Let me begin by saying that a referee is only human and therefore is allowed to make mistakes. The problem with a refereeing mistake is when it starts to cost a football club millions of pounds because it is occurring now, at the business end of the season, when one bad call can cost a team a title, a European spot, survival in a league and even promotion.
Now many times when a there is an officiating error at a football match, the linesman can be to blame. For example, last weekend, Chelsea beat Wigan Athletic 2-1 at Stamford Bridge. However, the linesman failed to spot that Chelsea scored two disallowed goals costing, one coming in the 90th minute costing struggling Wigan a point. That point could be crucial at the end of the season if Wigan go down by one point. It could potentially cost the Latics up to £40 million in lost revenue.
This then asks the question, at what point do managers stop being fined for speaking out about bad officiating and when will officiators start to feel the repercussions of making big game mistakes? Another question that needs to be answered is why, all of a sudden, are the mistakes cropping up all over the place?
I believe I have the answer to the second question. I will use a young referee, whom I believe is the best young referee in the Premier League, Micheal Oliver. Oliver, along with many other refs are being given a huge work load. Last week Oliver began the week at Old Trafford, refereeing Manchester United's live game againts Fulham. United controlled the game and were 1-0 up but in the 90th minute Fulham had a clear penalty denied that may have cost them a precious point. This then put Man United 5 points clear of Man City. The gap at the top of the Premier League should have been cut to 3 points.
Then the following weekend, he had to travel to Peterborough to referee their Football League Championship match against Leicester City. I am told Oliver had a very good game, where The Posh ran out 1-0 winners at London Road. Oliver then earned a week off but he was then given two huge games over the Easter in the Premier League. First he took on Liverpool v Aston Villa, a game in which both teams were desperate for a win. The game ended 1-1 but not without controversy as Liverpool manager Kenny Daglish was angry that his was not awarded two 'clear' penalties in the second half. 2 Days later Oliver was in London taking over Spurs' clash with Norwich City. This game also had controversy as Norwich had two clear penalties turned down. However as Norwich won on this occasion no one seemed to care about Oliver's mistakes.
Oliver is a very good referee but he is being given far to many games to take control off. There are 16 Premier League referees in total. This clearly is not enough and with so few Premier League referees they should not be being sent down to the Championship. In my opinion there needs to be at least 20 Premier League referees, so that a ref can referee every other match and then be fourth official for every other match. However if the FA do not want to do this then 1 of 2 things must happen. Firstly, there should be a Christmas break, to give refs a rest from the physical and mental drain they face. How many players can run around for 90 minutes 4 times in 2 weeks? The second option is to bring in video technology to help them out. I would give each team 3 video appeals in every match where they can choose to appeal against a decision that they feel was wrong.
However, I do not feel that video technology is going to work in the Football League. Sky Sports choose 2 matches a week to send their extra cameras to film games. The BBC choose 1 3pm game where they send their extra cameras to in order to film their 'main game' for the football leage show. All the other Football League games have 1 camera, on the gantry. These stadiums do not have cameras all over the pitch to see if player was offside or if a ball did cross the line. Could they afford the equipment and staff to do this? Most of them probably can't. Video technology is only really available to the Premier League.
If you guys have any ideas on how refereeing could improve then let me know in the comments section or contact me on Twitter at @UnitedWeStand95
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