05 January 2024 , 18:15
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There's no point in sugar-coating it: English football has a refereeing crisis.
Standards of decision-making are lower than I can ever remember during my lifetime in the game, with too many flying in the face of all logic and common sense. We reached a new low on Thursday night with the nonsense of Everton striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin's red card in the FA Cup tie at Crystal Palace.
Show that incident to 100 ex-professional players and not one of them – not a single one – would agree it was a sending-off. I don't understand how VAR official Craig Pawson concluded there was excessive force or that Calvert-Lewin's honest challenge endangered the safety of an opponent. It failed the red card test on both counts.
And I have no idea why on-field referee Chris Kavanagh, having been sent to review the incident on his pitchside monitor, didn't tell his colleague at Stockley Park: “Sorry, but I'm not sending him off for that.”
Further down the pyramid, it's just as worrying. From the Premier League all the way down to Step 6, the quality of decision-making is not good enough. We can't carry on like this.
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But instead of trashing referees' reputations, we need to give them some help – because without a ref, there is no game, and if recruitment of referees at grassroots level dries up, we will have a real problem five or 10 years down the line. So here is my manifesto, based on simplified law changes and supporting referees with better education about the game, to improve the product we all love.
HAVE YOUR SAY! Should VAR be scrapped? Comment below.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin was sent off for this challenge on Nathaniel Clyne. (Getty Images)SCRAP VAR: I was a fan of it when it was introduced, but if Calvert-Lewin deserved a red card, the game has officially gone. Technology was supposed to help referees, but instead of eradicating clear and obvious mistakes, the way it is being applied has only added another layer of controversy. And too many VAR decisions are leaving officials and the PGMOL referees trade union open to ridicule. Enough is enough, bin it now. Too many games are being ruined or tilted by people looking at a bank of screens and reaching the wrong conclusions. Sack it off because it's embarrassing.
IF WE MUST KEEP VAR... BRING IN THE EX-PROS: Time and again, we see challenges which are misinterpreted by people who have never played the game at a professional level and, frankly, do not understand where there is intent to hurt an opponent, recklessness, a 50-50 tackle or an immaculate intervention to win the ball. The Premier League and PGMOL should recruit, immediately, a squad of ex-pros who understand what they are watching and they can advise VAR officials on the difference between naughty red-card challenges and blameless collisions. Rugby's TMO and cricket's DRS work miles better than football's VAR – and it's probably because ex-players are in charge of the technology.
SIMPLIFY THE HANDBALL LAW: Deliberate handball to gain an unfair advantage – that's what the law should be about. Thierry Henry's basketball for France against the Republic of Ireland in a World Cup qualifier. Luis Suarez punching a goalbound shot over the bar in a Uruguay v Ghana World Cup quarter-final. Instead we've had interfering administrators rewriting and complicating the law to the point where nobody knows what's handball any more. Natural position? Making body shape bigger? Give me a break – and give referees a break. Handball used to be a simple law, now it's a mess.
VAR is currently used for key decisions like offsides and penalties (PA)CONSULT VAR FOR SECOND YELLOWS: Willy Boly's second yellow card, for a perfectly good tackle, in Nottingham Forest's 3-2 defeat by Bournemouth just before Christmas was a terrible decision. That's where VAR should get on the walkie-talkie radio to the on-pitch referee and tell him to reverse his decision – but Robert Jones was not allowed to tune into VAR and his original (wrong) decision stood. Forest lost and Jones was hammered for his mistake. If a second yellow card is demonstrably unfair, and leads to a team being reduced to 10 men, it MUST be included in VAR's remit.
OFFSIDE: LET'S GO TOE-TO-TOE: A caller to Six-0-Six last weekend made a terrific suggestion that the line for every offside decision should be drawn from the tip of the attacking player's foot. After all, it's called football, so why not make the foot a definitive point of every offside decision instead of using geometry sets to prove a player's armpit, eyelash or kneecap is offside? Great idea.
I hope PGMOL chief Howard Webb, whose attempts to be more transparent and communicative are well-intended, will take some of the above points on board. As a player, when you lose form it's only natural that you lose confidence and it's the same with referees.
They know when they have messed up, and they need systems of education and support to regain public confidence. For a start, that means simplifying stupid laws and giving them ex-players' help to reach the right decisions.