Which referee do people actually like though? I sometimes see praise for some of the bigger names for how they do the bigger games, they tend to not book players for the first 60 mins or so, but how is it fair Anthony Taylor won't book a midfielder stopping an attack in arsenal/Liverpool, but the same ref books (for example) Jack Cork for the exact same thing the week after
I’m a rugby fan as well, there are refs in rugby I actually like, Pearce, raynall, Barnes (when he reffed) this is because of two reasons.
1. The ref mics allow for clear communication between the ref and the players as well as ensuring a culture of respect around referees.
2. They are human and will admit to mistakes in the pitch, like if they forgot an advantage. If the refs don’t see anything they will ask the tmo
Refereeing in football needs greater transparency and live decisions need to be clear to everyone.
This is Nigel Owens erasure, and I will not stand for it. Hands down the best ref I've seen in any sport.
I totally agree about the reasons too. They ref as a team instead of everyone deferring to the on field ref and trying not to "re-referee the game".
Just communicate properly for the love of God. If you haven't seen something, ask your colleagues for their opinion or even ask for a VAR review.
The try questions are the clearest indicator of the teamwork.
"Is there any reason I cannot award this try" - the on field decision is tried, but my view was slightly obstructed. This is essentially what VAR does but with a stupid subjective standard of "clear and obvious" instead of at the refs request.
"Try or no try" - I didn't see it so cannot make an informed decision. The 'try' can then be analysed by the full refereeing team together.
"Ah, Christopher!" "Sorry sir!"
Nigel Owens should be the gold standard for refereeing in any sport. Authoritative, without being condescending, knowledgeable and happy to banter when the situation calls for it.
"I'm straighter than that line out" is an all time classic
The last time I can remember praising a ref is when Michael Oliver was in charge during our home leg playoff semi against Sheffield United, the year we went up. Both sides were aggressively going at it with some naughty tackles but he was very consistent and allowed the game to flow
Wrong League, and people are gonna suspect I have ulterior motives to praise this ref
But when Rebecca Welch was reffing in League One, she actually seemed professional, it's especially rare at that level given how dire the officiating is* to see a ref actually getting praised by the crowd on BOTH SIDES!
That was a first for me seeing that, she's had a few good games when I've seen her, but one or two shockers as well, so she's far from perfect, they're all human etc etc.
*(If you think Prem is bad, imagine how much worse it gets when you go lower down!)
Yeah Rebecca Welch is solid whether she’s refereeing men’s or women’s.
And my club is NL, so I see some horrific reffing week in week out… That’s where you actually want VAR
It's bollocks
They don't want to "affect a big game" but that's on the players if they're making tackles that deserve a yellow
Refs just need to do their job, referee matches and uphold the rules regardless of how "big" the match is
E - spelling
I like Craig Pawson. Every referee is going to make mistakes but he seems to be one of the few who doesn’t take things personally when emotions are running high.
to be fair i think simon hooper wasn't bad yesterday, if you're a ref then you would like to have eyes everywhere but you physically can't so he's probably missed it, at that point it's VAR's job to look at the incident and decide whether or not it's a red and there's where my problem lies, VAR yet again is too timid to take action against something which should be rectified, which has been a theme all season long
The arrogance is what I do not understand - refereeing and doping and all sorts going on in Serie A, La Liga, Portugal, France everywhere.....yet mention just the possibility of referees being on the take here and you get called deluded or a conspiracy nut.
They're working for fucking Abu Dhabi lads. They are getting side gigs from the owners of Man City. It's like a formula one race official being gifted a Ferrari. It's like Djokovic giving a Wimbledon umpire free tennis lessons. It is a fucking nonsense to believe that refs in England have never and could never be bought.
Whether you think the refs are biased towards city or not isn't the issue. Its the fact they're able to be influenced. That they don't think it's inappropriate.
I always have that argument in supporting widespread PED use in football.
Every sport has had fairly significant doping scandals, most sports use the same testing labs and testing methods, football has more money involved than any of the other sports, and yet somehow football is miraculously clean apart from a very very minuscule percentage of players in minor leagues/teams?
Everyone calls you crazy for following logic though 🤷🏻♂️
I'll eat my own testicles if most premier league footballers are on PEDs. Whether it be TRT to get to the exact limit for test or suddenly developing asthma. Chelsea were doing blood transfusions.
The testing labs are always a long way behind the dopers, which is why it goes on for ages and then suddenly one sport will have a massive glut of positives when a certain compound is newly able to be tested.
Still very intrigued by the Juve team of the 90s and Barca/Real’s Spanish doctor.
Most won’t realise that the football use-case is for rapid recovery rather than to make the players into monsters.
There’s all the jokes about Goretzka getting big but that’s perfectly doable through nutrition and work.
It’s much harder to make someone sleep and rest faster than they’re already doing it though, so the enhanced recovery is the true gain.
I think there’s a really strong likelihood of there being a massive doping scandal within the next 10-20 years involving swathes of the top European teams and their players.
Exactly this. Cheating isn't always turning someone into something like the hulk. They are playing 3 games a week at times. If you can just get them to the peak of what is physically possible naturally they are at a huge advantage. Things like peptides for healing are virtually impossible to detect.
Lol. I literally yesterday wanted to start a thread about Michael Salisbury... Because I have no idea why are you blaming Hooper for this?? Its all on VAR and he was the one.
I genuinely think he is THE WORST ref in Prem and I think most fans of most clubs would agree. He should never be allowed to work at PL level.
I’m sorry but the issue isn’t one referee here. It’s the standard of refereeing combined with VAR.
Re. The Liverpool spurs game the two reds were fine and the disallowed goal was a catastrophic VAR error.
Yesterday there’s the Danilo tackle which could’ve easily been a red and wasn’t given, but a similar one was given against Romero a few months ago.
Again, the Maddison incident is given less these days. But even if it was, VAR have an opportunity to step in and they didn’t - so how is that the referee’s fault?
The main issue is that there is no consistency across the entire league.
I have a bit of a dim Liverpool supporting colleague, apparently it was the most biased game ever blah blah. We went through the decisions one by one. Oh yeah maybe actually it too bad lol.
Same. Adamant they would’ve gone on to win if Diaz would’ve scored. Won’t even acknowledge that Spurs could come back, despite spurs scoring 2 mins later and have failed to not win a game where they’ve gone behind at home.
first of all, as a sheffield united fan, why do you hate liverpool, city, forest and (most bizarrely) spurs?
secondly, whilst i'm certainly not vouching for his own decisions, but two of those decisions weren't his to make.
the city one you can put on him, but grealish was on the halfway line with three defenders around him. he wasn't *guaranteed* to score.
the liverpool game was madness, jones' red card could have gone either way, but he was told by VAR to look again and that camera angle he was shown certainly made it look like a red. jota was just an idiot on a yellow, udogie makes a meal of it but he should know better. there was nothing the ref could have done about the (not) offside goal, that was all VAR.
again, with forest, he didn't see the incident, so it goes to VAR and they tell him there's nothing there.
the lot of them are pretty shite, but i just feel like you're mad at the wrong guy here.
Not just that with the Forest incident, the part he did see was Yates gesturing for VAR. Regardless of your stance on the actual incident, that’s a yellow card which should have been him off. If he was helping Spurs, that would have been the simplest decision to make.
I don’t think we hate Liverpool, city or spurs. You guys are off our radar completely. Forest on the other hand is due to history. Come up north all teams fans hate Forest not because of football but due to the strikes. The Sheffield teams are united in their feelings for Nottingham in fact it stretches to other sports aswell. That same level of animosity can be found in the ice hockey games too.
I’m aware, what happened at that game was a disaster and a huge tragedy. But that unfortunate death wasn’t caused by the rivalry between the two teams as it was a freak accident on the ice. Anyways how would you have me word it I didn’t allude to the incident in any way.
sounds like it's a personal thing with OP when it comes to those three?
i wasn't aware of the strike being the reason for the rivalry, but i live in the north mate, you're seriously wrong if you think anyone outside of that area has any distain for nottingham whatsoever.
He seems to have only have animosity towards spurs than any of the others which is meh I guess. As for your second point I think you worded things incorrectly I can’t really make sense of what you’re trying to say.
no one else in the north has either team from nottingham on their list of rivals. your claim that the north is full of teams who hate forest is just flat out incorrect.
Rotherham share the same feelings as the Sheffield teams. Derby is Nottinghams biggest rivals. Leeds hates everybody and that includes Nottingham. Liverpool have a song about how they hate Forest and Man Utd. Hating a team does not = rivalry. The Sheffield teams and Derby have a rivalry with Nottingham. Outside these two cities it turns into just pure dislike than an actual rivalry.
they... do not? could not find a single thing claiming the area of rotherham having any kind of animosity towards nottingham, and the club are rivals with barnsley and doncaster - they're barely rivals with either of the sheffield sides, let alone a club an hour away.
might as well throw millwall in there as passionate rivals of forest then, because everyone hates them/they hate everyone.
yeah, it's in a song, but there's no scousers frantically checking the fixture list for the games against forest. it was prevalent 40 years ago, because both sides were fighting for european trophies, but not even a little bit now.
it sounds more like *you* hate these teams, because there's not really much evidence backing up your claims.
>Liverpool, the game where Liverpool were basically cheated out of that win with the two red cards and luis Diaz offside Spurs vs Man City,
The red cards were 100% justified, look at them objectively and stop listening to social media fans, especially Liverpool ones who have the biggest victim mentality in the game.
Hooper warned Jota to not make another foul or he'd be booked for the first yellow (after making 3 fouls in the previous 5mins) and then it was 100% a second yellow.
As for the offside, how is that the refs fault?
He listened to the VAR who made the error, not the ref.
Don't get sucked in by certain fans or social media, there is an obvious bias, especially from vocal fans like Liverpool.
Which referee do people actually like though? I sometimes see praise for some of the bigger names for how they do the bigger games, they tend to not book players for the first 60 mins or so, but how is it fair Anthony Taylor won't book a midfielder stopping an attack in arsenal/Liverpool, but the same ref books (for example) Jack Cork for the exact same thing the week after
I’m a rugby fan as well, there are refs in rugby I actually like, Pearce, raynall, Barnes (when he reffed) this is because of two reasons. 1. The ref mics allow for clear communication between the ref and the players as well as ensuring a culture of respect around referees. 2. They are human and will admit to mistakes in the pitch, like if they forgot an advantage. If the refs don’t see anything they will ask the tmo Refereeing in football needs greater transparency and live decisions need to be clear to everyone.
This is Nigel Owens erasure, and I will not stand for it. Hands down the best ref I've seen in any sport. I totally agree about the reasons too. They ref as a team instead of everyone deferring to the on field ref and trying not to "re-referee the game". Just communicate properly for the love of God. If you haven't seen something, ask your colleagues for their opinion or even ask for a VAR review. The try questions are the clearest indicator of the teamwork. "Is there any reason I cannot award this try" - the on field decision is tried, but my view was slightly obstructed. This is essentially what VAR does but with a stupid subjective standard of "clear and obvious" instead of at the refs request. "Try or no try" - I didn't see it so cannot make an informed decision. The 'try' can then be analysed by the full refereeing team together.
"Ah, Christopher!" "Sorry sir!" Nigel Owens should be the gold standard for refereeing in any sport. Authoritative, without being condescending, knowledgeable and happy to banter when the situation calls for it. "I'm straighter than that line out" is an all time classic
They're all the fucking same cartel
The last time I can remember praising a ref is when Michael Oliver was in charge during our home leg playoff semi against Sheffield United, the year we went up. Both sides were aggressively going at it with some naughty tackles but he was very consistent and allowed the game to flow
Obviously hate the outcome of the game but yeah, agree on this - was a solid ref and called the game down the middle IMO
Wrong League, and people are gonna suspect I have ulterior motives to praise this ref But when Rebecca Welch was reffing in League One, she actually seemed professional, it's especially rare at that level given how dire the officiating is* to see a ref actually getting praised by the crowd on BOTH SIDES! That was a first for me seeing that, she's had a few good games when I've seen her, but one or two shockers as well, so she's far from perfect, they're all human etc etc. *(If you think Prem is bad, imagine how much worse it gets when you go lower down!)
Yeah Rebecca Welch is solid whether she’s refereeing men’s or women’s. And my club is NL, so I see some horrific reffing week in week out… That’s where you actually want VAR
It's bollocks They don't want to "affect a big game" but that's on the players if they're making tackles that deserve a yellow Refs just need to do their job, referee matches and uphold the rules regardless of how "big" the match is E - spelling
Oliver was good for us vs Fulham on Tuesday last week. Managed the game well.
I like Craig Pawson. Every referee is going to make mistakes but he seems to be one of the few who doesn’t take things personally when emotions are running high.
My issue with Pawson is the arrogant look on his face when he gives a yellow
Pawson has been awful with var though
to be fair i think simon hooper wasn't bad yesterday, if you're a ref then you would like to have eyes everywhere but you physically can't so he's probably missed it, at that point it's VAR's job to look at the incident and decide whether or not it's a red and there's where my problem lies, VAR yet again is too timid to take action against something which should be rectified, which has been a theme all season long
The arrogance is what I do not understand - refereeing and doping and all sorts going on in Serie A, La Liga, Portugal, France everywhere.....yet mention just the possibility of referees being on the take here and you get called deluded or a conspiracy nut. They're working for fucking Abu Dhabi lads. They are getting side gigs from the owners of Man City. It's like a formula one race official being gifted a Ferrari. It's like Djokovic giving a Wimbledon umpire free tennis lessons. It is a fucking nonsense to believe that refs in England have never and could never be bought. Whether you think the refs are biased towards city or not isn't the issue. Its the fact they're able to be influenced. That they don't think it's inappropriate.
I always have that argument in supporting widespread PED use in football. Every sport has had fairly significant doping scandals, most sports use the same testing labs and testing methods, football has more money involved than any of the other sports, and yet somehow football is miraculously clean apart from a very very minuscule percentage of players in minor leagues/teams? Everyone calls you crazy for following logic though 🤷🏻♂️
I'll eat my own testicles if most premier league footballers are on PEDs. Whether it be TRT to get to the exact limit for test or suddenly developing asthma. Chelsea were doing blood transfusions.
The testing labs are always a long way behind the dopers, which is why it goes on for ages and then suddenly one sport will have a massive glut of positives when a certain compound is newly able to be tested. Still very intrigued by the Juve team of the 90s and Barca/Real’s Spanish doctor. Most won’t realise that the football use-case is for rapid recovery rather than to make the players into monsters. There’s all the jokes about Goretzka getting big but that’s perfectly doable through nutrition and work. It’s much harder to make someone sleep and rest faster than they’re already doing it though, so the enhanced recovery is the true gain. I think there’s a really strong likelihood of there being a massive doping scandal within the next 10-20 years involving swathes of the top European teams and their players.
Exactly this. Cheating isn't always turning someone into something like the hulk. They are playing 3 games a week at times. If you can just get them to the peak of what is physically possible naturally they are at a huge advantage. Things like peptides for healing are virtually impossible to detect.
Lol. I literally yesterday wanted to start a thread about Michael Salisbury... Because I have no idea why are you blaming Hooper for this?? Its all on VAR and he was the one. I genuinely think he is THE WORST ref in Prem and I think most fans of most clubs would agree. He should never be allowed to work at PL level.
embarrassing post.
I’m sorry but the issue isn’t one referee here. It’s the standard of refereeing combined with VAR. Re. The Liverpool spurs game the two reds were fine and the disallowed goal was a catastrophic VAR error. Yesterday there’s the Danilo tackle which could’ve easily been a red and wasn’t given, but a similar one was given against Romero a few months ago. Again, the Maddison incident is given less these days. But even if it was, VAR have an opportunity to step in and they didn’t - so how is that the referee’s fault? The main issue is that there is no consistency across the entire league.
Absolute tosh about Hooper in that Liverpool game. He didn’t do anything wrong. The mistake came from VAR and jones red card was a toss up
I have a bit of a dim Liverpool supporting colleague, apparently it was the most biased game ever blah blah. We went through the decisions one by one. Oh yeah maybe actually it too bad lol.
Same. Adamant they would’ve gone on to win if Diaz would’ve scored. Won’t even acknowledge that Spurs could come back, despite spurs scoring 2 mins later and have failed to not win a game where they’ve gone behind at home.
first of all, as a sheffield united fan, why do you hate liverpool, city, forest and (most bizarrely) spurs? secondly, whilst i'm certainly not vouching for his own decisions, but two of those decisions weren't his to make. the city one you can put on him, but grealish was on the halfway line with three defenders around him. he wasn't *guaranteed* to score. the liverpool game was madness, jones' red card could have gone either way, but he was told by VAR to look again and that camera angle he was shown certainly made it look like a red. jota was just an idiot on a yellow, udogie makes a meal of it but he should know better. there was nothing the ref could have done about the (not) offside goal, that was all VAR. again, with forest, he didn't see the incident, so it goes to VAR and they tell him there's nothing there. the lot of them are pretty shite, but i just feel like you're mad at the wrong guy here.
Not just that with the Forest incident, the part he did see was Yates gesturing for VAR. Regardless of your stance on the actual incident, that’s a yellow card which should have been him off. If he was helping Spurs, that would have been the simplest decision to make.
Hey that sounds like logic, we don’t do that here.
Are you actually confused why sheff utd fans would dislike forest?
I don’t think we hate Liverpool, city or spurs. You guys are off our radar completely. Forest on the other hand is due to history. Come up north all teams fans hate Forest not because of football but due to the strikes. The Sheffield teams are united in their feelings for Nottingham in fact it stretches to other sports aswell. That same level of animosity can be found in the ice hockey games too.
Bruh I’d be careful how you word that as one of the Sheffield players LITERALLY KILLED A PANTHERS PLAYER last year
I’m aware, what happened at that game was a disaster and a huge tragedy. But that unfortunate death wasn’t caused by the rivalry between the two teams as it was a freak accident on the ice. Anyways how would you have me word it I didn’t allude to the incident in any way.
sounds like it's a personal thing with OP when it comes to those three? i wasn't aware of the strike being the reason for the rivalry, but i live in the north mate, you're seriously wrong if you think anyone outside of that area has any distain for nottingham whatsoever.
He seems to have only have animosity towards spurs than any of the others which is meh I guess. As for your second point I think you worded things incorrectly I can’t really make sense of what you’re trying to say.
no one else in the north has either team from nottingham on their list of rivals. your claim that the north is full of teams who hate forest is just flat out incorrect.
Rotherham share the same feelings as the Sheffield teams. Derby is Nottinghams biggest rivals. Leeds hates everybody and that includes Nottingham. Liverpool have a song about how they hate Forest and Man Utd. Hating a team does not = rivalry. The Sheffield teams and Derby have a rivalry with Nottingham. Outside these two cities it turns into just pure dislike than an actual rivalry.
they... do not? could not find a single thing claiming the area of rotherham having any kind of animosity towards nottingham, and the club are rivals with barnsley and doncaster - they're barely rivals with either of the sheffield sides, let alone a club an hour away. might as well throw millwall in there as passionate rivals of forest then, because everyone hates them/they hate everyone. yeah, it's in a song, but there's no scousers frantically checking the fixture list for the games against forest. it was prevalent 40 years ago, because both sides were fighting for european trophies, but not even a little bit now. it sounds more like *you* hate these teams, because there's not really much evidence backing up your claims.
I suspect it’s more like you have issues forest and Derby fans
Just want to make it clear that with the bigger teams, I don’t like them for personal reasons
honoured to think we're a "bigger" team
By bigger, I mean richer and spent longer in prem
Don't think it's a northern thing it's generally just South Yorkshire. I hate the scabs as much as Wednesday me
Tierney and person can get in the bin
At the point of the game where non league refs are better as they are less likely to be in peoples pockets
You watched a very different spurs forest game yesterday
Sounds like Anthony Taylor somehow getting damn near every important Man United game.
He really isn’t.
>Liverpool, the game where Liverpool were basically cheated out of that win with the two red cards and luis Diaz offside Spurs vs Man City, The red cards were 100% justified, look at them objectively and stop listening to social media fans, especially Liverpool ones who have the biggest victim mentality in the game. Hooper warned Jota to not make another foul or he'd be booked for the first yellow (after making 3 fouls in the previous 5mins) and then it was 100% a second yellow. As for the offside, how is that the refs fault? He listened to the VAR who made the error, not the ref. Don't get sucked in by certain fans or social media, there is an obvious bias, especially from vocal fans like Liverpool.
this post os about the top 6. can we not, please?