The issue that makes us think, what is going on with the referees?

 

By Tony Attwood

• The issue that makes us think, what is going on with the referees?
• Why does the media so rarely criticise a referee?

I’ve never conducted an actual survey on the topic but I rather suspect that if I did so, I would find that a majority of the people who regularly go to Premier League matches would agree that at the very least, the quality of refereeing could be improved.   Many, I suspect, would say that there is something wrong with the refereeing within the games that they see.

So I am starting this piece from the premise that there is a problem.  But that notion poses a bigger question: why is there a refereeing problem in, of all places, the most popular football league in the world: the Premier League?

After all, to quote Wikipedia, “the Premier League is the world’s most-watched sports league, broadcast in 212 territories to a potential audience of 4.7 billion people.” More than 1.4 billion watched live games during the 2024–25 season.  The league has the highest average match attendance in association football, at 40,421 per game, with most stadiums near full capacity.

So you would think that if any league could organise its refereeing in such a way as to overcome a lot of controversy concerning the referee and his decisions, it would be the Premier League.

And yet the quality of the refereeing remains very high on the list of issues that I hear fans (including, of course, my own friends) discuss.   Decisions which were obvious are ignored or given the wrong way, and so on.

This leads to a fairly major issue.    The Premier League is apparently the most watched league in the world, and yet it has a constant debate raging on among those who watch games about the accuracy of the refereeing decisions.   Which suggests that if the Premier League can’t find referees who can get decisions right, no one can.  And that then suggests that football is, in fact, uncontrollable.  

The trouble with this debate, it appears to me, is that there is no way to reconcile matters, for we can’t easily tell if a referee is incompetent or has made a mistake of the type that anyone could make.   Matters on the pitch happen quickly, players consistently appeal for decisions in their own favour, and it would appear they are not always honest in such appeals.  Furthermore, matters not only move quickly on the pitch, but there are also constantly issues occurring across the pitch.  Worse, some players will feign injury when not hurt, which again doesn’t help the referee see what really did happen.

Add to all that the fact that at the professional level this is a fast-moving game in which the rewards for success are enormous, and there can be a biased crowd giving its opinion, and we begin to see the problem there is.

But even that is not everything, because there is some factual information available that shows that referees are influenced not just by what happens on the pitch, but also by what happens in the crowd.

Now I could of course, join in and blame different referees for different situations, but I have tended not to do this, instead turning to a remarkable website that reveals to us the pattern of decisions that referees make.  And before I offer this, may I add that these figures relate to The Premier League, “the world’s most-watched sports league, broadcast in 212 territories to a potential audience of 4.7 billion people.

“This is the league that has the highest average match attendance in association football, at 40,421 per game, with most stadiums near full capacity.   And having noted that take a look at this…

 

Referee	Games	HomeWin%	AwayWin%	Draw%
John Brooks	16	68.8	12.5	18.8
.Anthony Taylor	31	25.8	51.6	22.6
.Chris Kavanagh	25	32.0	24.0	44.0

 

These are experienced referees undertaking PL games week after week, and yet across a season one can see over 68% of his games as home wins, another can see 51% as away wins, and another can see 44% as draws

Now, I am not expecting all referees to have the same figures, and of course I know the arguments about matches played “at home” having the advantage of familiarity with the surroundings and the majority of crowd support.   But these differences in results are enormous.

In fact, they are so large that it would be unthinkable for a Premier League manager not to tell his team what to expect.  And if that expected result is not one that they want, the question is, how to overcome that or how to make use of it.

In short, managers and players will be adjusting how they play according to the results that referees normally see in their matches, and this is absolutely not how it should be.

Now I think this variation is so huge that any decent refereeing association, and any decent league employing a refereeing association, would see these figures, and realise there is something untoward going on here, and start looking into the situation.   But this has been going on for years, and nothing has changed

And that lack of change is probably the key issue that makes one question, with Premier League referees, what is going on..