By Tony Attwood
Who independently scrutinises the people responsible for policing the accuracy of referees in Premier League matches?
By Tony Attwood
Referees are monitored and I think employed by Professional Game Match Officials Ltd of which organisation they are all members. And if PGMOL needs monitoring well… err. it’s no one. At least no one I can see.
Meanwhile PGMOL has just rebranded itself Pro Ref, and it is owned by the Premier League, the English Football League and the FA. But if these Pro Ref referees get things wrong who deals with that?
So far we don’t know. Pro Ref has taken the dramatic step forward into the end of last century by having a page on the league website but I don’t it is helping us judge the performance of refs much although it tells us how good they have all been in the past and how they are going to be even better from now on.
And yes, there is the Elite Referee Development Plan which “has enabled Pro Ref to put a more modern and dynamic pathway in place, which will continue to provide opportunities to those who are ready to officiate across the various levels of the professional game. ” OK so it is going to find more referees – and this is good, because as we have constantly noted, at the moment we can have the same ref see the same PL club five or more times in a season – and we don’t think that is right.
And we are going to have a “Development Group and the CORE X programme” that is revamped creating “a new chapter for professional refereeing in England, the change from Professional Game Match Officials (PGMO) to Professional Game Referees (Pro Ref) to deliver the highest possible standards of refereeing in this country for the benefit of the game.”
In fact it has already begun. “For 2026/27, a newly created Professional Referee Group will service the Premier League and EFL Championship, creating both greater competition and flexibility to appoint and recognise high-performing match officials.”
Tye this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PskjcZKmfc
O this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMl9oxZjalE
Or this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/videos/cm2m7105d71o
Or this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqWPUQIpCJM
ISo as we are told that “Behind every referee and assistant referee is a multi-disciplinary team of experts, working together to ensure that the officials can perform at their best week-in, week-out,” we know that is one thing and one thing only – a total and utter con trick.
Now Untold always tries to be fair (honest, we do) so we didn’t jump in with this story on day 1 of this season. We wanted to give them time to get settled into their new titles. But now the clubs have had four league games and the refs lots of extra training we think it is time to start taking notice.
So we note that “Performance is measured by an independent Key Match Incidents” panel which is made up of “five members including former players and coaches, alongside one representative from the Premier League and another from Pro Ref.” It is there to give an “independent assessment of decision-making” and “review major incidents and assess the outcomes of on-field and VAR decisions.”
Now of course I may have got this wrong and maybe that is me, or maybe that is the way the ProRef stuff is written, but isn’t this still the referees monitoring the, err… referees? So if Referee Bert cocks up he’s monitored by Referee Fred who say, “I think you made a bit of a cock up this time old pal.” Is that it?
What we want, and what there is no mention of so far is…
No referee should oversee games involving a Premier League club more than once at home and once away in the course of a season. Why can’t PGMO employ enough refs to make this happen? (We’ve been asking for four years).
Presentation to the public (ie on line) of referee errors and a report on what was subsequently done (an apology would be nice also, but we’re not asking for the moon).
Publication of the report made by each PL club on the performance of the referee for each Premier League match, plus the awarding of a mark out of ten given by the club, which can be averaged across the season.
An explanation of why the level of yellow cards per game ranged from 4.6 by Stuart Attwell over 25 games, down to 2.67 per game for Craig Pawson over 21 gams. That seems to be Attwell giving 70% more yellows that Pawson per game. Why?
And here’s just one more for the time being. Why Peter Bankes saw 68% of his 22 matches last season as home wins, while Jarred Gillett only saw 22.7% of his matches last season as home wins. Are you selecting the games they see specifically, or is one ref biased to home teams and one to the away teams? Or are they all making it up as they go along?
We have of course got lots more questions, but answers to these would help. Data comes from Who Scored. Oh and by the way – we’re not dropping this.
