During a week in which match-fixing made the headlines of Sky Sports News, the microscope is once again trained on the men in black in The Premier League.
The 2014/5 season goes to the wire with just four and five games left – Sunderland have their annual extra conveniently-timed ‘Get out of Jail’ game in the final week – and the rewards for staying up can be counted in their tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds.
With so much at stake and human officials fallible, the time has arrived to aid them with the video technology that has been available since 1986 when it was introduced into the NFL and means TV viewers watching video replays have a vantage point superior to on-field referees.
A League Managers Association survey last summer which interviewed 142 coaches from 20 different countries found an astonishing 93% backed more technology in the game and 64% a video referral system as is currently used in rugby, cricket and tennis.
In the last seven days, Hull City have enjoyed some extraordinary favourable decisions: their ‘luck’ was in against Crystal Palace, who had a goal disallowed, two penalty appeals turned down and saw a Tigers player handle the ball before scoring the game’s opener last Saturday to Alan Pardew’s aggravation.
Then on Tuesday night in a game that was not on BT or SKY Sports and Hull had taken the decision to charge Liverpool fans £50 per ticket meaning only a handful attended due to a boycott, the winning goal was scored by Michael Dawson ,who could have already been off for a shocking challenge on Jordan Henderson, with three men clearly offside.
Awarded by Lee Probert who has returned from refereeing hibernation for the vital run-in, there were three Hull attackers putting off Liverpool goalkeeper Simon Mignolet and it brought to mind the old Brian Clough quote –
“If he’s not interfering, what’s he doing on the pitch?”
The greatest beneficiaries of the goal were Manchester United whose former captain Steve Bruce, now Hull manager, later called it a “grey area” in the law.
Liverpool were also the victims of a terrible offside call at Wembley in the FA Cup Semi-Final against Aston Villa when Mario Balotelli scored a perfectly good equalising goal only for him to be wrongly judged to have been offside denying Steven Gerrard a last Wembley hurrah,
With the FA Cup gone and Champions League only a remote possibility, how much have referees been to blame for Liverpool’s demise this season and also last when a string of decisions helped Man City beat them to the title?
As stated in previous articles, Manchester United have enjoyed extraordinary ‘luck’ from referees this season, especially during the Christmas period as referee Graham Poll pointed out in The Daily Mail and who stand to gain £50M minimum from a return to the Champions League.
From being deep in the mire, Hull have sprung referee-assisted into the relative comfort of 34 points and a fighting chance of survival.
In Saturday afternoon’s early kick-off, Mike Dean takes charge of the battle of the hard-done-by teams as Leicester early in the season and Newcastle in the second half of the season haven’t been able to buy a decision in 2014/15 – or perhaps haven’t tried to.
Nigel Pearson has demonstrated some bizarre behaviour both on the touchline and in press conferences yet a lot of it is the reaction of a pressurised individual who has not only not had the rub of the green yet is not playing on a level playing field, just as Newcastle aren’t.
Pearson’s exasperation at having three penalties turned down against Man City, the “worst refereeing decision ever” in the words of Gary Lineker for a penalty awarded at Anfield by Mike Jones and, most recently, a penalty softly awarded against Spurs by Dean, who he called “One of the most arrogant men I’ve ever met” is understandable.
Newcastle Head Coach John Carver sympathised with Pearson following OstrichGate and he, too, has experienced very little from referees – in fact Newcastle have only had one penalty all season, at 3-0 down at Old Trafford having had a stonewall pen denied at 0-0 and haven’t had a single opposition player sent off against them this season.
Absolutely 100% stonewall penalties have been denied to John Carver and The Magpies against Liverpool when Ayoze Perez was fouled, Manchester United when Manu Riviere was fouled, the same player had a shot blocked blatantly by the hand of Jose Fonte against Southampton and at Everton when James McCarthy stopped Mike Williamson’s shot on the line with his hand at 0-0.
With so much riding on key decisions both in individual matches and their repercussions in terms of momentum gained or lost which can swing a club’s season and decide their very fate, the bad or good ‘luck’ element of refereeing decisions must be taken out of the game by incorruptible, infallible technology.
Video refs would not affect the pace and flow of a game already broken up by regular stoppages and all decisions can be cleared up within 30 seconds as they are already on SKY by expert pundits like Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher.
Decisions can define careers as well as games and a promotion or survival, a cup run or lack of it, the difference between the Europa or Champions League, and of course, titles are decided by the tightest of margins.
A game playing with 21st century money needs 21st century officiating forthwith.
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