The PGMOL Needs To Go

Another week of football fixtures have come and gone with once again the taking points not being the key wins or precious points on the table but that of baffling decisions made by referees across the top two levels of English football. Once again fans and pundits call these decisions into question while the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) protect each other and hide behind blank template ‘apology’ letters. I just wanted to vent on this and why serious change is needed (again I’m aware this has been done before).

Just this weekend we saw Jarred Gillet sending off Sunderland’s Dan Neil for yelling ‘that’s a fucking foul ref’ from far away having said pre game he would officiate the derby game empathetically (having previously sent of Mario Lemina of Wolves for what can only be described as waking towards him), Michael Oliver not sending Manchester City’s Mateo Kovatic for two yellow card offences despite being the same ref who sent Gabriel Martinelli off against Wolves a few years back for two minor offences in the same passage of play (funny how something like that has never happened again). These are just a few of the decisions that have baffled and confused this weekend and I would be amiss to not mention Simon Hooper and Darren England with the disaster of officiating the Tottenham vs Liverpool game.

All of the above issues are only a handful pick out off the top of my head. But what have these refs done? Well some take additional paid trips to UAE (of what Man City’s owner is from). These refs included Michael Oliver who then officiated a Man City game and Darren England who was responsible for the breakdown of the Liverpool game. I will say now that I do not think the PGMOL is corrupt but a incompetent club of men looking to protect each other from even the slightest bit of scrutiny and places like Sky Sports allowing Mike Dean an prominent role to spew rubbish every Saturday doesn’t help them. But incidents like these do not help cool any fires from people alleging corruption and cheating from referees.

So what needs to be done? In my eyes the PGMOL needs to be abolished and started again. As it stands I don’t know who they answer to? Is it the FA? Is it just Howard Webb? For an organisation that wants clarity and respect they don’t seem to want it both ways. If an organisation spends most of the summer break thinking of rules to book players more instead of training its officials to not make such major errors then issues will of course arise. The organisation is full of people who do not care about the sport in my opinion only keeping themselves in the spotlight. What happens when they fail? At most a week off apart from Darren England who has been banned from Liverpool games all season (again his error could’ve happened in any game but this doesn’t help cool any corruption claims down). I do think it is beyond time for instead of just one voice all 20 premier league clubs (in fact all professional & semi-professional clubs both men and women) to call for an independent investigation of the PGMOL. What do they do? What repercussions are in place apart from a paid week off? Why are major errors so constant? If they want respect they should be transparent in their issues and shortcomings. For a major league like the premier league I have no doubt they could afford to hire the best refs worldwide to call these games, we saw a real lack of VAR issues in the World Cup apart from when English refs were used and I have to wonder why are they failing where others aren’t? Do they feel the technology will take their jobs and want to use it so badly it’s scrapped? Something needs to happen.

At the end of the day we now have a group of ‘celebrity refs’ who want the spotlight make these decisions in the hope they’ll be the next one so well known (for being a fuck up) they get a prominent TV spot like Mike Dean. This has to end. It has been said before the best ref is the one you don’t see or know the name of an unfortunately I think most English team fans know all the names by now. It’s time for clubs to stop defending bad decisions because they helped them and instead all band together and get major change.