2025-26 England Referee Thread [EPL/EFL/Cups+][Rs]

https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/s/aJf8iOvjXi

This was check completed yesterday. So who really knows anymore.

 

Holy hell.

 

I'm sorry, but I think this is lazy whataboutism. "Fans will always complain, so might as well have VAR" is what it boils down to.

But you're stealing a bunch of bases. A partisan fan might always complain, yes. But I am beyond confident that the vast majority of people around our game look at that play and say "yeah, handball, 100%, no goal." (which you pretty much stipulate in your subsequent post #925; sorry I'm just catching up). I can say this is a move I learned and tried myself before I was 14; you don't need to be a professional to try to sneakily get away with this. It's an easy handball decision. As @code1390 gets into, a trained official can start diving into the text of the Law and his instruction and start to make a case why it's not a handball and/or the call on the field should stand. But it's just not seeing the forest for the trees, as he says. I also think it's wilfully ignoring reality and just bad officiating, but I'll settle for his take at minimum.

If we go back to the idea of VAR being meant to catch travesties... I mean, put this scenario in the 2009 France v Ireland game and make the player Henry. France scores to eliminate Ireland off this. How many degrees short of the actual Hand of Frog frenzy aftermath would things be? Because I don't think it's much at all. I complain about VAR mostly because the remit is just too large and the number of things we want to subject to it has changed the game too much. But I am in favor of some system that catches the travesties, so to speak. This incident shows, to me, that we still don't even have that. Take this out of a meaningless GW37 game and put it in a title-decider with the goal standing.

It's not really technology that is the problem. Oftentimes it's just the officiating and personnel.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cp3p91xed8go

Referees' boss Howard Webb spoke to Forest to explain that while there could be justifiable reasons to judge this was not handball, a better decision, and one that would be expected, is for it to be disallowed.


So basically it's not really clear and obvious but this is one of the few times PGMOL says to just call it like the game expects. Cool.

 

Wow. That's unreal.

 

No, no, no. We're not letting Tierney off the hook for this one. He's right there. Looking right at it. He offers a soft tweet and almost reluctantly--and at least nonchalantly--pulls a yellow.

It's a horrible, inexcusable on-field decision. It's a clear missed KMI. Before VAR, we'd be wondering how on earth Tierney got that wrong.

You can blame the VAR, too, of course. But VAR's are tasked in England with seeing if the referee's call is defensible and once you start there, there's all sorts of mental gymnastics they can do. Yes, it was high, from behind, into the calf, and nowhere near the ball... but the overall reaction was muted, the victim didn't seem to suffer serious injury and maybe the force wasn't really through the leg. I'm not excusing the VAR. But the VAR can only be wrong here because Tierney was so wrong to start with. That should have been an instant and no-questions asked red card, instead we get... that, whatever that was. Just gross refereeing.

 

I am not saying that.

In fact, I think if this happens ANYWHERE else on the field, the referee is calling it immediately, no questions asked. There's only pause because of the consequences due to the location (we over-think attacking and defensive handballs close to goal).

This should be called because he trapped the ball with his arm. And he knew what he was doing, even if there's more instinct than malice. But many people will tell you that you can't read minds and you can't prove that it's deliberate, so will bend over backward to find a justification to allow this. Some of those people ref in the EPL.

 

I think the game does expect it to be called because a goal is scored. But it also expects it to be called if a midfielder does this in the center circle. That just matters less.

 

I feel like this image sums up the month PGMOL have had.

 

I'm willing to concede it's not a Tierney problem, mostly because I never tried to argue it was. There is an EPL or English officiating problem here. But I don't think it's universal. We have evidence of Oliver giving a more doubtful SFP live this year already. And there were other cases, including the one (last year) where Bruno Fernandes got sent off with AR input.

There is not blanket aversion to live SFP cards. They are rarer, yes. But still given. And this one is so obvious that I think it's firmly in the category of ones we expect the better referees to give. I don't know what Tierney was thinking. Did he just not see it right? Was he coasting enough in the match that he felt he could just get by? The implicit pressure of not giving something against Arsenal? No clue. But seeing him do it, I agree that others in the league would have been capable of also doing it. I just don't buy the implication that it's the expected call.

Definitely disagree here. Very difficult to play the "what if" game, but we have plenty of evidence from, say, 1995-2020 that this type of tackle was often appropriately dealt with. Now, pre-1995, different story. And since VAR came along, unfortunately it's becoming a different story again.

If this is the X factor you're focused on (the idea that the title is on the line in GW37), you've got an argument and one that can't be refuted (or proven, for that matter).

But if we're just talking about the merits of the decision in the context of any EPL match, I think the argument and history is on my side.

I guess the question comes down to whether or not you think Tierney was cowardly or incompetent.