How can we get better referees in professional football?

This whole ref thing is being blown out of all proportion by the media. Even the BBC almost suggesting the ref is assaulting Judge.

It was a clear dive so well done ref for calling it out!

 

I bet a few use it on purpose!

 

The irony of the player's name being 'Judge' is not lost on me!

 

When I saw the photo, it did look as if he was trying to lean into the player. When you see the video it is more like player ran up to ref to confront him. The ref is a tall bloke, player is shorter, so he has to lean in to say something quietly , like calm down. Nothing to see here. Is the ref from Liverpool?

 

Sack them all and replace them with all of the various football pundits because as we know they are never wrong....

 

I look forward to the day that a referee properly loses it with a player. I’m hoping it’s Zaha.

 

Or Salah...

 

A little tale to illustrate where it starts to go wrong. Both of my lads played football at a decent level back in the early nineties. One got a no-more-playing injury and took up reffing. In one of his first games he was subjected to sustained verbal abuse from supporters of one team, culminating with a drunken father coming on to the pitch to confront him. I'm glad to say I wasn't there, but I was made aware of the incident by the coach of the opposition team who rang me to tell me about it and offer his full support when the local FA held an enquiry. This coach was a former professional player and a man of very high status in the community - both his brothers played in the old First Division and his nephew was capped at every level by England, so you get the picture.

Guess what? There was no enquiry. When the coach rang the local secretary he was told that 'the referee will need to toughen up'. My lad immediately hung up his whistle.

 

Exactly. I feel so sorry for your lad, but agree with him. In fact, I think I’d have walked off and told the team that the drunken father could ref the game as, obviously, he knows better .....

 

That is an absolute shocker.

 

They should mic up refs, their decisions can be heard and explained and so increases their accountability, and it would discourage players from abusing them as they would be heard. Win-win. But such a common sense idea is far beyond the cognitive capabilities of the dinosaurs that run FA.

 

Yeah, right. They're a bunch of dicks. Probably all support ****ty little teams like Pompey ... oh!

 

Not have people like @tomw24 . Simples

 

And another thing. Zouma’s header from the free kick yesterday, when he was clearly offside, resulted in a corner, because the Lino didn’t put the flag up and because it wasn’t a goal, VAR couldn’t intervene. What if Chelsea had scored from the corner they should never have had?

A combination of poor rules and poor officiating. Classic.

 

Not seeing that live was not poor officiating. It was so tight and calling that offside live from set pieces like that is very difficult. One of the hardest offside calls than an AR can make. Very easy to call it from a frozen screenshot. Not easy at all live and with that many bodies in a small area.

 

But you see my point, surely? Rather than just defend the AR, could you not actually engage with the question?

 

I do get it where if Chelsea had scored we could feel a bit aggrieved. But that's the risk we take with our high line from set pieces. We know what VAR is and isn't used for. If they score directly from the free kick there's a good chance of it being disallowed. But on the flip side if they get a corner and they score from that we have to live with it.

 

Well exactly. We shouldn’t have to live with a **** outcome that is the result of dubious rules.

 

Is it me, or does this sound like bollocks. Not the poster, the logic of the post which I realise is based on the rules. Had Chelsea scored then VAR could have looked at both the goal and the corner that led to it, couldn't it?

Not sure the rules should disadvantage the way a team sets itself up for a set piece.

 

I don't get you point here. With or without VAR, that corner would have taken place. If you had VAR checks for corners it would take 3 hours to complete a match!