Off Topic Mark Halsey and the PGMOL

The PGMOL is the Professional Game Match Officials Limited.
They're in charge of the officials for the league system in England.
Why are they in the news? Because Mark Halsey has claimed that they told him to lie.

The former referee, who retired in 2013, has caused a bit of an issue by admitting the truth.
I think that most people accepted that this happens, but he's now confirmed it on Twitter.
These were in response to questions about the Aguero elbow, which the ref seemed to see:





This doesn't surprise me in the least, but it throws up some very big questions about our officials.
One incident that's affected us in this area would be the Moussa Dembele ban.
The incident that he's currently still banned for was clearly seen by the linesman:

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Did he deserve a red? Yes, definitely. Did the official see the incident? Without a doubt.
Why was this called up, despite all of the evidence suggesting that he couldn't be banned?
The media ****storm. It's that simple. This shouldn't be relevant.

 

Looks like FIFA will have to amend the Laws of the Game: The decisions of the referee regarding facts connected with play, including whether or not a goal is scored and the result of the match, are final...unless Sky Sports get on their high horse about something that happens in the game, then we'll defer to Uncle Rupert so The Sun gets a few days worth of material.

 

Absolutely!

No doubt Dembele deserved a ban for what he did. But then, so did that **** Costa for....well, just being Costa!...

The current rules state that if the incident was seen by the officials at the time and no action was deemed necessary, then the case cannot be taken further.

I'm not saying that's right, it's not. But I'd love to hear the FA's explanation for that pic!....

 

Well unless the linesman has xray vision he couldn't see through Dembele's head and so if asked would have to say he didn't see what happened.
Bad pic to use in this case, a pic of the ref staring straight at Aguero with nothing in between them would have been much better.

 

Seeing what actually happened is irrelevant. He saw the incident, even if he didn't have a good view.
Dembele wasn't standing in that exact position for the whole thing, either. The linesman just didn't give anything at the time.

The whole game was full of stuff that was allowed to pass but which normally wouldn't.
I got the feeling that the officials had been told to avoid harsh decisions and let the game flow.
It had the exact opposite effect, though.

 

I agree that angle makes it look as if the official couldn’t see the incident. I believe there is video demonstrating that the official did see the heart of the incident, however. I still don’t understand the reaction to what Dembélé did, quite aside from the question of whether the official saw the incident, though I doubtless have my Spurs colored glasses on. If he had actually touched Costa’s eye, he would certainly deserve a long ban. Since he clearly didn’t, it’s not, on the face of it, as bad as any number of other incidents which went unpunished, especially Torres’ face grab of Vertonghen. The idea is that officials saw the latter incident, but not the former, which clearly isn’t true. What Dembélé did is certainly weird and rather disturbing. But it’s not exactly violent and certainly caused no harm. So deciding to ban Dembélé for longer than others who committed violent acts (like Aguero’s elbow, which is designed from the beginning to hurt), or ones that clearly caused injury, is wrong quite aside from the question of whether officials saw it or not.

The larger issue is that Spurs have been the club that has displaced the biggest teams most often. They are the club you might expect would suffer unfair treatment if a bias in favor of those teams exists. They are the team who have suffered both the goal that was farthest in and ruled out, and the goal farthest out that was ruled in in PL history. They were granted in effect 15 fewer pens than Chelsea (and a grand total of zero) in a year when Chelsea finished two points ahead of them. Taking it all together, the Dembélé ban tends to reinforce the idea that bias in favor of the biggest teams does exist. The fact that Spurs have not been given a single pen this year despite a number of times their players have been flattened in the box does nothing to contradict that.