Your sheer defence of referees is admirable. We've all seen the likes of Fernandes historically react and say similar stuff, and nothing got said about it. Absolutely they're just making an example of him. That's not to say it's right, but we do ask for consistency.
I'm not defending referees who get abused and do nothing about it because it makes life at grassroots level much harder. The FA who won't pick and choose who they punish and who they don't but the referees have to report it. That does annoy me. Fernandes should at least pick up a lot more yellows for dissent.
Perhaps he doesn't because he plays for United, or perhaps he is known to have Tourrette Syndrome and they make allowances? Who knows? Some Referees give as much as they take, there is a lot of inconsistency in the beautiful game.
The most important factor in Premier League Football, is that the Referee must have the final word in any situation and that it must be respected, right or wrong. Many sports have the right to appeal or challenge decisions at the time, it isn't practical in football matches, although VAR makes things a bit different, the fact is, they get it wrong too often and this is causing issues, it isn't the solution that it was supposed to be.
I think the way referees are treated/spoken to is a big part of the problem with referees. You won't get the best refs as things stand because who would want to be a football ref? Especially at lower levels where there's little or no pay and you get dog's abuse. It's an old point, to the point of being a cliche now, but if you watch a football match the referee gets all sorts of abuse, while in rugby matches the players behave themselves and call the ref "Sir". It's a simple matter of actions needing to have consequences and really wouldn't be that difficult to sort out.
The problem is how ingrained it is now I guess. If everytime a player questioned an officials decision led to a yellow/red card then you would be ending games with 4v5 or something daft. The PL wouldn’t sanction it as it would make the game a laughing stock for at least a short period of time. Same reason they don’t punish the shirt grabbing etc on corners I think. Would be about 8 pens a game if they really enforced it People say that if you started handing out harsh punishments players would soon learn, but I’m sure they wouldn’t. As Tom said it is an emotionally charged atmosphere and if you start booking any backtalk (when the players have been doing it for years) then it would get ridiculous the amount of cards. And if you only do it for certain instances then, well you have what we have now where there is no consistency between what one ref is fine with and another isn’t
Hold up. If we gagged all our players in this instance, and the other team is down to four players. Well…we might scrape a draw or two.
Thing is, I'm sure they would learn soon enough. In the late 80s passing back to the keeper and him picking it up was rampant and for a little while after the back pass rule was introduced there were times when keepers picked the ball up when they shouldn't but it almost never happens now. In fact we now have a situation where clubs sign goalkeepers because of their passing ability rather than their ability to make saves (see: Bazunu, Gavin). If people are worried about red cards I think you could work around that. In rugby the refs don't immediately reach for the cards when players speak to them or question decisions. The ref will accept momentary frustration and warn them or say something like "I'm the referee" and that's the signal to shut up. If you want to get more out there you could try introducing an orange card that's only used for dissent/back talk and means a player gets sin binned for 15 minutes or something. You could also open the football ref microphones for televised games like the rugby refs have, with hefty fines for players who are heard swearing on TV. Hell, given the way society now responds to some things you might also find that if players DO regularly abuse referees they have problems getting and keeping sponsors. At that point they'd definitely keep their mouths shut.
I agree that something along the lines of rugby needs to be done, but maybe the 10 yard rule is worth pursuing first, before an abrupt increase in yellow cards. In rugby, any dissent or backchat is immediately punished by moving the penalty kick 10 yards (or metres) nearer the offenders’ goal line. That might have interesting consequences in football, such as upgrading a free kick just outside the box to a penalty. Giving away a penalty for calling the ref a **** would soon result in punishment by the player’s own teammates and management, and would quickly become a thing of the past.
I think you are onto something here around doing something aligned to Rugby. If we were able to increase the size of the opponents goal, and keep our goal the size of a dugout, to the size of a rugby one, and use an egg shaped ball, well we may just have a chance. I swear if we did that, I think we’d turn a corner. Also, the fully advocate that we replace referees with dock yard workers, from the coasts of Scotland, then people mouthing off like Jack Stevens and Bruno Fernandes would get their ****s kicked in. Just a thought, see what everyone thinks.
Yeah I don’t get this, “they wouldn’t learn”. Managers would soon bash it out as they wouldn’t be able to accept loosing players on a reg basis.
They did that for a while didn't they but binned it off? Not 100% but definitely recall something like that being a rule
Yeah, I'm sure it was tried and there were too many situations where it didn't matter much (like virtually any free kick in the opposition's half) and even some where it actually helped the defending team because there's a point where moving an attacking free kick 10 yards closer to the goal actually makes it harder to score.
