Where to next for refereeing?

[AllanW]

What exactly do you hope to achieve? 

Thanks for asking

Objective; A fairer game on the pitch. Less bias, fewer mistakes, more mistakes corrected quickly.

How? By showing the administrators and refs bodies that the fans will no longer put up with incompetence. They need to accept their responsibility to deliver a level-playing field and do a better job.

What does that mean? That fans from all clubs and all leagues support a 'We want a fair game on the pitch' campaign so the administrators and refs can no longer police their own performance.

How does that happen? By creating and reporting constantly on a set of refereeing performance measures that we, the fans, want to see. Like the OPTA stats for players but stats which monitor how the game is being refereed.

How do we get there? By building a campaign which is supported by all fan groups and fanzines as widely as possible. They must be the group which puts pressure on the PL and others to get this aspect of the game right because it's not going to happen if we wait for the refs to do it themselves. That much must be obvious to everyone now.

We can build this solidarity right now by capturing this moment and making it plain to all fans that getting onboard is easy and worthwhile. Starting with that petition to ban Kevin Friend from the PL refs panel. Then promote the campaign via fanzines to build a solid pressure group and create the perfromance measures. We can do that because we know what we want to see and what we don't want to see. Build the measure with as much creative input from the fans as possible (which is a lot) then report them each week. This is important because if you let the Pl or refs develop them and report them themselves they will get watered-down and become useless.

They are our measures and we bash-away at demanding them until the refereeing on the pitch becomes less biased, makes fewer mistakes and corrects as many of those as possible quickly.

We're not asking for perfection but we're saying it's nowhere near good enough now.

Wanna help set it up?

[brian green]

Respectfully Allan, a fan forum is not the place to begin.  The whole of football gets a shit deal from the Establishment.  Policing,  crowd control, kick off times, standards of officiating.  Football in Britain is regarded as a sport for the poor and the unwashed.  That is what needs to change.  We are about to have a General Election.  Write to your MP.  Start an on line petition.  A simple one about VAR.  If it gets 100k signatures it gets Parliamentary time.

[AllanW]

Respectfully Allan, a fan forum is not the place to begin.

I appreciate the respectful but disagree; it's exactly the place to begin because we're the ones who want the change to happen.

The whole of football gets a shit deal from the Establishment.  Policing,  crowd control, kick off times, standards of officiating.  Football in Britain is regarded as a sport for the poor and the unwashed.  That is what needs to change.  We are about to have a General Election.  Write to your MP.  Start an on line petition.  A simple one about VAR.  If it gets 100k signatures it gets Parliamentary time.

Agreed with your point about the place football occupies in our culture and the baggage it carries. But cannot for the life of me agree that the place to begin the change process, the people to ask to lead that change is parliament and our politicians. That's not an easy jab at our useless and selfish MP's and the fractured political machinery of this country, it's a bald statement of fact; they cannot lead, they have no idea how to do things and they have other matters on their mind at the moment. They are the last people we should look to for help.

It's down to us because we want it and we CAN do it. The time is right and it's a campaign that can be successful.

[ktvillan]

To those worried about other fans laughing at them - diddums, grow the fuck up.  It might look small time if it were just Villa fans and one game, and even one incident.  It isn't.  He's got previous with us from the Chelsea game we lost a few years ago and the Fulham play-off final stamp. Add in the blatant bias shown towards bookings in the first half of the Palace game.  I had my suspicions something was up when McCarthy clearly barged Grealish over nowhere near the ball and we didn't even get a foul.  Enough to suspect there might be some kind of "agenda" from him re Villa, if it were only Villa feeling hard done by.  But fans from as far afield as Southampton and Liverpool are condemning him as well and bringing up numerous past indiscretions.  As well as Journos, Broadcasters, former players, pundits, and, most tellingly, many former top level refs describing the disallowed goal decision as shockingly bad.  When there is so much at stake he needs to be held accountable and to be seen to be held accountable.  I just wish we'd had the same opportunities to protest in the days of David F*****g Elleray and Mark "Gooner" Halsey (and I blieve even the latter has called out Friend), among others. 

[chrisw1]

What exactly do you hope to achieve? 

Thanks for asking

Objective; A fairer game on the pitch. Less bias, fewer mistakes, more mistakes corrected quickly.

How? By showing the administrators and refs bodies that the fans will no longer put up with incompetence. They need to accept their responsibility to deliver a level-playing field and do a better job.

What does that mean? That fans from all clubs and all leagues support a 'We want a fair game on the pitch' campaign so the administrators and refs can no longer police their own performance.

How does that happen? By creating and reporting constantly on a set of refereeing performance measures that we, the fans, want to see. Like the OPTA stats for players but stats which monitor how the game is being refereed.

How do we get there? By building a campaign which is supported by all fan groups and fanzines as widely as possible. They must be the group which puts pressure on the PL and others to get this aspect of the game right because it's not going to happen if we wait for the refs to do it themselves. That much must be obvious to everyone now.

We can build this solidarity right now by capturing this moment and making it plain to all fans that getting onboard is easy and worthwhile. Starting with that petition to ban Kevin Friend from the PL refs panel. Then promote the campaign via fanzines to build a solid pressure group and create the perfromance measures. We can do that because we know what we want to see and what we don't want to see. Build the measure with as much creative input from the fans as possible (which is a lot) then report them each week. This is important because if you let the Pl or refs develop them and report them themselves they will get watered-down and become useless.

They are our measures and we bash-away at demanding them until the refereeing on the pitch becomes less biased, makes fewer mistakes and corrects as many of those as possible quickly.

We're not asking for perfection but we're saying it's nowhere near good enough now.

Wanna help set it up?

Absolutely not.

If you think the PL refs don't already strive to be the best referees in the world then you are deluded. 

Whilst games are refereed by human beings there will always be mistakes.  They are trying to limit those with the introduction of VAR.

What will a 'fair game on the pitch' campaign achieve when all referees tell you that is excactly what they are already trying to achieve?  They already monitor their performances and I don't see how publisiced stats will help, particulaly when so much of what they do is subjective.

I'm sorry, but I just think you are barking up the wrong tree here.   

[AllanW]

I'm sorry

No problem. All the best. UTV.

[Steve67]

The only way to improve refereeing is for the people on here who want to complain and moan, to become referees and to do a better job at it. Or to persuade former players to become referees too. End of, stop bleating, move on.  You will not stop poor decision making, ever.

Friend has previous? Really? Don’t they all?

[Brend'Watkins]

He has previous against us yes, yes he does. We won't get the lost point back so next best this is that he never ref's a game at a professional level again.  That won't happen either but there's more chance than us getting our point.

[chrisw1]

He has previous against us yes, yes he does. We won't get the lost point back so next best this is that he never ref's a game at a professional level again.  That won't happen either but there's more chance than us getting our point.

Every PL ref will have one team or another who has a gripe about them.  So hopefully non of them will ever ref at a professional level again.  Then the PL can promote the refs from the Championship...

What, wait, they were shite too?  oh...

Really, we are not victims here.  We've just been on the end of a shit decision.  As have several other clubs in the PL this season - probably including Everton against us. 

[dave shelley]

Off the top of my head, the only referee that I can think of that has/had been blatantly demoted from the PL is Andy D'Urso.  He was guilty of nothing more than incompetence. I think it's fair to say that bias is something that cannot be leveled at him.

My abiding image of him is when he was fronted up by Roy Keane and the Class of '92 snarling at him for having the temerity to give a decision against them.  He looked terrified.  I know it's easy to say but, that would never have happened to me, my character on a football field was much, much stronger.

[Chipsticks]

Live from Zimbabwe

https://twitter.com/carelesstommy/status/1168861481225601025

[tomd2103]

We can’t get the point back. No matter who agrees with the crap Friend decision.  Bleating is so very small time and makes other fans laugh at us. Let whatever injustice motivate the players to win games.

Agree to a point, but there is a wider point in that they have got to use examples like that to get the processes right.

I see it as fairly simple really.  Take the incident on Saturday as an example - ref sees the incident, thinks in his mind it is a dive, but lets the play go on to a natural stoppage.  Then goes back and consults the technology to see if it was a dive or if the goal can stand.     

[PeterWithesShin]

Problem with that is that VAR isn't being used for dives, all it can do is say yes/no it wasn't a penalty.

[Brend'Watkins]

Problem with that is that VAR isn't being used for dives, all it can do is say yes/no it wasn't a penalty.

So even if the whistle had gone after the ball hit the net it could have been ruled out by the ref for simulation by Grealish?  I don't think that's correct. The point at which he blew his whistle is crucial is it not? If the Villa hating c*** was doing his job properly and let play continue as it should we'd have had our deserved point.

[paul_e]

Problem with that is that VAR isn't being used for dives, all it can do is say yes/no it wasn't a penalty.

I think this is correct from what I can make out and, in my opinion, is why this one happened as it did. He knew we had a scoring chance but he'd decided that Grealish had cheated and knew the goal would stand if we scored so he blew quickly. The solution is to allow events leading to a goal to all be reviewed, even if it's a tackle in the other half that led to break away. By limiting how much of the game can be checked you force the ref to make a decision early, which runs against the advice to let the game flow.