There is not a club in the land that has not criticised referees for giving perceived decisions. Most fans base their points on various angles that they see on TV in slowmo or superslowmo. Whenever I have been to a match it is very very rare that I have been placed well enough to say with any certainty who, where what was offside, over the line etc. The calls for accountability from referees or accusations that they are receiving payments to favour the top teams have reached a farcical stage. From an experimental viewpoint I would like to see an electronic solution by placing a mini camera on a referees head or shoulder and then the whole football world would see what he does in real time without the benefit of playback in any form. Form a panel of 10 appointed experts, either pundits players or managers and they could make a decision on their perception of any incident that is blown up for, and it would be interesting to see how they fair. My bet is that the referee would be more right than wrong. But then the panel would have to be neutral, so in the end they know that looking at the game from the referre's viewpoint the experiment would not be necessary. Answer - more honesty from players and managers for the good of the game. Chances of that?
I dont believe for one second that referees want to make wrong decisions on purpose, I just feel that nowadays the game is so quick that one person cannot keep up with the actions/movements of 22 players and a ball; and given the money that is involved in todays game and the price of relegations/finishing positions they certainly shouldnt be alone in making these decisions. In this day and age with the technology that is available (not to take over the role of the referee, but to help and assist them to do their job more effectively) it is absolutely ridiculous that nothing has been brought in by now to get the majority of these controversial decisions ironed out. We are at the stage now where there is at least one talking/debatable point in every single game of football.
I listened to an ex ref talking on Talksport a couple of years ago, and he stated that he had to be 125% certain before giving big decisions against the big clubs such as Man U because it would have been detrimental to his career if he gave a wrong decision against them. He went on to say that it didn't matter if he got it wrong against the likes of Wigan etc, because the national media didn't care..He also stated that he believed most refs in the game thought the same way... I could never understand why there wasn't a national outcry after this interview, but there was hardly a ripple about it..
