouchable. In the UK the only other operation that works like these bodies do that I can think of is the House of Lords.
So when the FA for example, refuse to investigate the allegations of abuse of children in football league clubs, this is accepted because the FA are supreme and there is no one else to appeal to for a root and branch investigation. The media won’t do it, because the journalists are afraid that too much probing will result in press passes being removed. Thus no one goes looking.
From that point we get to the conclusion that abuse of referees in junior leagues is due to bad parenting, bad schooling, a lack of national military service and well… you can make up any reason you like because none of these explanations come with any proof or any sort of argument properly thought through.
And thus we remain at the starting point: no one investigates PGMO, just as no one seems to want to face up to the fact that Manchester City’s 115 charges are still sitting there, still unresolved; now no longer news.
Thus what is so particularly clever about ManC and PGMO and the FA and the League is that they have managed to engineer a situation in which no one is questioning why they are doing nothing. Worse, no one is even laughing at them.
And that really is a worrying point. The position of Fifa, Uefa, PGMOL and the rest is so strong that no one even satirises them despite the fact that their positions and their decrees are utterly bonkers. No one laughs at them. No one challenges them.
Yet these bodies are absurd, living in total secrecy like PGMOL, and inventing more and more and more unneeded competitions, while refusing to investigate accusations of the abuse of children. Yet not only is this situation accepted no one is even laughing at the gross incompetence and irrelevance of the authorities that run football.
Even in communist states like China people can laugh at their leaders. On social media in China they comment on the similarity between Xi Jinping and Winnie-the-Pooh. OK that doesn’t lead to the collapse of the state, but at least it is a comment.
Thus in football we have a problem. It is not that no one laughs at these organisations, but rather the fact that no one even questions the workings of the FA or Fifa, or Uefa or PGMO, or even Manchester City with their finances. We just accept them as inevitable. And this is where we are being let down by our media. They accept that football has to be as it is. They are not asking daily how come the 115 charges against Manchester City are still not resolved, and how Manchester City are seemingly themselves running two legal cases against the organisers of competitions that they play in.
This is not to say the only way to deal with the way football has gone so horribly wrong is through laughing at it. But at least it might be a start if absolutely no one is willing to take the threats that PGMO, Fifa, Uefa and Manchester City present to the game.
